Searching for child care, round 2

This is my third post in a series on finding child care.

As I explained in my last post on this subject, we put Littles on a waiting list at a daycare center while I was pregnant, but ended up moving away from that area shortly before the end of my maternity leave. This meant that we had to start the daycare search all over again.

Once again, I started looking at daycare centers that offered a discount through my employer. I visited two, and was not terribly impressed.

But this time around, I was willing to consider options other than a daycare center. Our new home would be an 1800 square foot townhouse, much bigger than our old condo, and it would have a third bedroom that I would use as my office. So having someone come to our home was now an option. In addition, I had a clearer picture of what I would be doing when I returned to work, and I knew I'd be working from home quite a bit. This made the idea of having a caregiver in our home even more appealing.

Still, we could not afford a nanny. But late one night, I got the idea to look on craigslist for a nanny share. Amazingly, I immediately located not one but two nanny share options in our new location! (I am still amazed by my luck that evening. Good nanny shares are tough to find on craigslist.) I emailed both to set up meetings.

The first family had a daughter named Dani, who was almost two years old at the time. They had tried some daycares initially, when Dani was about six months old, but didn't like any of them and eventually decided to bite the bullet and hire a nanny. They found Maria and loved her, but realized that they couldn't afford her. So they started sharing with another family. The mom in the other family had recently been laid off and had decided to stay at home with her son, so Dani's family was looking for another family to share Maria with.

The second family had a son named Evan, who was in the infant room at one of the local daycare centers. Since he was almost a year old, he was getting ready to move up to the toddler room, and his parents did not like what they'd seen of that room. So they talked to Jennifer, one of the teachers in the infant room, about nannying for them (which I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to do with your daycare teachers, but that wasn't our problem...), and were looking to find another family to share Jennifer with.

Hubby and I both met with each family and the prospective nanny together. I didn't have any pre-defined questions to ask -- I had asked some basic questions of each family over email, such as the age of the other child, what the nanny was like, and the cost. I mostly wanted to see whether I felt comfortable with the situation or not.

Littles devised her own test, as only a two-month-old can do: She took an enormous poop during both meetings. The differences were telling.

Dani's family heard the poop and immediately offered up their changing table to us. Hubby took Littles back to the changing table. Unprompted, Maria followed him, and pitched in to help with the diaper.

If Evan's family heard the poop (which is likely, because it was pretty loud), they didn't acknowledge it. Littles was sitting in Hubby's lap, and I could see him nervously shifting her around, looking to see if she was leaking. Since it was getting towards the end of the meeting anyway, we said that Littles had a dirty diaper and we better get going. Evan's mom and dad just said, "Oh, OK." No offers to help.

As we changed Littles' diaper, Hubby and I quickly agreed that we felt far more comfortable with Dani's family. We called them the next day to say, "Let's do it."

Searching for child care, round 1

This is my second post in a series on finding child care.

As I mentioned in my first post on this subject, we have now done the child care search three times.

The first time was while I was pregnant and, later, on maternity leave. At the time, we were living in a 1100 square foot condo that had basically three rooms -- the master bedroom, Littles' bedroom, and the main living area, which included my office. Consequently, I did not consider any type of care in our home, because I figured it would be too distracting to have Littles spending her days just a few feet away from where I was trying to work. (In retrospect, I was absolutely right on this.)

I did not really consider in-home daycares, stay-at-home moms, etc. either. I don't really remember why. Part of it might have been that I couldn't imagine trusting someone who was completely alone (i.e. no other adults) with my child all day.

So that left daycare centers as the only remaining option. I started with the list of centers that provided discounts through my employer, and called to schedule some visits.

I didn't really have a list of questions that I asked. I quickly found that I just had to listen to my gut. Some places, I immediately felt at ease and comfortable. Others just never felt right. Sadly, this included the center that was by far the most convenient, just a quarter mile away from our house and offering a 20% discount through our employer. But if it's not right, it's not right, and that place did not feel right at all.

I ended up finding two places that I liked. One was a Kindercare facility, about a 10 minute drive from our house -- Kindercare is a huge national chain with many many facilities. The other was a non-chain daycare called Future Assets.

I liked the Kindercare facility, but I loved Future Assets. Even now, 1.5 years after my first visit, it stands out as probably the best daycare I've ever visited. Unfortunately, we got hung up on the terms for reserving a space for Littles. Kindercare wanted a non-refundable $25 application fee to put her on the waiting list -- totally reasonable. Future Assets wanted a $100 application fee plus first and last months' tuition. That came out to almost $3000, all non-refundable!

So we decided to put Littles on the waiting list at Kindercare (we did this about two months before she was born) and to cross our fingers that Future Assets would still have a spot if we felt it was the right place to be as my return-to-work date drew closer.

That ended up being a fantastic decision. When Littles was about two months old, our landlord sold our condo, meaning that we had to move. Hubby's office was about a 45 minute drive from that condo, so we decided to move closer to his office. Of course, that meant that neither the Kindercare we had looked at nor Future Assets made sense as child care options. Good thing we didn't put down $3000 non-refundable at Future Assets!

So, we started the child care search again...