Daycare - Another Day, Another Drama

I'm starting to sound like a tired, old broken record regarding my child care situation. Or maybe it is more like the teacher on Charlie Brown. Wah, Wah, Wah. Anyways, I thought I had a solution to our child care woes. Thought being the key word. I have been searching high and low for a child care that meets not just our minimum standards of safety but also the amount of kids, the hours, etc. I can't find a single person who can recommend a child care center or an in-home daycare. Either they are keeping them a secret and only sharing with a few select friends or everyone is facing the same issues as me. The child care is ok but not ideal.

After extensively searching the Department of Family and Protective Services website and reading all the local child care provider's inspections and looking at things such as hours of operation, location, number of children, etc I found one that looked promising. This lady lives 5 minutes from us, only keeps 5 kids including her own, she didn't have any violations on her inspection which after reading some of the others, was a big deal. So I emailed her and she didn't have a spot open. But then she emailed me back the following day and said she said she had a spot opening up January 2nd and she was offering it to me first. I said great, when can I come meet you and check out the place? She said her first availability was Tuesday night (last night). I agreed to come by at 6pm last night with Bear and my husband. We met and saw the house and she gave us all the paperwork. We agreed that we would talk it over and let her know in the morning.

I wasn't 100% thrilled with everything but it was pretty good. She does take 2 weeks vacation during the year but we don't have to pay her for it. We just have to arrange for other daycare. She also takes 5 sick days per year, paid for by the parents (I have heard this from other parents too so I expected this), if the baby is sick or we take vacation we pay the full week (I currently only pay half a week for my daycare if he is out a week). She also has a 110.00 non-refundable registration fee which is a little higher than I paid for our current daycare. BUT on the plus side, he will be exposed to less germs, she reads with the kids, does sign language, talks Spanish to them, she is close to our house, and she charges 43.00 less per week than our current daycare which makes up for paying her sick leave and then some. So after much discussion last night my husband and I decided to try her out. So I emailed her as soon as I got to work and said we wanted the spot.

She emailed me this afternoon and indicated she was meeting with another set of parents tonight and she would let me know which one of us will get the spot. WHA? She told me last week that the spot was ours if we wanted it. I understand that she has a business to run and can't wait around on a maybe but I met her at her earliest convenience and gave her an answer the NEXT morning. Now all the negative things I overlooked last night are starting to crawl all over me. I am more than a little ticked that she didn't mention this last night. I didn't realize that we were competing for a spot. If she had said I need an answer today because I have another family I would have understood but that just completely caught me off guard today. I need to talk to my husband about it tonight and see if we want to wait and see with her or if we want to try something else.