No More Daycare Drama

It's been busy the past few weeks. I had a great first Mother's Day. Andy made me breakfast in bed and had Quinn all morning so I was able to get ready without interruptions. My mom and I got manicures and pedicures while the rest of the fam prepared a BBQ. It was a beautiful day too.

Last Sunday we had the American Cancer Society Walk and Roll in Chicago. Andy's three year mark will be this August. He posed for a cancer survivor picture so I will let you know if it appears on the website. We lucked out with good weather and had fun picnicking with family and friends afterwards. It took a lot more planning with Quinn around but she did great and slept most of the time.

Team CANcervive. Andy is in the yellow survivor t-shirt.

Hanging out with daddy at the walk. I had a team t-shirt too.

Some of you may know that the person we were counting on to babysit Quinn in the fall backed out a few weeks ago. Lovely, just lovely... I have been researching home daycares since that time and we finally found one this week. We are so relieved to have found one. It is about ten minutes from our house and has two providers. One was the director at a daycare center and the other was the lead teacher in the infant room at the same center. Since they have that background, the home is structured like a center, they have a contract, are licensed, have an open door policy, and have elementary/early childhood educations too. The few others we went to did not even compare. This one is bright, the kids are happy and clean, and the providers seem so down to earth, and normal. Our worst experience involved a man verbally abusing a four year old, a random thin woman appearing to be high, filthy children, excessive amounts of tattoos, filthy home smelling of cat urine and stains all over the carpet and couches. The provider made comments of stress because she was getting a divorce, her car being repossessed and a dog leaving the home because the police were called and she said they didn't care for it the way they should. Yes, this was all experienced at one of the daycares we looked at and thank God it wasn't the first we saw. What boggles my mind is that she shared so much negative information and did not prepare her home at all for our visit. Did she actually think we would choose her? We didn't take Quinn out of her carrier the whole time and apologized to her later for exposing her to that environment. When we got in the car to leave the home Andy turned to me with a straight face and asked if she would be kept in the running. I died laughing. Definitely a memory we would like to forget.