Day care

Ever since I found out I was pregnant, the thought of sending my child off full-time as a baby has just tied my stomach in knots. I never had to send Vinny off anywhere full-time until he was 18 months. I have always been a working mom, but I just got lucky. Now, I have a great career that I love and feel is my life calling, and incidentally, absolutely need to keep being able to pay for our house, so Tiana will definitely need to be somewhere during the day.

I didn't know what to do. Ideally, a well-qualified loving nanny to spend all day with her would be great, but I will never be able to afford that. A licensed day care center with a quality infant program seems like the next best option, but I hadn't found one I liked. They are so scheduled and so sterile.

Today I checked out the local Montessori school where there is an infant program. I think it is perfect. Well...the next best thing to her getting to be at home. It is a very cozy atmosphere. Each baby has their own crib and even their own baby swing. There are high chairs and exersaucers to be shared. In the 30 minutes I was there, I saw lots of individual attention. Babies being fed individually, babies napping when they felt like it, getting changed because they needed to be, etc. They have great tummy time mats and each baby has his/her own comfy blanket from home to lay on. When they start attempting to walk and pulling up on stuff, they go up to the toddler side where there are lots of push toys and good stuff.

I felt very comfortable with all the workers too. I really felt like I instantly connected to the owner.  She's this beautiful young Indian woman, and most of the other employees are Indian too, but they don't have an accent at all. I am not saying this to be racist, but because it is important to me that they speak very clear English, since my daughter will be in her most formational stages of learning the language and that it is easy for me to understand my child's teacher if she is trying to tell me something. At one of the schools where Vinny went before, I had a hard time understanding his teacher and barely ever knew what she was trying to tell me.

Best of all, it is several hundred dollars cheaper than I thought I was going to need to pay for quality child care.

They are even willing to use the cloth diapers. Smile. Everything is going to work out okay.