Luckily we're all set to start the new daycare tomorrow, and Char had fun playing at a friend's house today (gave her a run for her money, though!). So, yay for that. But I realized that, in general, child care has not been easy since day 1.
Day 1: Phone call from DCS offering us placement of 2 day old baby girl (now known as Charlotte). Problem: We both work full-time and babies aren't eligible for daycare until 6 weeks. I called several friends who are SAHM's and was about to give up, when DCS called back to say that they had a foster family who would watch Char until she was 6 weeks old.
4 weeks: Find a daycare that has space for a newborn, and they tell me I'm on the waiting list.
6 weeks: Discover that the daycare filled our spot. Frantically look for another daycare that takes the state certificate (req'd for foster families) with space for newborn, because the foster family she stayed with was going to have to stop watching her due to not having space for a carseat in their van and needing to drop their teenage daughter at band camp every day. Find a daycare, yay!
Ongoing through first year: Char's reflux caused a lot of issues with the daycare. She wouldn't eat, they didn't know how to get her to eat, she reverse-cycled and ate most of her daily formula intake at night, meaning we didn't sleep, daycare was stressed, etc. Also, in watching some of the other classrooms playing outside when doing pickups/dropoffs, I noticed that most of the teachers sat and chatted while the kids played, and essentially ignored the kids. When they did need to intervene, they shouted to/at the kids. Such as "Johnny, Kim wants to swing and you're in her way. MOVE!" rather than walking over to the children and gently guiding their behavior. Not that they were "abusing" the kids by any means, but they were not doing the kind of positive discipline I prefer, so I knew I didn't want her there past the nursery.
13 months: Found a Montessori school in my neighborhood that I really liked.
16 months: Charlotte started biting and was asked to leave the Montessori school with NO notice. DH went to drop her off at school one day and was sent home and told not to return. MIL drove 3 hours to keep Charlotte for the week while we found a nanny.
16 months: Nanny was found. She did a good job keeping Char, but became really unreliable in terms of call-offs from work, being late, etc.
27 months: Fired nanny with no notice due to ongoing lies and inability to do the job. Spent the week looking for places to send her daily and ongoing. Found a daycare where she will start.
30 months (3 months into the future): Start a different preschool.
Now, does 7 child care centers in 30 months not seem like a lot for one child? Poor kiddo! I hate it for her and feel some guilt about it, though I'm not sure what I could/would have done differently.
In funny news, I put Char to bed wearing play clothes tonight so that DH doesn't have to dress her in the morning. Dressing her seems to take FOREVER on any given day.
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