Daycare is secured!

I've been searching for a new daycare provider for a couple of weeks now, or at least seriously looking for the past 3 weeks. It's a much harder decision than I thought it was going to be.

The first place I interviewed in person is a place where a friend of mine takes her year-old daughter. It was a very clean home, nice neighborhood, wonderful caregiver...but, there was only one other child there the age of my daughter -- the rest of the kids were younger. It would be the perfect location for my infant son, but since we're not sending our daughter to preschool this next year, I really want a place that sort of 'feels' like preschool.

The second place I interviewed was set-up like a preschool with Montessori stations and educational activities all around. But, this place raised a lot of red flags -- 2 dogs running around in the house amongst the children. I'm not opposed to animals, I actually like my kids being around animals. But, in a daycare situation where there are 10+ children in the house, I think letting your dog run around is a huge liability. Then, there was the sleeping situation -- grungy, grimy pack-n-plays for the infants. The infant area of the house (there are 2 adult care-givers in this home), was full of snot-nosed 2 year olds and I just pictured 4 two year olds with their fingers in my infant son's mouth -- not a reassuring feeling. The final blow was that the caregiver told me she took in a friend of the family who lost his job and his home due to the economy. Now, I'm all about helping a friend out, especially in this economy, but I just can't put my daughter into a house where a strange man is living. She didn't introduce me to the man, she just said, "he stays in this room all day". A HUGE red flag....

The third place I interviewed (today) was the place I will be sending my children come June 4th. She has a preschool-type atmosphere, where each child has a 'job' for the day. She does a monthly theme -- this month is the alphabet, last month was bugs and they have a caterpillar habitat, waiting for butterflies to come out of their cocoons! They have story and music time each day, they have a fenced in back yard with play activities and a park just a couple of blocks away.

Each time I went to interview a home, I prayed that I would just 'know' if it was the right locations. The first home I didn't get a feeling positive or negative, the second home was definitely negative and this 3rd home -- I got that feeling -- the feeling as I walked out the door of, "I can't wait to bring my daughter here to meet Miss Connie"