Desperation

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

In my previous post, I talked about how we thought we had lined up a spot for Noob at an in-home daycare, only to find out that the spot wasn't available, just two weeks before Hubby's return to work.

Once that happened, I knew that in-home daycares weren't an option. I had already contacted every one within a reasonable distance from our home, and no one had openings.

Hubby and I talked seriously again about the Bright Horizons daycare center that had been our favorite center option. We both really liked it. But there was just one problem that I simply couldn't overcome: In the toddler room, the kids only got one nap a day. And Noob most definitely needed two naps! I think that sleep is so important to young children, and I had a really hard time compromising on that point.

Since the one-nap-at-1-year policy is pretty common in daycare centers, I asked some other daycare moms about how their kids did with that transition. For the most part, they said it went fine. I knew Noob would adjust OK if he had to. But I still felt like it wasn't the best choice for him.

One of the other moms told me, "Taking one nap just gives him more time to participate in that great educational curriculum at daycare!" That comment hit me in completely the wrong way. Noob is 1 year old. This might sound odd, but I totally don't care what he's learning. Sure, I don't want him plopped in front of the TV or stuck in a crib by himself all day, but at his age, day-to-day life is enough of a learning experience for him! He just needs to feel secure and loved, and to get plenty of one-on-one interaction. He doesn't need a college prep curriculum -- and he certainly doesn't need to sacrifice his sleep for the sake of any curriculum!

It was yet another sign that, as I mentioned in a previous post, the daycare centers we visited just didn't fit our parenting "style."

I couldn't get past it. Even Hubby could see it, and conceded that we needed to find a different option.

(As an aside, two months down the road, I'm really glad I stood my ground on this point. Even now, Noob does fine with one nap some days, but usually takes two very solid naps totaling 3-4 hours -- and still has no problem falling asleep for the night before 8 PM. I have to think it would not have been healthy for him to force him down to just one 2-3 hour nap.)

But given our short timeframe, our options were running thin. Feeling a little desperate, I decided to post an ad on craigslist. I had no time to waste interviewing people who wouldn't be a good fit for our family, so I was very upfront about a few of the "non-mainstream" things that are important to us: Healthy food options. Acceptance of extended breastfeeding. Minimal TV. Cloth diapering.

I only got one response back. I think I scared a lot of people off :)

The response was from a 21-year-old woman named "A." She was living with a roommate "L," and watching L's daughter, "S," who was right around Noob's age. A was fine with the things I had mentioned in my post and she actually used proper English spelling and grammar, which is rare to find among craigslist posters/responders :) (I know that sounds nitpicky, but when a post has a ton of spelling and grammar problems, I feel like that person simply isn't very professional.) And her home was conveniently located right on the route we already took to drop Littles off at preschool.

Despite all that, I didn't have high hopes, just because there are a lot of crazies on craigslist. But, well, we didn't really have any other options, so I figured A was worth a visit.

I was surprised when I ended up loving her. When I visited, L was there, too, and they were watching the child of one of their friends. It was obvious how much they both enjoyed being around and interacting with kids. Now, A did not offer a college prep curriculum :) But I definitely got the sense that A would provide the security, love, and interaction that I wanted for Noob, and that she would respect Hubby's and my preferences as parents.

Hubby visited separately (I had been so convinced that I wouldn't like A that I told him not to waste his time coming on the initial visit with me!) and felt much the same way. So we told A that we wanted to go with her.

I quickly got background checks processed for both A and L (since L only works part-time and would be around a lot when Noob was there), and called references. Everything looked good.

A week later, Hubby returned to work, and Noob went off to A's.

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!

Searching for child care, round 4: Noob

I've blogged before about our various searches for child care for Littles. We recently went through yet another search -- this time, for Noob.

We knew from the start that Noob would not require outside child care for quite a while. Between my maternity leave (20 weeks), Hubby's paternity leave (12 weeks), and some assistance from my mother and mother-in-law over the summer in between our two leaves, we were able to keep Noob at home until just before his first birthday.

This meant that we weren't in any particular rush to line up child care for him. Still, while I was on maternity leave, I started visiting daycare centers in our area. I figured that I would pick my favorite and put money down to hold Noob's place. Then, as his start date drew closer, we could look at in-home daycares, nannies, and other options that could not be reserved well in advance. (Sending him to Littles' preschool was not an option, as it does not start till age 2.)

I was already familiar with virtually all of the daycare centers in our area from visiting them during previous daycare searches. I already knew that my top choice would probably be the same Bright Horizons franchise that we had almost picked on two separate occasions for Littles. In fact, I had visited Bright Horizons so many times without sending Littles there that I was a little embarrassed to go back again.

But none of the other daycare centers appealed to me. I finally realized the fundamental problem: Hubby and I have a certain parenting "style," and I couldn't find a center that fit that style. Sometimes, it was obvious, such as at the center that served Frito pie (Fritos corn chips, "mystery meat" looking ground beef, beans, and bright orange cheese) as a lunch, when we try to minimize fried foods and provide at least one fruit/veggie at every meal. Or the one that had an hour of TV time listed daily in the infant room, when we try to avoid screen time for our kids until age 2 and limit it past that point.

Sometimes, it was just a feeling. Many places felt very "institutional." I felt like Noob's basic needs would be met at all of them, but I didn't feel like he would be loved on and nurtured like I want.

I want to be clear that I am not anti-daycare center. I consider Littles' preschool to be a daycare center, and it doesn't feel "institutional" at all. I'm sure there are similarly non-"institutional" daycare centers out there that accept infants. I just didn't find any of them close to my home.

Anyway, after visiting all the places except Bright Horizons, I had only found one other that I would consider, a Children's Courtyard franchise. As luck would have it, both places are on the list of daycares available for backup care through my company. We had two stretches during Noob's time at home where we needed backup care, so I was able to get him in to both centers for a few days each. This was an excellent way to "test drive" both places.

The Children's Courtyard was one of the places that felt very institutional when I visited, and my test drive confirmed this. I peeked in to both infant rooms each day when I dropped off and picked up, and not once did I see a caregiver on the floor just playing with a child. They were always feeding a bottle, or feeding solids, or changing a diaper, or filling out a daily sheet. Not surprising, as they keep a 2:10 caregiver:child ratio in the infant rooms -- the maximum allowed by the state. Infants have a lot of needs, and from what I observed, the caregivers were busy meeting those needs, with very little time left over for anything else.

As for Bright Horizons, I was glad to have the opportunity to visit without actually having to visit :) and I was truly impressed by the care Noob received. He cried a little at drop-off each day, and the teachers were great about holding him while I left; at Children's Courtyard, they had plopped him in an Exersaucer. One day, when I came to pick him up, I was surprised and pleased to find the director of the facility lying on the floor with Noob and two other babies, just playing with them as their regular teacher prepared a bottle.

I knew that Bright Horizons was the only daycare center I was willing to consider. But again, I was embarrassed to put down money knowing that I might back out again. So the weeks went by, and we still had no confirmed child care lined up for Noob.

In my next post, I'll talk about how I looked at in-home daycares as an alternative to Bright Horizons.

The preschool transition

I've been meaning to do a post for a while on Littles' preschool transition -- but, well, life has been busy. Due in large part to the news from my previous post :)

The transition went fairly smoothly. The first week, the main issue was napping, or lack thereof. She didn't nap at all on Monday or Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, she was so exhausted and sluggish that I thought she might be getting sick! As you might imagine, she was also super crabby at night, so for that week, we mostly brought her home, got dinner on the table immediately, and put her straight to bed.

She did nap on Wednesday and then again on Friday, and she's been doing well with napping since then. Every now and then, she has a day where she naps poorly or completely skips her nap, and then she's crabby in the evening again, but it's fine as long as it's not every night!

The second week, I was in Seattle, so I don't know how she did, but I didn't hear any major complaints from Hubby.

The third week was rough because she started clinging to me and crying at drop-offs. Luckily, this only lasted for that week, and then she was back to being happy at drop-offs. In fact, she gets really excited and says, "My school!" when we pull into the parking lot.

(Now, we have the opposite problem, which is that she throws a tantrum when we come to pick her up. Literally, screaming "No! No! No!" the minute she sees us, stamping her feet, crying, even hitting. Makes me feel like Mom of the Year, let me tell you :( This little "phase" has been going on for a couple of weeks now, and I wish it would end already.)

Another minor transition issue (warning: this may be a little TMI!) was that she refused to poop at preschool for the first month or so. She used to poop regularly after her nap, but I think the napping issues that she had threw her "schedule" off. She wasn't actually constipated -- she just pooped at random times at home, rather than daily after her nap at sschool. Then, suddenly, one day in early July, she pooped three times in one day while at preschool, and she has had no issues in that department since then :)

All in all, the transition was smoother than I thought. I actually expected the napping issues and the crying at drop-off to last longer than they did!

Overall, I'm glad that we made the move when we did. Littles really seems to enjoy all her new friends and the activities that they do. Hubby and I have a few little quibbles with the school (such as sending her home one day with a huge fruit-punch face, after we had specifically requested "no juice"), but as I've written here before, no child care situation is perfect. Littles is clearly safe, happy, and surrounded by people who care for her -- those are the important things!

The preschool decision

This post is part of an ongoing series on finding child care.

As I have explained previously, we started looking for a full-time preschool for Littles after her sitter informed us that she was pregnant and would not be able to care for Littles as she neared her due date. We came up with three solid preschool options: two Montessori schools (which I will call Montessori A and Montessori B), and a daycare in the Bright Horizons chain.

I initially visited each school on my own. I liked all three, although each had its strengths and weaknesses.

Montessori A
Pros:

• Good word-of-mouth recommendations
• Directors able to clearly articulate the school's educational philosophy and approach
• Lunch not provided by the school. Parents provide lunch, either from home or through a partnership with local restaurants. (I consider this a pro, as I like being able to have significant control over what Littles eats.)
• Starts at 18 months of age. This meant that Littles could potentially start as soon as they had an opening.
• Two campuses, one near our home and one near our sitter's home. This meant that Littles could potentially start with 3 mornings/week at one campus in the winter/spring (with her sitter picking her up), and then move to full-time in the summer at the campus near our home.

Cons:

• In my discussions with the directors, I felt that there might be a little too much emphasis on academics and being "advanced." As I explained in my last post, my main concern is ensuring that Littles learns to love learning, not that she learns specific skills, and I wasn't sure that Montessori A shared that philosophy.
• In my initial discussion with one director, she made a huge deal out of healthy eating and said that she never, ever allowed junk food into the school, even for special occasions/parties. Then I found out from the other director that one of the local restaurants that the school partners with for catered lunches is Chick-fil-a. Along the same lines, I happened to visit the school on Valentine's Day, and saw tons of cookies, cupcakes, and other junk food. What concerned me most was not the presence of the food itself (I could opt out of Chick-fil-a for Littles, and everyone deserves a little junk food on Valentine's Day!) but the fact that the director had made such a big deal out of healthy food over the phone but apparently ignored it in practice.
• Some things made me question how closely the school adhered to the Montessori philosophy. For example, one of the core tenets of Montessori is mixed-age classrooms (three-year age range), yet most of the Montessori A classrooms seemed to have no more than a two-year age range amongst the students.
• This preschool had a very strange licensing violation, regarding transporting a child between two vehicles while parked on the shoulder of a highway.

Montessori B
Pros:

• Good word-of-mouth recommendations
• Director able to clearly articulate the school's educational philosophy and approach.
• Director specifically emphasized teaching a love of learning over teaching specific skills (unprompted by me)
• Lunch not provided by the school. (See above for why this is a pro for me.)
• Smaller school with just three classrooms total. The director said that it has a "family" feel, where all the kids know each other, and I could definitely sense that when I visited.
• Cheaper than the other two options ($715/month for full-time care, compared to around $850/month for the other two)
• Only licensing violations are paperwork issues (e.g. missing physician information)

Cons:

• Significantly further from our home than the other two options, although still closer than our current sitter. (We actually passed Montessori B every day on the way to our sitter's home.)
• Only takes children starting at age 2. They were willing to take Littles a few weeks shy of her second birthday, but there was no way for her to ease into preschool by starting part-time in the winter/spring.
• Higher student-teacher ratio than the other two preschools, although I believe the class size quoted to me (18 students to two teachers in the "beginner" room) included a significant number of part-timers. It's also worth noting that Montessori does not specifically emphasize low student-teacher ratios, because the idea is that students learn from other students as well as from teachers.
• This may sound silly, but the playground is smaller and has less equipment (especially for kids Littles' age) compared to the other two schools. Also, the other two schools had covered outdoor playgrounds (very important for hot Texas summers!) while Montessori B's playground is uncovered.

Bright Horizons
Pros:

• Some good recommendations from people with children in the infant room at this specific center, and many good recommendations for the Bright Horizons chain in general.
• NAEYC accredited
• Director able to clearly articulate the school's educational philosophy and approach.
• Low student-teacher ratio, and the director specifically mentioned that they keep the ratios below where the corporate office would like them to be because they felt it just worked better that way (even though the corporate office's desired ratios are still well below state maximums)
• Accepts children as young as six weeks, so if we have another child, s/he could go there as well.
• Immediate part-time openings, so we could start Littles two days/week in the winter/spring and then ease into full-time in the summer.
• Smaller center, no "corporate" feel even though it is part of a nationwide chain.

Cons:

• Lunch provided by the school. The menu wasn't bad -- I could definitely live with it -- but I prefer to provide food.
• A licensing violation around not reporting that the infant room had flooded and was unsafe for children. The director explained that they temporarily moved the infants to another room, but still, how can you forget to notify licensing about something like that?

The decision
After visiting all three schools by myself, I was leaning towards Bright Horizons. I liked their curriculum, I liked their teachers and their director, I liked the idea of being able to start Littles part-time at first, I liked the idea of not having to drive so frickin' far to drop her off!

I then went back to visit all three schools with Hubby.

We went to Bright Horizons first, and he walked away saying, "Now I remember why we liked that place so much when we looked at it before." (We had come very close to placing Littles at Bright Horizons back around her first birthday. Full story here.)

We went to Montessori B next. I was really curious to see Hubby's reaction. It was probably the most "unique" of our three options, which can be a good thing or a bad thing!

The director took us into one of the classrooms and spent probably 30 minutes talking to us about Montessori, showing us the various materials available to the students, etc. Hubby seemed interested, but I wasn't sure if he was just being polite. Finally, the director left the room to get something else to show us and Hubby mouthed to me, "I like this place!" After we wrapped up at the school, we went out to lunch to debrief, and Hubby couldn't stop raving about it. He liked it more than Bright Horizons -- and after that second visit, I did as well.

Finally, we visited Montessori A. We had a less-than-impressive tour with one of the staff members. (My initial tour had been with one of the directors.) She admitted that she came from a traditional daycare background and really struggled to explain Montessori concepts and how they were implemented at her school. To give A a fair shake, I did explain to Hubby that the directors at A could talk about Montessori just as articulately as the director at B had done, but it didn't really matter. We were both completely sold on Montessori B.

So... Littles starts at Montessori B on Monday. I'm very excited about it. I think she'll really enjoy being in a larger environment, and I think she'll learn a lot. I am nervous about the transition, and I definitely think the first few weeks will be tough, with lots of tears at drop-off. But hopefully, she'll settle in quickly and start loving it!

Preschool options

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

As I have explained previously, we started looking for a full-time preschool for Littles in early 2009, after her sitter informed us that she was pregnant and would not be able to care for Littles starting in the summer of 2009.

Coincidentally, our neighbors have a son who is just a few weeks younger than Littles, and they were looking for a preschool as well. They gave us recommendations for two excellent Montessori schools in the area, which I will call Montessori A and Montessori B.

I could easily devote an entire blog post -- or, heck, an entire blog -- to explaining the Montessori philosophy, so I'll try to be brief. It's an alternative educational method that is child-centered, rather than teacher-directed. Children are allowed to choose the educational activities that they participate in, with guidance from their teachers, of course. If you're interested in learning more, I found this "Montessori 101" guide to be an excellent introduction.

One important thing to realize about Montessori is that it is a philosophy, not a chain or a franchise, so individual Montessori schools can differ drastically. For that reason, I knew it was important to take a close look at both schools and see what I thought.

I had a 30-minute discussion with the director of Montessori A over the phone before I visited, and I loved everything I heard. She was able to clearly articulate the school's educational philosophy, and it sounded wonderful. She also put a strong emphasis on active parental involvement, both in the actual educational experience and in non-educational areas such as providing healthy food, ensuring that kids get plenty of sleep, etc. Finally, Montessori A had two campuses, one close to our home and another close to our sitter's home. That meant it might be possible for Littles to start out with three mornings a week in late winter/spring (with her sitter picking her up in the afternoon), then move to full-time in the summer, which was a nice option.

I looked briefly at Montessori B, but eliminated it early on because: a) it was significantly further away from our home than the other options (although still closer than our sitter's house) and b) it started at age 2, not 18 months, so starting Littles part-time in late winter/spring was not an option.

Then, I happened to attend a "preschool fair." (Basically, it was set up in a room at the local library, and a bunch of area preschools sent representatives. So you could go from table to table and talk to different preschools about their programs.) The director of Montessori B flagged me down and started talking to me about her school. Something about it immediately appealed to me. The director was just as articulate about B's educational philosophy as A's director had been, but there were some subtle differences. For example, A's director had bragged that most of her four-year-olds were reading. This made me wonder, "What about your four-year-olds who aren't reading? How do you feel about them?"

See, while I would love for Littles to be able to read at age four, I also don't see it as necessarily being a "goal" or a point of pride. The A-number-one most important thing to me right now is not that Littles learns specific skills (e.g. reading, math) but that she learns to love learning. I figure if she has a love of learning instilled in her at an early age, the specific skills will follow in time.

I had figured this out in my head long before talking to B's director, so it was neat to hear her talk about instilling the love of learning as well. She did mention that most of her four-year-olds are reading but was quick to follow up and say, "We work with each child individually on reading, and go at whatever pace they need." I just got a very good feeling from her, all around.

After that talk, I put Montessori B back on our list.

To round out the list, I also decided to look at a more traditional preschool/daycare. I chose the same Bright Horizons center that we had almost sent Littles to when we first moved to Dallas, since Hubby and I had both really liked it. I talked at length with the director about its educational philosophy and how it differed from Montessori. It was more child-centered than most of the other chain daycares I visited, which had a prescribed curriculum dictated by the central corporate office. At Bright Horizons, teachers were encouraged to come up with their own lesson plans based on the interests of their students. I definitely felt that the curriculum was well-thought-through and structured enough to ensure kids were learning while still allowing plenty of time for fun and play.

Another benefit of Bright Horizons was that they had immediate part-time openings, so Littles could potentially go two full days a week through late winter/spring (spending the other three days with her sitter) and then move to full-time in the summer.

I looked at a few other daycares and Montessori schools in the area, but these three stood out as my favorites. Hubby and I took a few days to go back and visit all three together, and then we made our final decision.

In my next post, I'll talk about which school we chose and why.

The preschool search

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

As I have explained previously, we used a stay-at-home mom (Kristi) for child care after moving to Dallas just before Littles' first birthday. At first, she watched Littles along with her own two school-age boys and another boy about a month younger than Littles. The boy's mother got laid off a month or two after we started, and Kristi never filled his spot. So once her own boys went back to school in the fall, when Littles was about 14 months old, it was just Littles and Kristi during the day.

Littles thrived in this situation and always enjoyed her time at Kristi's. Still, as she approached 18 months of age, Hubby and I started to feel that she would enjoy being around other children her age on a more regular basis.

So we started looking again at group child care settings. I had already visited virtually every daycare center within a 10-mile radius of our house during our previous search for child care, so during the early days of our new search, I focused on preschools. I hadn't visited these before because they didn't take children younger than 18 months of age.

We weren't necessarily looking for full-time care. I really wanted to find a program for perhaps 1-3 mornings a week, so that I could drop Littles off and then Kristi could pick her up and care for her in the afternoon and on the days when she didn't go to preschool at all. I found the preschools to be much more accommodating of part-time and especially part-day schedules than daycare centers. In fact, many of the preschools I looked at only offered part-time care for younger kids, and didn't offer care at all past 2 PM or thereabouts.

I had started collating a list of possible preschools and scheduling appointments when Kristi informed us that she was pregnant!

(As an aside, this is another downside of having a single caregiver: If that person decides that s/he no longer wants to take care of kids for any reason, you have to find a whole new provider. We were lucky that Kristi gave us plenty of notice. Some providers aren't as courteous.)

The timing really could not have been more perfect. Kristi told us about the pregnancy in January, and as it so happens, most preschools in our area do open enrollment in February and March for the following fall. This meant we really had our pick of programs. Had we found out about Kristi's pregnancy in April or later, we might have had to get on a waiting list, as many of the programs would have filled up during the open enrollment period.

Also, Kristi didn't mind continuing to watch Littles until the time that her boys got out of school, in early June. That gave us plenty of time to find a program that met our needs. The only adjustment we had to make was to look for programs that offered full-time care.

In my next post, I'll talk about what we ended up finding.

Kristi pros and cons

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

As I have explained previously, when we moved to Dallas shortly before Littles' first birthday, we started sending Littles to Kristi, a stay-at-home mom to two school-age boys who watched Littles along with one other little boy (a month younger than Littles) out of her own home. So this was a sort of a cross between a nanny share and a very small in-home daycare.

I've highlighted some of the pros and cons of this situation below.

Interaction with other kids vs. 1:1 attention
About a month or so after we started with Kristi, the other little boy's mom got laid off. Kristi looked for another child to take his place, but never ended up finding one. So for months now, it's been just Littles and Kristi during the day. (Kristi picks up her two boys, along with another school-age boy, at around 3 PM, so Littles has some older kids to play with in the afternoon.)

I consider this to be something of a downside to this arrangement, and to be honest, I'm not sure we would have selected Kristi if we had known that that would happen. Littles loves being around other kids, and I think she would have more fun with a playmate her own age.

But there are also plenty of upsides to Littles being the only baby. Obviously, she gets plenty of one-on-one attention. I don't think that's as crucial for one-year-olds as it is for infants, but it is still important. It is also easier for Kristi to get out of the house with only one baby to worry about, so she was able to take Littles to different places, rather than always being stuck in the house. Finally, Kristi is able to tailor each day around Littles' schedule and interests. If Littles has a rough night, I know she can get some extra sleep during the day, without worrying about other kids waking her up. Or some mornings, as we're getting ready, she asks to read a book or go for a walk -- and then I can tell Kristi that and know that she'll do it, because she doesn't have to consider the interests of any other kids.

Rules
The daycare centers that we looked at tended to have a lot of "rules" in the toddler rooms. The two hardest for Littles at 12 months old: No bottles, and only one nap a day at a specified time.

Had we been looking when Littles was 18 months old, or even 15 months old, I don't think the rules would have been such a big deal. But at 12 months old, especially in the midst of a move halfway across the country, the first few months would have been very difficult.

Kristi, of course, didn't have any of these rules, and it was nice to give Littles the time she needed to grow up on her own, rather than forcing her into it.

I also like being able to provide Littles' food. None of the daycare centers we looked at would allow that.

Caregiver time off
One downside of any single-caregiver situation is that there will inevitably be a time when that caregiver is unavailable and you need to make alternate arrangements for care. That is certainly the case with Kristi, who asks for significantly more time off than our previous nanny.

Since my job is very flexible, and we also have an excellent backup care program available through our employer, it's rarely a problem to find alternate care for Littles when Kristi is unavailable. And there are plenty of benefits to a single-caregiver situation. It's good to know that Littles has consistency in care. And it's helpful for Hubby and me to have one person to communicate with regarding Littles' care, rather than having to talk to one person and hope that the message reaches her other caregivers.

So it's worth it for us to put up with the occasional inconvenience of having to find backup care. But if our jobs were less flexible, that might not the case.

Caregiver style
Kristi definitely has a different style from our previous nanny, Maria. She is more willing to listen to me and work with me on my preferences for Littles' care, which is good. I find that she and I tend to think alike in many ways anyway. She makes most of the same decisions I would make with regards to Littles' care, without much guidance from me.

She is less "cuddly" and loving than Maria was -- more like a teacher than a nanny, if that makes sense. I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing, especially now that Littles is no longer a little baby. It's just different.

Location
We take Littles to Kristi's house, which means about a 30-45 min roundtrip each morning to drop off and each afternoon to pick up. Obviously, this is much less convenient than having a nanny come to our home, and also a little less convenient than most of the daycare centers we had considered.

Cost
Although taking Littles to Kristi's is a little inconvenient, it is also a lot cheaper! Littles gets 1-on-1 care just like she'd get from an in-home nanny, but at less than half the cost. Can't beat that!

Kristi also charges a little less than most daycare centers in our area. She does charge a little more than the average in-home daycare, but given that she watches fewer kids, that's quite understandable. (She told us upfront that she wanted to watch no more than 3 kids, and obviously it's been just Littles for most of the time. In contrast, most in-home daycares have 5-6 kids.)

Conclusions
Kristi has been really good for Littles. Certainly, she made Littles' transition from California easier. While I wish that Littles had some playmates her own age, I do think there are benefits to the 1-on-1 care she enjoys during the day. It's a little less convenient for Hubby and me, since we have to drive further each day and we have to find backup care with Kristi is unavailable, but the low cost and the quality care definitely outweighs those minor issues.

Still, earlier this year, we started thinking about moving Littles to preschool. Hubby and I both felt that as she got closer to age 2, she could really benefit from a larger environment with more kids her own age.

We initially looked at part-time preschools, thinking that we would keep Littles with Kristi for part of the week and send her to preschool for the rest of the time. But we found out at right around the same time that Kristi is pregnant. She is due in July, and wants to stop watching Littles around the time that her boys get out of school in early June. That worked out perfectly with our plans to transition Littles into preschool around her second birthday -- the only difference was that we needed to look exclusively at full-time programs, rather than considering part-time programs as well.

In my next post in this series, I'll talk about our preschool search, and our final decision.

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.

Nanny share pros and cons

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

As I have explained previously, when I first returned to work, we placed Littles in a nanny share. Maria, our nanny, watched another girl named Dani, who is about 18 months older than Littles. Maria also brought her daughter, Gali, who is almost exactly 4 years older than Littles.

I wrote quite a bit about our nanny share in a post back in February. Overall, the experience was fantastic. Hubby and I are already thinking about trying to find something similar when we have another child.

Still, I went in thinking that it would be perfect. It was not. Now I understand that no child care situation is perfect. (Including having one parent stay at home!)

In retrospect, the root cause of the handful of complaints that I did have was that I made a lot of assumptions.

Caregiver style
Probably the biggest assumption I made was that Maria would fully defer to my desires on all aspects of Littles' care. She did not. Our biggest disagreement, as I described in my February post, was over how to get Littles to sleep for naps. Maria let her "cry it out" -- something that I was very much opposed to. I told Maria that I didn't want her to do it, and she did it anyway. In that case, I must admit that it worked quite well and does not seem to have had any negative long-term impact on Littles. But I always worried that Maria and I would disagree on something else major, and that I would have to defer to her again.

Lesson learned: Every child care provider has his or her own "style," as does every parent. Some providers are more willing than others to adjust their "style" to fit a parent's. Now I know to ask providers about their style, and to sniff out how willing a provider is to change their style to suit mine.

Breastfeeding
I had assumed that I would be able to mostly breastfeed during the days when the nanny share was at our house and I worked from home. This would have greatly eased my pumping load.

But I never discussed this with Maria before we started. Within a week, it became very apparent that this was not going to work out. Part of it was that Littles seemed to do better when she took bottles exclusively during the day -- I think she got confused when I saw her to nurse and then "left." But I also think that Maria could have been more supportive. For example, she sometimes didn't want to "bother" me at work, so she simply gave Littles a bottle without telling me. Unfortunately, that seriously messed with my schedule, because I was waiting on Maria to bring Littles to nurse, and didn't realize that I needed to pump instead.

If we do a nanny situation with future babies and I'm still working from home, I plan to discuss my desire to nurse as much as possible ahead of time, rather than springing it on the nanny on the first day.

Conserving my "liquid gold"
I also assumed that Maria would treat my expressed breastmilk like I did. This one is hard to explain if you've never pumped. Pumping moms often call expressed breastmilk "liquid gold," because it is! It takes so much effort to get it out that you don't want to waste a single drop. Maria certainly didn't waste breastmilk on purpose, but I think she could have conserved it a little better than she did. For example, she often gave a bottle late in the day (around 4 PM or even later, when I picked Littles up between 5 and 5:30 PM), rather than waiting for me to get there to nurse.

A few other minor quibbles that I had:

• We had some struggles with Dani, who was very jealous of Littles. For example, if one of her parents said hello to Littles, she would scream, "No Littles!" She also scratched Littles on multiple occasions. This did not really bother me, as I knew Dani was being disciplined appropriately for her behavior and the scratches were not serious, but it really bugged Hubby.
  
• The two older girls watched TV. Not a significant amount, just a half hour of cartoons before their nap and occasionally a little at the end of the day too, and Maria usually gave Littles a bottle or played with her while the older girls watched TV. But we try not to have the TV on around Littles at all, so even half an hour was more than I would have liked.
  
• Maria generally worked 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM. She was usually happy to come early or stay late on the occasional days when we needed her to, but I always felt bad making her do that. After all, she has a family and a life of her own. On those days, I wished we were at a daycare center, where I could drop off at 7 AM and know that Littles' teacher wasn't there just because of us.
  
• There was not much structure to the girls' days with Maria. They walked to the park when the weather was nice, and the rest of the day was spent in unstructured play. This was fine -- even preferable -- for Littles as an infant, but it might have become less desirable had we stayed with Maria as Littles got older.
  
• One oft-cited con to a one-caregiver situation like our nanny share is that you have no backup if the caregiver is sick or unavailable for any reason. Luckily, as I've mentioned before, we have excellent backup child care through our jobs, so this was not an issue for us.

That said, there were many pros to our nanny share, and they far outweighed the cons!

Individualized attention
I cannot stress the importance of this one enough. Littles got so much love and attention! Part of this goes back to Maria's caregiver "style" -- this was definitely a positive aspect of it. She always reached out to hold Littles the moment I walked through the door, gave her lots of hugs and kisses, and generally made sure that she interacted with her as much as possible. Littles really bonded with her. Gali was like a miniature version of her mom, always talking to and playing with Littles. Dani, like most 2-year-olds, was mostly wrapped up in her own little world :), but Littles loved watching her dance, run, and play. I think that interaction and bonding was really important to Littles as an infant.

One caregiver to bond with
I also think it's really important for infants to have the chance to bond strongly with one caregiver. In a daycare environment, an infant room might have three, four, five or more teachers in and out over the course of a day. I liked that Maria was Littles' only caregiver, that she didn't need to give me daily written reports because she could just tell me everything about Littles' day, that Littles had lots of consistency and familiarity in care. Some moms don't like this because they think their baby will start to prefer the caregiver, but this never happened. Littles loved Maria, but she never forgot that Hubby and I are her dad and mom!

I remember coming to pick Littles up one day, a few weeks before we moved. Maria had given her a Doodle Pro to play with, and as Maria and I caught up on her day, Littles attempted to figure out the Doodle Pro -- she kept trying to draw with the wrong end of the magnetic wand. Finally, she figured it out and scribbled a clear black line on the pad. She looked at me with a big smile, clearly proud of herself, and then gave Maria the same smile and the same look. It was in that moment that I could see just how well she had bonded with Maria. It made me happy that she spent her days with someone she loved so much, and who loved her so much.

Social interaction
Littles absolutely loved Dani and Gali. She got a huge smile on her face every morning when they came running over to say hello. I think she enjoyed the nanny share much more than she would have enjoyed being alone with a nanny. The nanny share offered a great balance between social interaction and individualized attention.

Interaction with older kids
Dani and Gali interacted with Littles in a much different way from either adults or other babies. For example, from the day we brought Littles home from the hospital, we used a bouncy chair that had a little dog toy attached to it. If you pulled on the dog toy, it played a song. Littles hadn't figured out the dog toy when she started in hte nanny share, but within a week, Gali had taught her how to pull on the dog toy to make it play the song. Another baby would not have the awareness to show her that; an adult (like me!) would have no interest in pulling the silly toy over and over to show Littles how it worked. It took an older child to do that.

Comfortable surroundings
Littles got to spend two days a week in the familiar environment of her own home. The rest of the week, she was in a similar home-like setting, with the benefit of access to Dani's extensive toy collection :) Far different from the busy environment of daycare. She does great in these environments now, but I think it was good for her to get used to them gradually, rather than all at once as a young infant.

Convenience
Not having to pack up all of Littles' stuff on the two days when the nanny share was at our house was wonderful! Also, the flip side of "inconveniencing" Maria by asking her to come early some days was that I didn't have to inconvenience Littles on those days by waking her up to go to daycare. Oftentimes, on the days when Maria arrived at 7:30 AM, Littles was just waking up as she arrived.

Cost
We paid about the same for Maria as we would have paid at a daycare center -- and much less than we would have paid for a dedicated nanny. Yet we got a much lower caregiver to child ratio and greater convenience.

Cleaning
We paid Maria $35 extra each week, and she cleaned up as the girls napped. This was a nice little side benefit, and far cheaper than a cleaning service. She also did things that our old cleaning service didn't do, such as putting away clean dishes and folding Littles' clothes.

Conclusions
We really lucked out with our nanny share. As inexperienced parents, we didn't even know what questions to ask in our interview with Maria. But we went with our gut, and ended up finding a wonderful situation for Littles. It wasn't perfect, to be sure, but Littles was safe and very loved, and that's all a parent can ask for.

Nanny share logistics

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

As I explained in my last post on this subject, when I first returned to work, we placed Littles in a nanny share. Maria, our nanny, watched another girl named Dani, who is about 18 months older than Littles. Maria also brought her daughter, Gali, who is almost exactly 4 years older than Littles.

Nanny share logistics can be a little tricky, since you're dealing with not only a nanny but also another family. Here's what we figured out for ours.

Which house?
Some nanny shares are always at one family's house. In our case, we decided to split days between Dani's house and our house. Usually, everyone came to our house on Mondays and Wednesdays, and we took Littles over to Dani's house the rest of the week.

Equipment
Both families provided pack-n-plays (portable cribs/play yards). Littles slept in Dani's pack-n-play at her house, which was set up in the bedroom of Dani's school-age brother. Dani slept in Littles' pack-n-play at our house, which we set up in either our master bedroom or our office, depending on whether or not I was working from home that day. At our house, Gali slept on a mat on the floor of the living room; I assume she did something similar at Dani's house.

We purchased a Fisher Price Healthy Care booster seat right before we started the nanny share, and that is what Dani ate on at our house. We then purchased a high chair for Littles when she started solids. Dani's family had a Healthy Care booster seat and a high chair as well, so Littles used their high chair at their house.

Dani's family had previously purchased a double stroller, so Maria kept it in her car and brought it back and forth between our house and Dani's. This allowed her to easily take all three girls out for a walk.

We had to do some childproofing of our home when we first started in the nanny share -- mostly putting gates on the steps to ensure that Dani didn't fall. We didn't mind at all, since we knew we would need the gates for Littles in a few months anyway! (And we did...) This might be bad, but we never really looked over Dani's house from a childproofing perspective, even after Littles got more mobile. We figured Dani's family had already childproofed well enough to keep her alive, and Maria would raise any concerns she had about Littles' safety.

Nanny pay
As is typical, Maria charged a little more to watch two children instead of one. Typically, each family paid $8/hour, so Maria made $16/hour total. If one family needed Maria but the other didn't, the family who needed her paid $14/hour. For example, Maria typically worked 8:30-5:30, but some days, we needed her to come early or stay late. On those days, we paid her $14/hour for the extra hours.

Both families also paid Maria about $35 extra per week to clean up around the house. She vacuumed, cleaned the bathrooms, washed windows, cleaned the kitchen, put away dishes/loaded the dishwasher, folded laundry, dusted, etc. She usually waited till Littles took a nap to vacuum, and she did the rest of the cleaning while all three girls were down for a nap (right after lunch). This was definitely a nice perk of having in-home care!

Sick/vacation days
We did not specifically negotiate a certain number of sick days or vacation days. Dani's family had been using Maria for over a year when we joined the share, and they assured us that she was very reliable and almost always there. Indeed, in 8 months with her, she never called in sick and only asked for three days off, each time with over a month's notice. We paid her when she took time off -- I figure everyone needs a break from their job every once in a while! Also, if either family took vacation, they still paid Maria as if they were there. This allowed Maria to count on a consistent income, and it also allowed each family to count on a consistent price for Maria -- it would have been awful if we had had to pay more than anticipated one week just because Dani was out sick or on vacation!

Conclusions
Really, the arrangement was pretty informal. We did not sign a contract or talk about liability (e.g. if Dani got hurt at our home) or decide on sick-child policies or write up emergency policies (i.e. if Littles or Dani needed to be rushed to the doctor) or anything like that. Naive? Maybe. But it worked out fine.

In my next post, I'll talk about the pros and cons of our nanny share.

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...

Child care options

We just finished our third search for child care, so I thought I'd write a couple of posts about the process we've gone through.

First, the options. Most people break down child care into three categories:

• Daycare centers. These tend to be large, with kids broken up into multiple classrooms by age. Biggest pro: Always available. If your teacher is ill, the center handles finding a backup. Biggest con: Lots of kids can mean less 1:1 attention... and more germs and illness.
  
• In-home daycares. These are usually smaller. In Texas, for example, in-home daycares can have no more than 12 children at one time, regardless of the number of providers -- that's the size of one classroom at many daycare centers! Most in-home providers also accept kids of all ages, from infant to preschool. Biggest pro: Most in-home daycares have only one provider, so your child is able to really bond with that provider, rather than seeing multiple teachers over the course of his/her day. Biggest con: You'll usually find yourself scrambling for backup care if your provider is sick or goes on vacation.
  
• Nannies. A nanny comes to your home to watch your child. Biggest pro: Tons of 1:1 attention. Biggest con: Cost. A good nanny can easily cost more than your mortgage payment.

When I first started looking for child care, when I was pregnant, I thought these were the only options available. And, personally, I don't like any of these options, at least at Littles' age. I think that 1:1 attention is so important for infants/toddlers, but at all of the daycare centers and in-home daycares that I've looked at, Littles would be one of four or five children assigned to one caregiver.

A nanny certainly provides 1:1 attention, but the cost is prohibitive for us. Plus, Littles really does enjoy interacting with other kids, and I don't think she would get enough of that interaction if she were home alone all day with a nanny.

For me, the "sweet spot" is 2 or 3 children with one caregiver -- enough so that each child gets plenty of attention from the caregiver, but also plenty of interaction with other kids.

So I am lucky to have stumbled upon a couple of additional options, both of which hit my "sweet spot" for the number of children, at a reasonable cost:

• Nannies who bring their own child. This gives your child a built-in playmate. Also, the nanny usually charges a little less, since she's essentially getting free child care.
  
• Nanny shares. One nanny, two families. This is what we did in California, and it worked out to be about the same price as a daycare center.
  
• Stay-at-home moms. Some stay-at-home moms look to watch an extra child or two to make some extra money. This is what we will be doing in Texas. The mom who we'll be leaving Littles with is actually on the high end as far as what she charges, compared to other stay-at-home moms providing child care, but we feel she's worth it. And she's still cheaper than a daycare center.

In my next post, I'll talk more about my process of searching for child care.