Today we had our daycare meeting, an orientation and tour with the teachers Ingrid will have. I have to say, I feel really, really good about this place. On paper, it looks great, of course, and everything in there is brand new, which makes its own impression, but even more, the teachers seemed to be really nice. They were personable, and professional, both with bachelor’s degrees in ECE — one a fairly recent grad, from what I could tell, and the other was probably in her 40s. The room that Ingrid will be in is huge, easily more square footage than the infant and toddlers had put together at the uni. Because of the supply/demand, she’s actually the youngest baby in the Toddler 1 room, for 11-18 month olds, but the infant room (6w-11mo) had so much demand, and the Toddler 1 so little, they wiggled the dividing line to accomodate as many people as possible as they got started. Ingrid is one of 5 kids, the oldest 13mos, in the ‘Toddler 1’ room, with 2 teachers. (HELL of a ratio there, 2:5! and as that room fills, they’ll hire to keep the ratio at 1:4) At the university, the infant room was for 6w-18months, and that’s quite a span… Of course, Ingrid will be the little sitting buddha of the Toddler room, since she firmly believes that crawling is for pussies.  The room itself is bright and cheerful, with 2 little toddler height sinks, and wooden furniture, wooden play kitchen, a foam crawling area, books, puzzles, dolls, bead paths…. just really, really warm feeling. They have a no-shoes policy, another thing I like that the uni didn’t have, where adults take off their shoes before going in (as do the kids, I imagine) so that they don’t eat rocks and dirt and stuff, since kids of that age spend a lot of time on the floor.

My other big concern was about pumping and breastmilk storage — the paperwork said that bottles had to be prepared by us, not the staff, which would mean having to estimate how much she’d eat, blah blah blah… whereas at the uni, I just kept frozen EBM in the freezer, and they used it as necessary, which really cut down on waste. Unless you’ve pumped yourself, you have no idea how horrible the concept of "waste" is in this scenario. Anyway, they are totally cool with frozen bags of EBM, and really, it’s just for the next 4 months anyway, and I’m not opposed to supplementing if I have to. I want to nurse as long as Ingrid wants to, but the general rule is that one doesn’t need to pump after a year, and that would be cool, as pumping blows, and a lot of my internet people have followed that same path with great success.  They also provide snacks (fruit, cheerios, etc) and when she’s older, they’ll provide organic, vegetarian lunches. Good lord, the girl will eat better there than at home.

Today, it was snowing like mad, which made the location really stand out as a strong point. It’s less than a mile from our house (and if the director can get them to re-connect their entrance street to the business park road, that would probably cut our drive to less than .5 mile) and if I don’t work for an organization with snow days (highly likely) that means we have to get her to daycare anyway, and the less time that Ingrid is on a crappy road, the better, IMO.

And, the icing on the cake? because she’s a ‘toddler,’ we pay the toddler rate — NOT the infant rate, which is $15 dollars more a week. Yeah, it’s fifteen bucks, but every penny counts. Now I just need a Damn. Job.  At least I feel totally confident in our childcare choice now, it all looked good on paper, but you never know, you know?  They have a great facility — totally renovated, great playground, an activity room for gymnastics lessons (SHUT UP, AMY :P) and a kitchen for the kids to learn to cook (probably when they are a littler uh, older than Ingrid) and kid-size everything, which is really cool.  It makes the whole prospect of going back to work so much more manageable for me.  Not working is Not an Option, and to have a good daycare is so, so, sooooo great.

Now, send some job juju my way, wouldja?