a long road

Well, today officially began our hunt for suitable daycare for Ethan come January. And so far its done nothing but make me more anxious about the whole thing.

The process of interviewing daycare providers (in home family daycare providers - usually stay at home mums themselves) reminds me of my experiences interviewing employees in government for job vacancies. You get your resumes, you narrow your choices down to those few that look pretty good, and you interview. You have high hopes - you want a winner or two to choose from. But then, the first candidate comes in, and every question is answered at sub par levels and you come away from the interview feeling pretty pessimistic that the position will be filled by anyone of quality.

Well, this happened today. The person we interviewed today had 2 big things going for her: she's a 3 minute drive away, and she's a little cheaper than the going rate (which would save us about $200 a month). Well you can't put a dollar amount on quality child care - we'd certainly not pick someone to do our son's weekday raising because they were cheaper!

This woman was pretty nice, but didn't seem to take the responsibility as professionally as I'd have liked. And her house wasn't too clean - tons of clutter everywhere. She has children of her own, who seemed a bit rambunctious. For example, her 8 year old was listening to death metal music in his room.

And the room where Ethan would be playing (if 10 month olds "play") is in the tv room - a room where she'd not be spending a whole lot of time herself - but she could HEAR the children from the kitchen/living room okay so that was good enough for her.

I asked Troy what he thought and he thought the woman was nice - but my expectations are higher than that. I'm sure she'd be fine - but its not what I envision for my child. She had no structure or ideas on how to have Ethan spend his day - standards I know are higher in other places.

So - back to the drawing board. I just hope that what we saw today was not representative of what is generally available out there. I have some more leads to follow up - and hopefully those interview experiences won't make me feel even worse (is that possible?) about returning to work in January.

*sigh*