Daycare Search

Parenting is already stressful, and Edison is not born yet.  About a month ago, JR and I went on our daycare search for Edison.  Let's do the math.  About a month ago I was 6 months pregnant.  Which means,  there were 4 months left before Edison would be born and another 2 months before he actually starts daycare.  Why are we looking so early???  This is the norm apparently.  The daycare that we  actually decided on has a wait list and no available spots until February!  So looking 6 months ahead actually wasn't even early enough.  Therefore, the earlier the better :)

Every parent wants the best care for their child, but we also have to remember that every parent has to also pay for that childcare.  So let's amend the earlier sentence to  every parent wants the best affordable care for their child.

JR and I began with setting a parameter on how far we would go for a daycare.  Within the parameter we set, there are about 15 daycares.   So I started to research each one, and narrowed down the list to 8 daycares.  To be honest, the first thing i looked for at each daycare was the price.  Of course, none of the websites have prices!

The next day, we set out to see all 8 daycares.  I had questions and a notebook ready to critique each and every day care.  Of the 8 daycares we drove past 2 and decided to not go in purely based on the look of the building and the play ground.  JR and I didn't even have to discuss it.  We would just look at the building as were driving up, and then look at each other and keep going.

One daycare that we went in to looked decent on the outside, but was extremely sketchy on the inside.  I think we could have turned around and walked right out, if no one had seen us walk in. We took a tour and ended in the infant room.  It was nap time , therefore the lights were off.  One of the teachers was standing between two rooms with a baby in her arms and one in a rocker.  She was feeding the one in her arms and vigorously rocking the one on the floor with her foot.  She actually scared us! As a teacher, I naturally asked about a curriculum.  The response was "We do not have a curriculum for babies.  They just eat and sleep"  This sealed the deal that this was not the right place for Edison...well the deal was sealed with the scary teacher, the lack of lights, the smell of dirty diapers and lots of other things.

After daycare hunting for about 3 hours, we grabbed lunch and headed home to make a decision.  We decided on the same daycare that my niece and nephew attend.  They provide a great curriculum, lots of experienced teachers, diversity, safety, and many other things, including a discount for educators :)

The winner is The Goddard School for Early Childhood Development :)

Thanks for reading,
<3 Jenn

Trimester 2: 17-27 weeks

Hey Friends and Family! It's been a while. There is so much to catch you up on. This entry will be about the BIG ultrasound and other trimester 2 (T2) shenanigans. On the last entry, I spoke about how T2 hadn't been as amazing and enjoyable as everyone said it was going to be. Well, I eventually made it to that honeymoon place. I stopped getting nauseous, rode in cars with ease and stopped wanting to nap every 2 hours. I was back to my old self and moving around with quite a lot of ease. This was great for me, especially with the school year coming to an end. For my non-teacher friends and family, you may think that the end of the school year is a breeze, but it is far from it. I was moving around constantly, packing my room, going on service and field trips, prepping my AP students for their big test, and getting things done around the house. I also finally regained my appetite and then some. This is when I started to eat everything in site. I was always hungry and always snacking. I kept a snack drawer at work and ate constantly during class. I would eat lunch and then leave during my conference periods to get more food. I tried to stay a little bit healthy :) My love was and still is DQ Blizzards. I did learn that I had an aversion to white mushrooms and olives. It was during this trimester that we had our first check everything ultrasound. We had an appointment at 7 in the morning but needed to be there 30 min early. I was told to come with a full bladder and not eat anything past midnight. I woke up and started drinking water. I was so nervous that I didn't drink enough that when we arrived at the hospital, I drank another 2 cups. Well, the joke was on me, because I didn't get in to the ultrasound room until 8 am. By then, my bladder was about to explode. I had to keep my bladder full for the first part of the ultrasound. The ultrasound is more then just checking the gender of the baby. It is to check to see if everything is developing correctly. A tech conducts the ultrasound. She took a lot of pictures and measurements of everything from limbs to organs. The whole time JR and I are just watching the monitor and hoping everything is alright. About an hour later, she leaves the room with the results and comes back in 15 min later to tell us we were done. We were still worried. The tech couldn't really tell us anything. We had to wait for the results to get sent to my OB and then wait for my OB to call us. I can't really describe the feeling. Worry doesn't really describe the knot in my stomach that had formed with the anticipation of knowing whether or not my baby was developing healthily. We were super excited when the tech showed us BR is a boy. He was not shy at all when it came to letting us see his boy parts... After the ultrasound we went to update our registry with boy specific things. We needed to take our minds off of the ultrasound. JR was super excited about the boy factor, and was bouncing off the walls in Target and Babies-R-Us. I had to kind of scold him to get him to focus...may not have been my proudest moment as a wife :/ In the end, everything was fine. The results showed that he was growing nicely and actually ahead of schedule. This did not surprise us at all. JR was almost 10 lbs as a new born....and i have a slight fear that Edison is going to follow in his father's footsteps. Next up: Day Care search <3 Jenn