I think this is the one! The deal is she is a young, single woman (age 24) who has worked in daycare her whole adult life (and even as a kid) and loves it, but doesn't love the daycare center environment so she decided to start her own home daycare. She is currently employed at a center, has a little house about a half a mile away from ours, and she's completing her schoolwork expecting to receive her license in March so she's trying to enroll kids now for this spring.
In contrast to Sue, everything about Judy gave me good gut feelings. She is very sweet, earnest, a little nerdy (I mean that in a good way), but also seems very professional and really sounds like she knows what she's doing. I actually learned some valuable information from her, which is that legally a daycare provider can only have a 1:4 ratio for infants, which means Sue with her 6 babies plus a preschooler plus adding 2 more infants is WAY out of line, despite being licensed (crazy!). Judy's kind of the best of both worlds in that she is intimately familiar with all the rules and regulations of a professional daycare center but is offering more personal care in her home.
Her plans is/was to stick with one age group at a time so she can more easily coordinate activities for them by herself. She would choose whichever group happened to enroll, but she said she did prefer to start with infants, so she would be happy if that's how things ended up. She wants to get four kids enrolled, but could financially manage with only three. She said she was okay with my part-time flexible schedule as long as we could still give her certain paid holidays and one paid vacation week per year. Mr. Ibis is concerned that she's going to have second thoughts about us because of the unpredictability of my work, so we are going to offer her a two-day minimum and pay her for two days on the weeks that I don't work at all (this is what Sue suggested and seems fair to us).
Other highlights:
- She has plans to do activities with the kids. Initially I was not looking for "educational" child care, but I definitely prefer activities over just sitting around and watching TV. She'd like to teach a little baby sign language, take little field trips, etc., and what was cool about it was that she sounded so excited to do those things. She said she would only turn the TV on to occupy the kids when she's preparing a lunch, and would follow the 1 hour per day rule of her center.
- I asked about bringing in breast milk and mentioned my weird experience with the anti-breastfeeding Sue. Judy said, "Oh no, if anything I might be a little anti-formula, I mean if you can manage... nursing is just so much better for their immune systems and everything else." Yay!
- Her enthusiasm in general was great. People who work in child care always say they "just love kids," but I really believed that this is a passion for her. She seems so excited to be venturing out on her own making a dream come true for herself. As a woman who started my own business at about the same age, it makes me happy to help someone else get started in this way.
- Again, the fact that she has been working in centers for years is a plus. Leaving my baby with a stranger, alone in her home, is a little nervewracking. But I know that to work with children in a professional setting you have to pass background checks, and she told me where she works now, so I can check that reference and feel a little safer with her.
- She's affordable. For us, any daycare is financially taxing, but I know there is absolutely no way we will be able to beat $125/week and $25/day! That is crazy reasonable.
- Location. I love that it's so close to our house. We could even walk to and from daycare when the weather allows.
Mr. Ibis and I were so pumped about it last night, but then we had to stay quiet about it all night because we went to have belated Christmas dinner with his family and we didn't want to talk about daycare in front of his mom yet. I'm so excited about this girl that now I'm afraid it's going to fall through somehow. Mr. I is worried she's going to have second thoughts after I sprung the whole flex time schedule on her. I'm going to call her this morning as soon as is decent and make our proposal for the two day minimum, and try to put down a deposit. YAY!!
1 comment:
That is such great news for you guys! I might have to hit you up for her info as August/September will be creeping up in no time. She sounds so great, I hope it'll be the perfect fit for you.
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