the wannabe daycare thief

luciana and I have the longest daycare pickups imaginable. all of the other parents come in, grab their kids, and go. most days a couple of kids are successfully picked up while I am still trying to get my kid to leave. it isn't that she doesn't want to leave or that she isn't happy to see me. rather, she takes ages trying to figure out how to steal the daycare toys.

yes, we have toys at home. yes, she enjoys playing with the home toys. but for some reason she is desperate to steal the daycare toys.

it started a couple of weeks ago when luciana tried to hand me some little people to slip in the daycare bag when we left. she seemed so disappointed when I wouldn't pocket them, so I just sort of dropped them to the side when I lifted her over the green baby gate.

after a couple of days of this, she figured out that the toys weren't coming home with us. then, she started to push or drop toys to the other side of the gate to recover on her way out. mean mom mom that I am, I would push the toys back or discreetly hand them to the kids who gather to say goodbye when we leave.

now she decided that subtle isn't the way to go. if she is going to succeed at stealing toys, she might as well go big. she has been trying to steal the farmhouse and the schoolhouse sets. no luck.

the latest? the classroom just acquired a small shopping cart. luciana is desperate to take it home. she tried just pushing it to the gate. I suppose in hopes that I would simply pick her and the cart up willingly? or that I wouldn't notice the big red and yellow shopping cart that was coming home with us?

when that didn't work, luciana decided that maybe she needed to lay claim to the cart. she has started putting her blankie and her sippy cup in the cart and then pushing it to gate. maybe I'll just accept it as a package deal?

today, I finally got her out of the room only to discover that one of the classrooms had watched a little tv this afternoon. there was a tv cart in the hallway with a copy of a thomas the tank engine video sitting on the shelf. luciana saw this and made a beeline for the thomas tape. she held it up to me making her chugga chugga chugga choo choo noise and looking around as if to say "come on, mom mom, no one is around. they'll never know!"

we are watching thomas now while I write this. we are streaming it over netflix, but I kind of hope that luciana believes that I am the cool mom who took the tape from daycare for her.