Woohoo! My Luck May Have Changed!

As a last ditch effort, I started calling home daycares (aka family daycares) on the other side of town. I figured it would be worth the extra 5 or 10 minutes in driving to a) have Maggie get more one-on-one care and b) save money. I called 4 home daycares today. The first is full for at least the next year. The next one wouldn't have an opening until February 14th. The third never answered the phone. The fourth asked me the age of the child and what hours I would need care for. Then she asked if she could call me back. This was at 10:29AM. I waited and waited and waited, losing hope with every passing minute. At a little after 5PM, I heard back from her (which makes sense since her daycare is open until 5PM). She said she thought she could take her as long as a little bit of overlap was okay with me. Technically, home daycares are only supposed to have 2 infants for every licensed adult. She currently has a 1 year old and a 3 year old with Down's Syndrome that are there full time. Then she will have 1 or 2 kids that are before or after school and a 4 month old starting next month (the sibling of the child with Down's Syndrome) that will be there from 2:30PM on. Maggie would need to be at daycare from 8AM to 4:30PM Monday through Wednesday, 8AM to either 3:30PM if my Mom picks her up, or 5PM if Brian picks her up, on Thursdays, and 8AM to 1PM on Fridays. The woman also mentioned that she has 2 teenage daughters who are there in the afternoon and help out (my aunt ran a family daycare and also had extra help from her teenage daughter in the afternoons and summers). Considering the overlap is a negligable amount of time, and that there would still be less infants to adults than there would be at a daycare center, I have no problem with this. I will be meeting with her tomorrow morning. Here's hoping it goes well! The woman has been doing this for 13 years now and has an Associate's degree in Early Childhood Development, which is more credentials than most in the field here have. She also charges $4.25 an hour, which would equal out to about $50 less per week than the center we were supposed to send Maggie to. Plus, there's the potential of part-time care so that, if my aunt truly was serious about watching her on Mondays, we could do that and not have to worry about still paying full time charges.

Wish me luck!! I'm really hoping this goes well!!!!