Adventures in Childcare- Part 1

As soon as I found out I was pregnant with Baby B, I started worrying about childcare. I looked at a couple of the centers near us and quickly ruled most of them out due to cost and lack of flexibility. I then talked to a couple of home daycare providers recommended by friends of friends, but none of them had openings or could say whether they would when we would need childcare. I put Baby B on the waitlist for the one daycare center that met our criteria in May 2008- before we even knew that he was a boy.

Fast forward to December. The end of my maternity leave was rapidly approaching, and The Husband and I still had no idea what we doing about childcare. At that point, I started looking at the childcare provider ads on craigslist. My only previous experience with craigslist had landed The Husband and I a prostitute for a roommate (more on that some other time), but apparently I'm not very good at learning from my mistakes.

When I first started looking for childcare, my ideal daycare ad would have looked something like this:

"Loving and experienced childcare provider who will treat your child like her own. Very small home daycare will accept only one infant so that your baby can have constant attention. Part time accepted"

I responded to some ads and interviewed several people. The first home daycare was in a trailer that reeked of cat piss.. for a bargain price of $250/week. I though The Husband (who never went to daycare as a child and was therefore skeptical about it) was going to quit his job and become a stay at home dad after seeing that place. The next couple weren't bad but weren't particularly impressive either- both stay at home moms running small unlicensed home daycares. We finally found one that at the time sounded perfect to us: a stay at home mom looking to take in one child in addition to her own children (ages 3 and 8). We liked her and her husband, she lived very close to us, and her references and background checked out. So, we hired her.

I'm going to have to continue this tomorrow, since it's time for me to get some sleep in anticipation of the Mother's Day breakfast in bed that The Husband better be preparing for me tomorrow morning.