...Run. Play. Swim. Fight. Use the potty. Nap. Run. Play....

By Andrew Garber
Staff Writer

Eric St. Cyr, holding his mom's hand, is one of the first children to arrive at the YMCA day-care center in Portland. He has close-cropped, light-brown hair, cheeks red from the brisk air and a black rubber ball bulging in the front pocket of his jeans. Like many 3-year-olds, he seems powered by a small nuclear engine.

The Y is where Eric spends most of his waking hours. It's where he plays, eats, naps and goes to the bathroom. It's now 7:30 a.m. His day is just starting.

Waiting for him is Julie Robinson, his teacher, nose-wiper and surrogate mother for the day. She has one of the hardest and lowest-paying jobs around - she is a day-care teacher.

The job requires enormous patience, a strong immune system, the ability to understand preschool babble, and a willingess to respond to a child's every need.

Robinson cares for eight children. State law allows up to 10 children.

Staff-to-child ratios are set for a reason: When there are lots of children in a class, it is difficult for teachers to give preschoolers the one-on-one attention they crave.

Even eight children can keep a teacher constantly running.

This morning, Eric, sensing a shot at getting Robinson's undivided attention, quickly scrambles into a chair next to her.

They start putting together a jigsaw puzzle of an airplane. Robinson talks to Eric, asking him about the puzzle and the colors of the pieces. She encourages him to figure it out and lavishes praise when he's done. ''Great job, Eric.''

It is the type of attention that experts say young children need to develop both emotionally and intellectually.

Eric got the time with Robinson because he arrived at the day-care center early. It is the most individual attention he gets all day. He soon must compete with the rest of Robinson's class for attention.

Within 15 minutes, more children arrive.

MORE CHILDREN MEANS MORE ENERGY, MORE NOISE

An interesting thing happens as the size of a day-care class gets larger. The noise level seems to increase exponentially, regardless of how many adults are around.

At the YMCA, all the day-care children are brought into a central room until enough children and teachers have arrived to be split up into individual classes.

By 7:45 there are five boys in the room. The tempo picks up.

Eric takes two plastic dinosaurs and methodically slams them on the table as hard as he can. Wham. Wham. Wham. Wham. Ten feet away, four boys begin yelling and tearing around in circles in a small carpeted area.

Robinson is 27 years old and a veteran teacher, with four years at the YMCA behind her. She wears practical clothes for her job, jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. Her dark hair is tied back.

She has learned over time that her job consists largely of solving small problems before they become big ones.

Robinson moves in and tries to reason with the boys running in circles, reminding them of a girl who ran around the room and had an accident. ''Do you remember what happened? She fell after running and she got two stitches in her chin.''

Her lecture to the boys works for a few seconds. Then they start running again.

Robinson and other day-care teachers nearby decide the children need to run off their energy, so they bring them to the Y's indoor gym.

The teachers bring out big spongy balls, large plastic trucks and a play baby stroller. Then they let the children loose.

The kids go wild, racing the toys up and down the large room and throwing balls into basketball hoops set at a height for children. Their screams and thumping feet reverberate loudly. Teachers yell to talk to each other.

By now there are 10 children and three adults. The children are on autopilot with the staff watching to make sure no one is injured.

Eric plays basketball with four other boys. As he's about to throw a ball toward the hoop, a bigger boy grabs the ball away from him.

''You should take turns,'' Eric cries, but he doesn't dwell on it.

He darts out of the gym for a minute to look around, runs back in undetected and grabs a toy truck. He races back and forth across the wooden gym floor, short legs pumping wildly.

By 8:45, enough children have arrived that the teachers decide to split them into separate classes.

Robinson takes Eric and four other children into her nearby classroom.

DOLLS AND TRUCKS, SKIRMISHES, 'POTTY' TIME

The room is 700 square feet. It is where Eric and seven other children spend most of their day.

The area is split in two. One side is mostly filled with large tables surrounded by tiny chairs. It's where children do artwork, play with tubs of water and eat.

The other half is a carpeted play area. That side is lined with shelves holding donated plastic toys and cardboard blocks.

Robinson added an old, overstuffed couch and has lined the walls with artwork done by the children.

The room has no natural light coming in. Its windows look out into the gym.

Once in the room, all the children head to the carpeted play area while Robinson prepares snacks.

Two girls begin playing with dolls. The boys start playing with trucks.

Within a couple of minutes, Eric and another boy argue over a toy truck. They get red in the face and tug back and forth, grunting with effort.

Robinson moves in to prevent the spat from escalating. ''Eric,'' she says, ''Are you using your words?''

She tries to get the boys to talk out the problem without hitting each other. Eric lets the other boy have the truck, but he thinks Robinson is mad at him. His eyes start to swell with tears.

Robinson reassures him with a pat, ''I'm not angry with you,'' she says.

Eric shakes it off and starts playing again. The room calms down and Robinson finishes preparing snacks. But the quiet is short-lived.

Within five minutes, three more children arrive. The tempo picks up.

By 9 a.m. eight children are in the room. Some are eating. Some are playing with toys. Some are yelling. Eric grabs plastic pots and begins slamming them together.

The noise level rises steadily.

Robinson diverts their attention. ''Let's go potty,'' she says.

The children know they cannot escape the morning ritual and line up at the door.

For Robinson, it's an exhausting routine she must go through several times a day. All eight children troop out the door, down a hallway, through another classroom and into a communal bathroom.

Robinson has to help all eight of them go to the bathroom. She pulls down zippers, unbuttons buttons, helps them clean themselves, put their clothes back on and wash their hands.

There's a constant patter in the bathroom of children asking Robinson for help and the teacher urging them along. ''Devante, let's go, buddy.'' ''Michaela, wash your hands.''

It takes about 15 minutes. ''Good job, everybody,'' Robinson calls out, as the children line up and march back to the classroom.

One of the children tells Robinson, ''we have a lot of kids.''

''Yes,'' she says, ''we have a lot of kids today.''

A PARADE OF DIVERSIONS; 'JULIE...JULIE...JULIE'

Back in the classroom, Eric sits impatiently at a long table waiting for Robinson to set up an art project.

He loves projects. He is often the first child at the table and one of the last to leave.

As Robinson gets the project ready, the children get restless and the noise level rises. They randomly call her name, like the constant peep of baby birds in a nest: ''Julie ... Julie ... JULIE.''

Robinson says it's part of her job that really becomes annoying.''By the end of the day I want to change my name,'' she says.

At 9:35, the art project is ready. Immediately, tension drains from the air as the children have something to focus on.

Eric dives in with vigor and spends 15 minutes churning out 10 paper circles smeared with glue, salt and glitter.

Each time he finishes one, Eric holds it up in the air and says ''Julie, look!'' But Robinson is across the room, busy with other children.

As the children finish their art work and get bored, the noise level begins building again.

Robinson delivers the next diversion.

''We're going swimming,'' she says, and grabs a large plastic tub filled with the children's swimming gear.

Another exhausting routine follows, with Robinson leading the children across the building to a changing room. There she helps all eight children go to the bathroom, wash their hands, get out of their regular clothes and put on bathing suits.

Inside there is the familiar patter from Robinson: ''Do you need to go potty?'' ''Do you need help with that zipper?'' ''Eric, come over here please.''

Some of the children are chanting ''Batman, Robin, Batman, Robin'' and then get into an argument. ''I want to be Batman. No, I want to.''

The process takes about 15 minutes. Robinson then leads them out of the locker room and to the swimming pool where the children sit on a bench to wait their turn.

It's hot and humid. Eric is squirming. ''Julie, I need to pee,'' he says.

Without blinking an eye, Robinson has a nearby teacher watch her class while she takes Eric to the bathroom, again.

FOR TEACHER, LOW PAY AND LITTLE PRESTIGE

Then they head back to their room for lunch. Eric is ravenous. He whips through a pasta dish and a bowl of yogurt and begins demolishing a large bag of chocolate cookies his mother brought for him to eat. Robinson has to take the bag away before he empties it.

Eric gets some wet wipes and begins cleaning his face. He looks up at Robinson, who is nearby, and says, ''I love you, Julie.''

''I love you, Eric,'' she says.

By 12:30, the children are ready for a nap. Robinson takes them for yet another trip to the bathroom and then herds them into a large room where a group of children take their naps.

Eric walks over to a stack of gray, vinyl cots and picks one out for himself.

The lights are turned low, soft music is put on. Fifteen children are stretched out in rows, cuddling with small blankets and an occassional stuffed animal.

Robinson sits down to watch them sleep for an hour and then will take a break.

The children won't get up until 2:30.

Robinson uses her free time to catch up on paperwork, or to lie down on the couch in her room and try to regain her energy.

She has been a day-care teacher at the Y for four years and will soon leave to pursue a master's degree in speech therapy.

There are some aspects of her job she likes. But Robinson says she doesn't care for the low pay and lack of prestige associated with being a day-care teacher.

Even with a college degree and several years experience, she only makes $8.93 an hour. That's high pay for a day-care teacher in Maine.

Robinson says that for some children, the Y offers a better environment than their homes. Still, she feels that it's difficult for one person to give eight children all the attention they need.

''When I have eight kids, I feel more like a manager than a teacher,'' she says.''I feel like we're muddling through.''

When her break is over, Robinson heads back into the nap room. All the children are wide awake, except for Eric. He is still sound asleep.

Robinson gently wakes him up and leads the class back into her room.

Eric's mother arrives to pick him up at 3 p.m. It's a short day for him, only seven and a half hours.

Eric doesn't want to go and wanders over to play with toys on the opposite side of the room.

''Come on, bud, come on,'' his mother says.

Robinson reinforces his mother's call. ''Eric, you need to get ready to go.''

His mother eventually gets him into his coat and heads out the door.

Robinson tells him goodbye and says she'll see him tomorrow. Then it's back to the business at hand. The final hours of the day can be grumpy ones for her class because the children are restless at the end of the day.

She glances at the clock and yawns. There's still an hour left before she heads home.