1. Take time to transition. My boss swears by three weeks, and I can attest that two is not enough, for it is not until you reach the near end of your final week that you madly and wildly realize that you should have taken time for yourself instead of a) preparing meals that will be thrown on the floor or lay desiccating in the oven and b) trying to erase a year’s worth of domestic neglect. Instead, hail the return of personal vanity. And do let your daycare’s staff know that you’ve yet to start work, otherwise they will come up with their own reasons for your schlumpy state.

2. Know that drop-off is so much easier than pick-up. And if you’re not the one doing drop-off, do not get involved. Your child will soon wise to the routine, and if you’re the one strapping him in, he will perfect the sullenest stare that is startling in it meanness and a certain predictor of later defiance.

3. Pause before you loudly and repeatedly denounce your child’s daycare teacher as foolish and outdated for asking for rigid shoes. Do not storm in with copies of podiatrist’s recommendations to press into their little old-fashioned palms. It is, in fact, a common request. Yes, you will not be able to use all the Robeez you’ve been gifted, but you will fall in love Livie & Luca. Our first steps towards big boy shoes have such soft flexible soles but sweeter and sturdier uppers.

4. Gifts go a long way. Give generously and thoughtfully and you will get the best service, no way around it. (CF‘s senior editor, Robin, has great caregiver gift ideas.) Oh, and and as few menu substitution requests as possible and a two-piece snowsuit will help too.

5. Do communicate passive-aggressively. Seemingly, each evening when you pick up your childcare from daycare, there will be a new demand­—more milk, more diapers, etc. Use the record-keeping sheet to gently remind them that you need more notice as going to the grocery now will result in no dinner, a 10pm bedtime and a very cranky child tomorrow (a sheet so brilliant in avoidance that I plan to use it at work and at home). And, yes, the diaper-to-wipes ratio will confound you; but, before you send, say, five packs, know that when other parents run out of diapers, yours will be the ones they “borrow.”

I am pleased to announce that much has improved since my first day, when I was totally dismayed to discover that the first morning of daycare coincided with the first time I absolutely ran out of every size of diapers—except for swim diapers. When the requisite huge leakage occurred, I claimed total ignorance, using my over-stuffed with everything but diapers as a shield to change him.

What’s the most embarrassing daycare hiccup that’s happened to you?

—Melissa, CF’s lifestyle editor