Affordable Day Care Is Hard To Find

today, between studying for comps, running HPLC, and being a bum playing solitaire, i made about a million phone calls to day care centers around town. we've decided to try and do day care for only three days a week, since i should be nearly finished with my lab work by the time we need it, and i will only have to do my 20 hours a week at the sea lab. i can do my data analysis/dissertation writing from home. plus, chad's mom can pop over for an extra day a week if we need her to.

sounds good, right? so what's the problem? well, the vast majority of day care centers do not offer part time day care for babies. once they turn 2, you're golden. but before then, options are woefully scarce, and the waiting lists are LOOONG. of the 20 or 30 day care centers i've called exactly three of them offer part time day care for babies. one of them costs more for part time care than many other centers charge for full time infant care, so that's out (because we're not rich, yo, and we can't afford $129 a week for 3 days of day care), one sounded kind of shady (the woman who answered the phone acted like she had no idea what was going on, and there were tons of screaming children in the background) and they don't have any openings and don't know when they will have one, and the last one sounds great but doesn't have a spot until may.

this afternoon i toured the last day care center and went ahead and paid the registration fee to hold the open spot in may. the day care teachers seem competent and caring, the price is affordable ($75 per week for 3 days, $100 per week for 5 days), they work with your child's schedule instead of trying to force all the kids to eat and nap at the same time, and it isn't as far out of our way as many of the others (though there are at least three day care centers closer to our house, one of which is the extremely expensive one). so our kid will have day care guaranteed for the first week of may, but what we'll do before then i have no idea. chad's mom can probably come over a couple of days a week, or we will have to put the baby in a full time day care somewhere else for 4-6 weeks. or maybe a spot will open up at our day care sooner than may. the girl at the front desk said they may have a spot coming open in march, but there are no guarantees about that. she said she'll call if we can get in earlier. i'm keeping my fingers crossed.