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Monday, January 29, 2007

Daycare Take II

As I mentioned last week, we have been looking at daycare options. Since we don't really know what our options are, we decided to keep an open mind on Family Care providers (ran out of some one's home) and Day Care Providers (actual centers), but just to narrow things down a little we decided to limit the search to places that would accept part-time infants.

If you're anything like me, you would think that finding a place that accepts part-time infants would be easy, and you'd be right but oh so very wrong at the same time. It's easy to find places that allow you to drop your infant off 3 times a week... but only charge you for those 3 days? Ha! You have to pay for all 5 days no matter what! And that can get pricey! Wooo-eeee*! We went to a daycare conference on Saturday just to see some of our other options and we found places that charge $400+ per week for infant care!!! Do the math... That's over $1600 a month!

Anyway... We've looked at three places so far:

1. Family Care Provider - This ended up basically being a woman who takes care of a few children in her house. She was Afgani and wore the covered clothing, sat on the floor, and couldn't shake Michael's hand. The advantage of this would be that she could introduce the baby to another language, which we like. The disadvantage would be that I could not understand her. Though she speaks English, her daughter had to translate for her many times. There really wasn't much to this place and it seemed like the most common form of entertainment for the children was the couch and the TV. $50 per day for part-time.

2. Little Lighthouse - We really liked this center a lot. The director has 20 years of experience and mentioned (on several occasions) how much they love coming to work everyday. She told us about how infants just need a lot of attention and they are held and talked to and sung to. They also do baby sign language (at least the simple signs like "more" and "food"), which we really like. $65 per day for part-time.

3. Luv to Discover - This was an interesting center because it was really small and was actually the basement of a house. The director had the basement of her beautiful house converted into a certified center. It was smaller and seemed cleaner than the Little Lighthouse. The director was really super-friendly and easy to talk to. We liked this place as much as the other center, but it is further out of our way and less convenient. We have to verify the price with her, though. $55 per day for full-time (might increase for part-time).

Needless to say, after seeing the two centers, we knocked the first one off our list pretty quickly, especially since it didn't seem to save us much money and the child would get so much more out of the center!

Our decision is this:
We will go with Little Lighthouse if Luv to Discover is $5/day difference in price. We will have to think about it more if it's $10/day difference (that adds up quickly). In the mean-time, though, I will try to find a Family Care provider that gives quality child care at a price lower than those options. I'd like to see more variety of family care providers so that I don't base my opinion on just the one.


* That's the sound of a surprised cowboy. Duh. I just don't know how to spell it. Woowee? Wuwee? Whooowhee? Whookwee? (the k is silent)

4 comments:

Heidi said...

Isn't it amazing how these things work?!

When I couldn't find the *right* preschool close to home I called a couple of nearby daycares that have preschool in the title stupidly thinking that they would be accommodating to part time hours. Yes! We could send him 5 or 6 hours/week...for $1200+/month. (I know you can't see me, but I am miming hanging up the phone.) So now I drive 25 miles each way to preschool twice a week and do my shopping while he's in school. I remind myself that it is so perfect for us, I can get errands done in town and that it's only for 2 years. (And heck, we live less than a mile from the elementary school, so after this my driving days are over!!!)

I actually have two friends here who were paying $1600/mo when the kids were infants. (Though it was per month, which would work to be a tad cheaper than $400/week.) Here? With our cost of living? What kind of profit must they be pulling??? The good news was that the price went down as their kids hit the milestone ages where the state required ratios went down. And if you break the cost down hourly it's way cheaper than a teenaged babysitter for responsible adults!

Have I made it seem less stressful? (LOL I tried.) It sounds like you did a great job and already may have found the perfect place. Horray for you!

In the coming months I hope you'll laugh along with me as I try to learn how to be a soccer Mom. My poor baby really wants to play soccer but I have failed him already. (Which, hello, I can't even imagine resembling soccer when it's a team of 4 year olds.) From what I've now learned an hour/week of soccer THIS Spring would have required that I had signed him up LAST Spring because it's for a full year, Fall and Spring. The waitlists are SO closed at this point it's not even funny. Talk about heartbreaking, when we went to inquire a few months back the Cracker asked, "Are you playing soccer when it gets warm out?" "Yes we are!" "Do you have woom for me to play too?" "No, I'm sorry." Bastards! (Okay, and totally my fault for not doing more research first.)

So are we having fun yet?

Anonymous said...

Ohhhh!!! The way you tell the soccer story makes me so sad for him! He's SO cute (I remember him from Jen & Michael's wedding). That's the kind of thing that will keep me awake at night when I have kids.

Jen

Niffer said...

I totally agree! The soccer story was heartbreaking. He probably doesn't understand the concept of waitlists, and I'm sure he certainly doesn't understand the concept of how quickly a year can go by if you were to tell him that he can play next year. Poor Cracker!

Niffer said...

I had so much fun on my soccer team! The team was called the Smurfettes and we looked good. Too good, in fact, because we were more concerned about our socks staying up than we were about continuing to kick the ball. I think I was in kindergarten at the time.