We interviewed another child care possibility today. They’re a montessori school, they take infants as young as 6 weeks, and they’re 5 minutes from our house.
We liked them a lot. And they don’t have 47 people ahead of us on their waiting list. They actually don’t appear to keep a waiting list, per se.
The thing that makes them challenging for our planning purposes is that they only move kids from infant to toddler classes when they reach particular developmental milestones, and predicting when that will happen is an inexact science. The school estimates that it will happen when a baby is between 14-18 months old. And then, of course, they have to have room in the toddler class.
Parents have to re-up for the next school year in January, so at the very least, the school will have a better idea of June availablity before Smudge is born. Which is better than no timeline, but still stressful.
But wow, those kids were amazing.
Everyone looked purposeful and into whatever it was they were doing. In the infant room, that involved things like rolling over, looking in the mirror, and playing with your own toes.
The girl who was looking in the mirror was so much fun to watch. She’d lay on her side for a minute or so, staring intently at her reflection. Then when the effort became too much, she’d flop back onto her back and rest, one arm flung above her head. After maybe 2 minutes of rest, she’d roll back towards the mirror and look delighted to discover that her friend was still there.
But the older kids (3-6) looked that way too. Some kids were cleaning up, others were playing with blocks in graduated sizes, two little girls appeared to be comparing the size of their feet, and a little boy was carrying a tray of pencils from point A to point B. He looked incredibly urgent as he did it.
The cost is going to be a big bite into our income, but I think we can make it work. Hopefully Jill’s job will keep thinking that she’s a rock star, and I’ll get a nice raise at review time too.
And hopefully one of the little ones we saw today will hit all those nice developmental milestones right on our timeline — say the week that little bean is born and the time is right for me to go back to work.
We just this week finalized our childcare plans. When we planned this pregnancy, and up to the last few weeks of it, we figured that I would work from home and we would shift our schedules around and somehow make it work without professional help. But things change and now we need full time daycare. So after much soul searching and much net surfing and much reference trolling, we finally made the decision to put our not-quite-three-month-old (at the time) in a home daycare. The woman is a lesbian mother and is liscenced and has been doing this for 16 years. of course, we didn’t get to explain this to my mother when she asked, over a busy restaurant table last night what we were going to do and she promptly exclaimed : “But home day cares are where babies are shaken.” Thanks mom!
Oh, I forgot. Montessori schools are usually WONDERFUL!
my friend aimee had both her children in a montessori school when she lived in japan and she LOVED it. if you want to discuss it with her, i’d be happy to hook you two up by email.