Daycare

The second thing we did when we got pregnant was look for a day care center. This might seem strange to some...the baby's barely a lump of cells and we're thinking about what happens after I go back to work? Ten months from now?!? Well, it wasn't the first thing on our minds either. The only plans we had at the time was to see my doctor.

Now, I have to mention that this pregnancy was planned. We know that Daniel was conceived on the last weekend in April. I know that he implanted on May 9th. We got into see our doctor on May 23rd, which was exactly two weeks later and determined our due date was January 23rd. (Our ultrasound data supports that date.)

So I'm officially 5 weeks pregnant, sitting in the car in front of Rob's office, waiting for him to come out and perusing the free magazines the nurse packed along with sample pre-natal vitamins. And what does the article in Baton Rouge Parenting warn me of? A daycare shortage in Baton Rouge made worse by the burdens of post-Katrina population growth. And worse...due to State of Louisiana Class A certification guidelines, infant spots are few and far between.

Oh, shit.

So Rob and I planned to follow the advice of the article, apply for a dozen or so care facilities to get onto their waiting lists. Hopefully we would get accepted into one within a year. But for anyone who knows me also know that's not a good situation. I've had to drive 25 miles to check to make sure my oven was actually turned off...on a day I know I didn't use it...and I'm going to sit around and wait for the first child care center that calls me back? Yeah...right.

Then I found this place. It's close to LSU and along our commute. It's a school and there's no waiting list. They only take families they can accomodate. For $200, the spot is guaranteed when we need it. The tuition is $200 more per month than the Baton Rouge average, but there would be no more running around. No more applications. No waiting for a call back. We figured if we got into our preferred school before March, the $200 would have bought peace of mind and be worth every penny.

Seventeen weeks have passed. We haven't heard a peep out of the other day care center. But we've received two newsletters from the school.

We're learning about what the kids are doing in all of the classes. The infant classes, due to their very small size, talk about the progress of all of the children individually. So we have an idea of how they learn...through play and through one-on-one "conversations" with their teacher. In this newsletter, the teacher in the older infant class talks about a boy named Kevin who is demonstrating walking to his younger classmates. They introduce the children to computers as toddlers.

I have to say that I like the idea of our son in this place like this, where he won't just be cared for in our absence, but actively taught to interact with teachers and other children, in a classroom environment, from his very first day.