In-home daycare search

This post is part of a series on finding child care.

In my previous post, I explained how I explored the daycare centers in my area, finding only one option (a Bright Horizons franchise) that I was willing to consider for Noob.

As much as I liked Bright Horizons, there were a few logistical hurdles that I had trouble overcoming. Most of these centered around the fact that Noob would start there at 11 months of age, which is around the time that kids transition from the infant to the toddler room. I didn't want him starting in the infant room, getting used to the kids and teachers, and then having to move to a new room just a few weeks later. But at the same time, I wasn't sure he'd be ready for the toddler room, where he would need to be walking well, completely off bottles, down to one nap a day, etc.

So I wanted to look at the in-home daycares in my area as well, knowing that they would provide more flexibility while avoiding the quick-transition problem.

Unfortunately, there aren't many in-home daycares in my area. And they can be hit or miss, to say the least. Some are fabulous, and some are downright scary. Fortunately for me, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services provides an excellent tool for weeding out the scary ones: Search Texas Child Care. This web site allowed me to locate every in-home in my area and, more importantly, view any daycare licensing violations that it had received.

So, the place where TV and video games were the only activities offered, or the place where the licensing inspector had to move knives and scissors to a location not accessible to children? Yeah. I didn't have to bother visiting.

But I did find that in the suburb just to the north of us (where Littles' preschool is located), there are a couple of in-home daycares that have been around since the early 90s and have a clean or nearly-clean inspection record. That was promising!

Unfortunately, when I first started looking in September (about four months before we needed care), none of them had openings :( They also did not have a waitlist or any formal means for me to be notified if something did come available.

Not so promising.

I decided to wait and see whether anything came available as Noob's start date drew closer. In late November, I contacted all the places again. To my surprise, one place did have a new opening!

So Hubby and I went to visit. We both really liked it. The provider was located just around the corner from Littles' preschool, and she had been in business for almost 20 years. It was clear that she loved what she did!

She had converted her garage into a room for the daycare, where she had lots of educational toys and materials for the older kids (roughly ages 1+). Her daughter assisted her and took care of the infants, who mostly stayed in the living room. It matched up very well with what I wanted for Noob... a smaller, homey atmosphere, but with plenty of activity and stimulation, a limited number of providers, and flexibility in meeting his changing needs.

She provided a couple of references, which I called, and they all raved about her. I called her back to say that we would take the spot.

We waited to hear back.

And waited.

And waited.

I started to suspect something was wrong.

Sure enough, she came back to say that the child who was supposed to be starting in preschool, thus opening a spot at her daycare for Noob, was in fact staying at her daycare through the end of the school year.

It was mid-December. Hubby was going back to work in two weeks and we still had no child care lined up for Noob.

In my next post, I'll talk about what we did next!