Daycare? It is decided (its a long one)

On March 25th we received a flyer in the mail for a daycare center near our house. It was advertising weekly child care for as low as $120.00 per child. I was taken back by the price and decided to call. I have always wanted my kids in daycare. I was on the waiting list for the daycare directly behind our house when I found out I was pregnant. Once we found out we were having twins the option of daycare was suddenly out of the question. We could easily afford daycare for one child but not two. Infants in daycare cost about $200 per week per child which is more than our mortgage! It would have cost us almost $1600.00 a month to have our children enrolled in a decent daycare. Ridiculous!!!

When the kids were born I had no idea what we were going to do for child care. We were blessed with Anita when the time came for me to return to work. Anita is our friend Claudia's mother and she stayed at home with her grandson, Zachary. I went back to work when they were three months old and Anita kept them for 6 months. I liked having someone I knew and trusted caring for my children. Anita had worked in day cares most of her life and had a degree in child development. She was excellent with the kids and taught them how to roll over, sit up, eat from a spoon and ultimately crawl. I could not have ask for a better first babysitter for them both!

Once the kids starting crawling and getting more mobile it was obviously time for them to move on. Anita's apartment didn't have any room for them to crawl and Zachary's toys were now a safety issue. We still could not afford daycare and were blessed to have met Melissa through my AMOMs club. She had a house with plenty of room for them to crawl and eventually run. Her twins were almost the same age as our children. It was immediately a wonderful change when Melissa took over because she understood the "necessities" of raising twins. She knew the importance of scheduling the twins and how to deal with their needs. She kept the kids for over a year and did a very good job. They moved from the bottle to a sippy cup, started eating regular food, started walking and even started talking with Melissa. They learned how to interact with Addison and Landon and they always seemed to have a really good time playing all day at Melissa's.

Although Melissa was definitely a blessing, the drive was horrible! At first it seemed like a long way but I eventually got used to it. In the recent months I despised that drive. I finally clocked the drive about three weeks ago and realized I was driving almost 55 miles round trip! Oh my goodness that is a long way! Not only is the distance and gas an issue but the time it takes me to drive there and back everyday is ridiculous. I have to leave my house by 8am or I am late to work. When I get off I have to rush to beat some of the traffic on the way to pick them up. If I stay and visit even ten minutes then I don't get back home until almost 6pm. By the time I get the kids fed and bathed it is time for bed. I wasn't getting to spend any time with them. We were rushed in the morning and the evening. I felt like I was only seeing them on the weekends.

The other main issue we had was the food we provided. When the kids started going to her house they were on bottles and baby food. Now the kids eat three meals a day with two snacks. We didn't pay Melissa enough to cover food cost therefore we brought their food everyday. Not only did that mean we had to purchase their food we also had to prepare all their food. Dallas was going to the grocery store every single day for something! We would have to spend an hour a night or early in the morning cooking meat, cutting fruit and sacking up pretzels. It was absolutely exhausting to keep up with that schedule! We found ourselves constantly doing something and never having a moment to rest!

Dallas and I have been discussing daycare or even the possibility of a mother's day out program for months. We both felt that the kids were getting to the age that they now needed a structured learning environment. When we received the flyer for the daycare I told Dallas about it and he said to call for sure. It was worth checking out. I called and talked to the director about their programs.

The flyer was for a church daycare which tend to be a little cheaper than the regular daycare centers. The program sounded wonderful but I was hesitant since the price was so cheap. In life you tend to get what you pay for and this sounded just too good to be true. I called Dallas back and told him I was going to go by at lunch and check it out. I also wanted to check out a place I had been looking at daily on my way to work. It was a newer building that I had noticed for the past few months.

At lunch I ran by the daycare that I see on my way to work and I was very impressed!!! It was nap time but the director and I quietly took a tour of the building. All the kids were asleep on little cots, precious! I talked with her for a long time about the curriculum, schedule and all the other details I needed to know. They have only been open for 9 months and were hidden behind a big fence. She said these two factors were the only reasons they still had openings. I told her I was very interested but the price was more than I could afford. I told her I would talk to my husband and let her know later.

I headed over to the church daycare and drove around the building. I didn't have enough time to go in but by the playground area I knew that I would more than likely not allow my children to go there.

I went back to work and started checking stats. I learned when the twins were born about the public government site that you can check all registered day cares records whether it be home, church, private or public. I looked at the church daycare's record and was not impressed. They had been written up countless times for the same problems that ranged from not having employee's records complete to leaving the electrical plug covers off. Are you kidding me, leaving the covers off in the toddler room! I don't think so! I checked out the daycare that I liked and they had absolutely NO write ups! They had been inspected five times in 9 months with no problems. The only thing that had been reported under their establishment was a month ago when a little girl fell and had to get stitches. They reported the incident themselves.

At this point I continued to talk with the director and Dallas about our options to see if it would even be possible for us to afford it. The only reason we could even look is because the kids will be 2 years old soon and the price per child drops when they turn two. I decided to go ahead and visit the church daycare after work because I could not truly judge it without seeing the inside. My initial reaction was correct. I walked in to find an empty room full of toddlers laying on the floor bored. I ask where all the toys were and the director pointed to a few boxes in the corner. She said, "We focus on the learning not the playing really." Yea right! It didn't take long before I was just trying not to be rude and get the heck out of there. The concrete area that led to the play ground outside was all eroded and had huge drop offs. I just envisioned my children falling face first into a slab of concrete and I was gone!

Dallas was excited to see the place I did like and he couldn't wait. He insisted I meet him there so he could take a look. I went to get the kids and met him back there to see his and the kids reactions. I beat him there so we went in the small foyer to wait. The director told us to come in and I told her she was crazy. I had them contained thank you very much. She insisted and said they could go to the two year old room and visit. So I opened the door and they took off running just like I figured they would. They made an immediate right to one of the infant rooms and I had to redirect them. We made it back to the two year old room and they went straight to playing. Ethan was already in the tube going through it to get to the small slide. Paige was digging through the kitchen area. I went back up front to meet Dallas and they could have cared less that I left.

Dallas arrived and we talked to the director about everything. We took a tour of the building and then ended up back in the kids room. Ethan was building a big tower out of huge Legos and all the other kids were too. The girl in charge said, "He started this". Paige was running back and forth between the tiny couch and the bean bag laughing and screaming. Once Ethan was done building he started to dump out different tubs of toys and I thought we better go before he tore the room apart. We headed home to take care of the kids and talk about our options.

Once we started crunching the numbers we realized that we were no longer saving money by driving to Melissa's house and we would in fact SAVE money in gas and food by enrolling them in daycare. We decided with Dallas' new opportunity at work with the possibility of traveling the time it would save to move them to daycare was essential. We would be saving at least 2 1/2 hours a day in time; almost two hours driving, time going to the grocery store almost everyday and time preparing their food. It was decided with high hopes for the future to enroll them in daycare at Imagine Nation Learning Center!

My problem now was telling Melissa that we were going to move the kids. I didn't want to hurt her feelings or damage our friendship but we felt we were making the right decision for our children. On that Friday I told her that we were moving the kids in two weeks to daycare. I explained the reasons as best I could and hoped that it would all work out. She was understandable upset since she would be losing income and her kids wouldn't have interaction with other children. She has had our kids for over a year and I imagine you become quite attached in that amount of time. I knew we would still get the kids together for play dates and I hoped it would open more opportunities for Melissa. She would be free to do whatever she wanted. Take her kids places, leave her house whenever she wanted, enroll her kids in a program or even go back to work. She would have to decide what was best for her family and we knew we had decided what was best for ours.