Searching for child care, round 3

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

As I have explained previously, we found a nanny share for Littles when I initially went back to work. We were really happy with the arrangement.

So when we decided to move from California to Dallas, Texas, shortly before Littles' first birthday, one of our biggest concerns was finding a similarly wonderful child care situation for her. This was a little complicated because we had to do most of the searching from a distance!

Although we loved our California nanny share, I wasn't necessarily opposed to a different type of child care. So I looked at all sorts of different options.

Daycare centers
As I had done during our very first child care search, I started with a list of daycare centers that offered a discount through my employer. I also got recommendations from friends in the area, and scoured the City-data.com forum for the Dallas area -- lots of great information there. Then I looked up all the daycares on the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services website. This allowed me to see any licensing violations that the daycares had received.

We came out to Dallas for a househunting trip in late April, about six weeks before our move was scheduled. I stayed for an extra day with Littles, and we visited a ton of daycare centers near our new home.

At the end of the day, I had found three centers that I liked:

• Creme de la Creme. You have to check out the online virtual tour of this place. It is like Disney does daycare. There is a water park, a tricycle autobahn, an indoor fish pond... you name it! Unfortunately, you also pay for it -- the cost was significantly more than any other daycare in the area.
• Bright Horizons. A large national chain with a consistent reputation for excellence. I couldn't put my finger on anything specific, but this place just felt "right."
• Discover and Share. A local daycare that came highly recommended from the City-data.com forum. This place felt very comfortable. I talked for quite a while with one of the teachers, and she told me -- unprompted -- that it was the best place she'd ever worked at. From what I saw of it, I wasn't surprised.

In-home daycares
I also wanted to look at in-home daycares, but by searching the Texas DFPS website, I quickly discovered that there were not many in the vicinity of our new home. Reluctantly, I took this option off the table.

Other options
As soon as we knew we were moving, I started monitoring craigslist constantly for new child care postings. Weeks went by with nothing even remotely appealing coming up.

Then, about a month before our move, I saw a listing come up that sounded perfect! It was a mom with three small kids, looking to watch another child out of her home. I talked with her on the phone for about 30 minutes one night, and we seemed to be on the same page with regards to... well, just about everything parenting-related.

We had another trip to Dallas planned over Memorial Day weekend, about two weeks before our move, so we planned to meet the mom. I loved her! Unfortunately, Hubby did not. He was concerned that her two older kids (ages 5 and 3) seemed to be pretty addicted to TV, which is something that we are not big on at all. And he didn't like that the mom left her youngest child (7 months old) alone in a nearby room for a few minutes while we were talking. He put his foot down and absolutely refused to go with her.

The final decision
With no other options available, I agreed to go with a daycare center. Together, Hubby and I visited the three that I had identified on my April trip, and decided that Bright Horizons was our top choice. We put our deposit down to hold Littles' place.

I had a lot of reservations about Bright Horizons, though. Most of these centered around the fact that they wanted to put Littles in the toddler room. Developmentally, this made sense, as she was walking at that point and really no longer belonged in the infant room. But I was worried about the transition:

• At the time, Littles was still taking a few bottles of expressed breastmilk daily. We were working to transition her to whole milk out of the sippy cup, but it was not going well. Bright Horizons wanted her completely off the bottle.
• In her nanny share, Littles was used to sleeping in a crib or pack-n-play (portable crib) in a quiet room by herself. At Bright Horizons, she would be napping on a mat in a room with many other kids.
• Littles was still taking two naps most days, but the toddler room at Bright Horizons had only one nap a day.
• Naptime was scheduled for around 11:30 AM. Since Littles was moving across two time zones, I was worried that she might not be tired at naptime, then be exhausted later.
• I wasn't thrilled with Bright Horizon's menu. Granted, it was far better than some of the other daycare centers I looked at -- one served biscuits and gravy for breakfast, another served juice and brownies as a snack. (To a roomful of 1-year-olds? Are you insane?) Still, it just didn't live up to my standards.

In short, I was really concerned about Littles going through all this change, on top of moving halfway across the country, leaving the nanny who had taken care of her for over half her life, etc.

Hubby thought Bright Horizons was the right choice, and was really upset with me for being so wishy-washy. It wasn't a fun time, for either of us.

I kept looking on craigslist, hopeful that another option would come up. And finally, one did! I found a listing from another stay-at-home mom, named Kristi. She had great credentials -- she helped in her mom's in-home daycare as a child, went to college for early childhood education, worked in daycare centers, raised her two sons (ages 8 and 10), etc. She was watching her own two boys, who were home for the summer, along with another little boy who was a month younger than Littles. Her home was a little bit of a drive from ours, but it was manageable.

I met with her a few days after we moved to Dallas. (My mother-in-law came up from Austin to watch Littles as we settled in during those early weeks, which gave me some extra time to interview caregivers.) I felt far more comfortable with her than with Bright Horizons. And Hubby agreed to give her a shot.

We checked references, ran a background check -- and then, on Littles' first birthday, she started with Kristi.

Well, crap.

Despite this blog's title, I'm actually feeling pretty balanced these days. When I'm at home, my focus is my family. When I'm in Seattle, my focus is my work. For the most part, I feel like I have plenty of time for both.

This past week and a half has been a challenge, because I've been with my family in Seattle. My husband had a business trip here, so I figured I'd do my monthly trip at the same time, and bring Littles.

For the most part, it worked out well. We took advantage of our company's backup care program yet again, and they were able to place Littles at a local daycare center. I far preferred this to the in-hotel nanny situation that we had when I brought her here back in May. It was also wonderful being able to wake up next to my husband every day. Had we not combined our trips, we would have spent two full weeks apart from each other, which would have sucked.

But Wednesday was a rough day. I had a team meeting starting at 9 AM, so I had to wake Littles up (which I hate doing) and rush through our morning routine to get out the door and off to daycare. Most days, when I dropped her off there, I was able to sit with her for a little while until she warmed up and joined in the activities. But that day, since I was already late, I had to get up to leave before she was fully settled. She cried as I left. Always a crappy start to the day.

I headed off to my office, thinking I'd get there just in time for my meeting. Instead, I got caught in terrible, terrible traffic. Someone thought it was a bright idea to shut down one lane on a major thoroughfare smack in the middle of rush hour. I prayed that the my co-workers would be stuck in the same traffic jam. No such luck. I walked in 15 minutes late to find everyone waiting on me.

The meeting was supposed to go until 4 PM. Instead, it was still going strong at 5 PM, the time that I normally started packing up to go pick up Littles. I knew my husband had a dinner with his co-workers, so he couldn't go get her. I would have to do it. "Great," I was thinking, "I get to see my boss about once a month, and what is he going to see from me? Showing up late and leaving early."

Thankfully, one of my other co-workers is in a carpool, so he had to leave at 5:30 PM, and when he did, I mentioned that I would need to leave soon as well. I still had to present my product's roadmap, so I rushed through it, threw my laptop in my bag, and ran off to pick up Littles. Crappy employee.

I arrived at 6 PM, half an hour later than usual. Littles was the last kid left. Crappy mother.

I love having her with me on these trips, but I'll admit, it's a lot easier when I come alone and can just focus on work.