Disaster at the Y

So joining the Y has been the best thing we've done since moving back to Puyallup--I think we've been there nearly every day since signing up. Zoey loves swimming and is proving herself to be quite the fish in the toddler pool. It's all been great, with the exception of Saturday morning's incident, which played out as follows:

We woke up to 38 degree weather and a rain/snow mix. Depressing. Bryan was leaving to take his dad fishing for the day for his birthday, and I was supposed to meet up with him later for the "surprise" portion of his dad's birthday. This meant we were leaving Zoey overnight with my aunt, since his father has chosen to live way out in the middle of nowhere, and driving back after the party wouldn't be such a great idea. (Also, hanging out with his dad generally requires a large amount of alcohol for both Bryan and I, but that's a different subject.) Anyway, the thought of leaving Zoey overnight after her traumatic move-in week, and the possibility of performing CPR on an old unhealthy clueless dude with Vietnam-induced PTSD who was about to be "surprised" by all his friends and maybe a heart attack, had me a little down. I wanted to do something fun with Zoey before we had to leave, so I decided to head to the Y. I thought it would be best for me to squeeze in a short work out before hanging with the Friends of Fatty Foods Club, and I thought Zoey would have fun playing on all the new toys in the nursery.

I was wrong.

Having been to daycare before, and having had no contact with anyone under the age of 30 in over a week, I thought my daughter would be overjoyed to play with some other kids. Granted, in hindsight, I can see that introducing her to the nursery on a busy Saturday morning was probably not my best game plan. It was crowded and chaotic and I had extra paperwork to fill out because this was her first time visiting the nursery. She looked wary as I handed her over to the YMCA employee but I still grabbed my tag with the number that matched the sticker on Zoey's shirt, and headed off to the cardio equipment.

Now, a word on signing your kids in to the YMCA nursery. You always sign them in and out and write down where you will be working out, in case they need to come find you. In this case, I had specifically written "downstairs cardio", thinking this was descriptive enough to locate me in case of emergency. Again, wrong.

I hit the elliptical machine for 40 minutes and was feeling pretty good about myself before deciding to run to the bathroom before picking up Zoey. As I headed toward the main entrance, I glanced in the direction of the nursery to my left and saw another Y employee holding a screaming, wet, frantic looking toddler. My toddler. Who spotted me from across the room and howled "MY MOMMY!!".

I rushed over and the somewhat annoyed looking employee asked "is she yours?". Um, clearly. Zoey was clawing at me and throwing herself in my arms in a way that suggested she was trying to save herself from a sinking ship. The front of her shirt was soaked with tears and snot, and she appeared to have fluid leaking from every orifice on her head.

"Has she been crying the whole time?" I asked. "Well, she had a snack and then she got real upset. We looked for you. Where were you?". I replied that I was right where I had said I would be--on the elliptical machine downstairs. I was informed that they had looked there and didn't see me, maybe because I wasn't wearing my ID tag with Zoey's number on it? I pointed out that yes, I had been wearing the tag, but by this point there was surge of about 10 parents either picking up or dropping off their children, and the employee who had been holding Zoey was swallowed up in a sea of preschoolers and parents. I had to fight to find somebody who could retrieve her jacket, let alone to ask how we could prevent an episode like this from happening in the future.

Meanwhile, Zoey had grabbed on to my neck and rested her head on my shoulder and announced she was very tired. She was still hiccup-sobbing as I got both of us out of there and in to the car.

I think it might be awhile before Zoey works up the nerve to visit the nursery again.