Childcare...Yikes!

I wanted to write about our experience in searching for childcare because it was quite humorous, and by humorous I mean downright scary!

We actually chose our childcare provider when I was pregnant with Braelyn, and thanks to God for looking out for us, they kept a spot for us this time around.  I am so thankful to have found them, and you'll see why as this story unravels.

I am such a planner, so I made Matt start looking at daycare people at about week 14 when I was pregnant with Brae.  I wanted to have everything lined up and ready to go by the time I had her, so I could enjoy my maternity leave and not have to leave the house in the wintertime with a newborn to go and start the search.    To start with, I asked all of my friends who have kids about their provider and if they liked them/if they had openings, etc.  NONE of them had any openings.  Must have been a popular time to have a baby...

So, I had to basically start from scratch.  It's a pretty daunting process when you have no idea where to even begin.  I found a few resources and began to make phone calls to ask if people had openings and to set up a time to interview them.  I struck out big time, but did manage to find a few names.  Let me break this story down to discuss each sitter we talked to and let's see if you can find the problems. :o)

Sitter #1

We arrive and she seems very friendly right off the bat and welcomes us into her home.  Her home was fairly clean (not my kind of clean, but I know not everyone has OCD like me), and I could see evidence of children being in her home which was a good sign.  We sit down on the couch and start talking.  She tells us that she is in her late 40's, is married and has an 18 year old son who is going to the local community college.  Then  as if we had known her for years, goes on to tell us that just that very day she had a pregnancy scare.  I swear, Matt and I could not look at each other the entire next two hours that we were there!  She goes into detail saying that she was taking a birth control shot and the manufacturer called her and told her it was a bad batch so she had to call her mom over to watch the kids that day so she could run up to her doctors office to see if she was pregnant.  WOW!  Not sure I needed to know that 5 minutes after meeting her, but ok.  At this point she asks Matt & I if we work at State Farm.  We both reply yes, and she goes on to bitterly tell us that she used to work there, that is until her boss told her she was too fat to work there anymore.  Hmmm...seems like maybe there was more to that story than we were let on to.   I went into this interview with a list of 3 pages of questions.  I could guarantee my baby was going to be very well taken care of!  Haha.  Then this lady proceeds to talk for 2 hours about her daycare without letting me ask half of my questions.  You ask why were we there for 2 hours?  We could barely get a word in edgewise to cut her off to leave.  And with this being the first interview we did, we had no idea how to handle it (if you continue to read my entry, you will see we get better and better at leaving quickly as the interviews progress).  She goes on to tell us about how she has a little Indian boy who comes and she told the parents that she does not cook curry.  She also tells us that before he is allowed to play with the other kids and sit in her house, she gives him a bath.  Does that scream red flag to anyone else??  After talking for 2 hours, I knew for sure we would not leave our child at this house (well I actually knew after about 5 minutes...).  But I decided to be nosey and have her show us around her house.  She took us back to her bedroom first and then showed us her 18 year old son's room.  I asked her where the babies took their naps, because I didn't notice any pack-n-play's or cots.  She said that mostly they just slept in her bed and her 18 year old son's bed.  Say what!?!  That just about put me over the top.  So nasty!  Then she took us into the "play room" and went to open the closet door to show us the toys and the huge door just fell right off the hinges.  She tried to play it off, but it's kind of noticeable when a woman is trying to push back up a 30 lb door and latch it.  She had no child safety locks on any cabinets either.  Go figure.  Then she took us downstairs to her basement where she said the kids spent a lot of their time.  When we were upstairs talking to her, her husband had come home and went straight to the basement.  Apparently he was locked in a room down there with a computer.  She went to show us the room, and knocked and waited for him to answer then knocked again.  Finally he said we could come in.  Wonder what scary man was doing in the basement with the computer with the door locked?  That was about all I could take.  I told her we were still on the hunt for the right sitter, so we would be in touch if we decided to use her, but also told her not to wait on us to call.  As we got in the car I was so scared we would never find someone worthy to watch our child.  I remember I looked at Matt and said "what if they are all like that?"  And I think I also mumbled that I wouldn't even leave Ritz there, and he's a dog.

Sitter #2

So this lady tells us to be at her house at 6 p.m. sharp.  She sounded like she meant business, so we arrived promptly at 6.  She answered the door and it smelled like she was cooking some hamburger upstairs.  She leads us to her living room and tells us to sit on the couch.  Then she goes back into the kitchen and we hear her banging around.  As she emerges she is mumbling loudly about how she was trying to cook dinner, but was interrupted.  Seriously?  Did she not tell us to come at 6?  It's not like we just randomly showed up!  That was one strike against her (with about 10 more to follow).  I did tell Matt that if this lady sucked I was not going to go through my whole list of questions...and that I would elbow him and that meant we were going to make a quick break as soon as we could.  Sounded like a good plan to me!  When we got to the house the TV was on and boy was it loud.  As the woman sat down, we expected her to reach for the remote to turn it off.  She reached for the remote, but she did not turn it off.  She turned it down two notches and continued to watch it while "talking" to us.  She asked if we had any questions.  I very quickly and slyly jabbed Matt's ribs with my elbow and said "yeah we have a few".  I asked about 5 questions and told her that was all I had.  She did okay with the answers, but I wasn't impressed.  She then informed us that her husband also watched the kids with her.  We found out he was a long haul trucker and in his "spare time" loved to play with the kids.  FREAKY!  He was on a long trip when we came to chat with her, so unfortunately (fortunately) we did not have to meet him.  When we could pull her away from her TV show, she decided to show us her basement where she kept the kids.  We went down there and there was a lot of kids stuff crammed into about 10 sq ft of space.  She then proceeded to tell us about how they just replaced their egress window. I was thinking ok that's good, the perform regular maintenance.  Then she kept going with that story and told us it was recently changed because her husband was (and I quote her) "too fat to fit through the old one".  That was when we thanked her for her time and decided to split.  As we got in the car we just laughed...and commended ourselves for the new record of getting in and out.  We were only there about 30 minutes total.  Hopefully that gave her enough time to run back up and finish cooking her hamburger helper.

Sitter #3

At this point I was becoming very skeptical about in home daycare for our kid.  I was thinking about telling Matt to just get a second job or selling our house so we could afford a daycare center.  I was not going to leave my child with these freaks.  We went into the meeting with sitter #3 with the same plan, a quick elbowing if we needed to make an exit.  However, as soon as we entered the house of this sitter something was different.  And different in a good way.  The house was very clean and definitely centered around all things kids.  The team of sitters consisted of a mom and her daughter.  The mom was probably a little older than my mom and the daughter just a little older than me.  They were so nice and welcoming.  They said they first wanted to show us around the place and then we could sit down and talk.  The entire basement of this house is finished to be a daycare.  There was a big room where all the kids could play and there were tons of toys.  Then there was a really nice big bathroom, a small kitchen with a table for the kids to eat at, an office, and last a nursery room with cribs for the babies to sleep in.  I kept looking at Matt like this is it!!  We sat down and talked with them and by the time they had finished telling me about their operation, there were only about 2 questions that I had come prepared to ask that I didn't have an answer to.  They did a great job of explaining their day to day schedule and told us a lot about who they are and why they do this.  We were there for about 2 hours and not once did I even think to elbow Matt.  As we left, I told Matt that we needed to go back in there and tell them we wanted to take the spot they had open.  I was terrified that someone else would take it before we did.  Matt said he really liked them too, but he thought we needed to look around a bit more.  He thought they were kind of far from our work, which is true.  But I tried to convince him that the drive was not what mattered.  Our kid would be safe and loved here.  We wouldn't have to spend one minute of one day worrying.  We did love them from the minute we walked in the door at their house.  I just knew that we would end up calling them back!

Sitter #4

Since Matt forced me to call another person, we ended up meeting sitter #4.  She lived very close to our work, so Matt told me that even though he knew I had fallen in love with sitter #3, to keep an open mind.  As soon as we pulled into the driveway at this lady's house, I told Matt to just turn around and go home.  I could tell right away this was not a place we would want to bring our kid.  The place looked like a dump and was not well cared for at all.  Matt said he couldn't turn around b/c she was watching us from her window and that would just be rude and obvious.  So we walked slowly up the sidewalk to meet this lady.  As we stood on the porch and she answered the door, I was already elbowing Matt hard in the side (several times).  I could tell immediately this was a no go!  I decided that I would make this the fastest visit yet.  We walk into her house and stand in the living room.  Matt asks her if we should sit down in the living room or the kitchen.  She says "doesn't matter".  So we sit at her kitchen table, mostly b/c I think it would have been weird had all three of us sat down on her couch next to each other.  Seating was limited.  Haha.  We started by asking her to tell us a little about herself.  She started to stutter big time and got really flustered.  She said something about how she had to go get her resume to do that because she didn't have any of it memorized.  Never realized that telling someone about yourself was so hard.  Once she had her resume, she quickly read everything to us, including providing details about her GED.  I mean good for her that she finished, but not sure that's what I wanted for my child to be around either.  I really shouldn't judge b/c I don't know why she had a GED.  Anyway, she asked if we had questions for her, and I think I asked about 3 and then said that was all I had.  Matt was cracking a smile the whole time because he knew I was skipping several questions at a time just to get out of there.  Then Matt asked her where the kids play because her living room was pretty empty.  She pointed to the living room and said "right there".  So the lady had no toys at all.  She then took us back to a bedroom to show us the crib that she had for the baby to sleep in.  Pretty sure it was recalled back in 1980...  At that point I knew I just had to get the heck out of there and call up sitter #3 and snatch up that spot because I was NOT going to talk to anyone else in this town about childcare.  To this day I do not know where these lies came from, but I think I was just trying to get out of there as fast as I could.  I started to tell her that I wasn't sure we would actually need a sitter b/c my mom might decide to watch the kid.  But we would call her if we needed a spot.  Then I told her not to hold a spot for us and if someone else wanted it then they could have it.   I think my lies came because I was trying to be polite, but also just get out.  Matt was cracking up when we left.  Right before we walked out the door she asked if we wanted a copy of her contract just in case we decided to call her back.  Again, being polite, I took one.  When we got in the car we laughed because we realized it had only been a 15 minute visit.  A new record for sure.  As Matt was driving back home, I started to read her contract.  Can you believe in the contract it explicitly said that she would not be responsible for providing breast milk to the baby.  Um, so many thoughts on that subject...  First, how would she be providing it seeing as she was not pregnant nor did she have children?  Second, why the He#@ would I want someone else to stick their boob in my baby's mouth?!  Third, that is just NASTY!  I need to quit here because I could go on about this forever.   We immediately called sitter #3 and reserved our spot.  Sitter #3 told us that she had held the spot for us b/c she knew some of the other people we would be talking to and just had a feeling we would be calling back shortly.

Baby Squirt:  I just want you to know that we went to a lot of trouble to find you the perfect sitter to spend your days with.  We endured some freakish moments but also got a few good laughs out of the experience too.  You will grow to love your sitters and they will grow to love you.  I think through Facebook they already have grown to be attached to you.  You are going to be one lucky little boy who probably gets held too much (if there is such a thing) and loved on by all of the other kids.  We feel so blessed that God put sitter #3 on my list to contact.  Since we know we have to go back to work and share you, we feel so lucky that you will be in good hands (and not drinking someone else's breast milk).

Hope you all got a laugh out of our experience.  If you had any funny stories about looking for a sitter I'd be interested to hear them.