Regime Change

We finally found a new daycare. First I was looking into preschools for Kirk but they were all ridiculously expensive if you needed all-day coverage. Then I was looking into centers that had preschool programs as well as infant care but they were all ridiculously expensive. So then I started going through in-home daycares and found that infant openings were rare and precious commodities. We interviewed a lady a couple of weeks ago and really liked her but wanted to do due diligence and check out some other places as well. But our car broke down and we couldn't make it to the next appointment I had set up.

I decided it must be fate. First of all, this new woman is walking distance from us. That's...miraculous actually. And she had given me a phone list of her kids' parents and the ones I spoke to gave her unbelievably glowing reviews. And I was completely and utterly paranoid that we'd loose out on the infant spot if we didn't just jump on it. So Kirk and Ronnie will be starting when I go back to work.

Which means that I gave two weeks notice to K on Monday. I'm going to keep Kirk at home with me and the Bundle my last two weeks of leave. We'll save a little bit of money and it'll give him a more defined transition period. I've been mentioning to him that when his sister is big enough to get to go to daycare he'll get to go with her. And he attended the interview at C's house with us so he got to play with the toys and meet her and seems cool with it all. I know he'll miss his little friends but we can always have play dates.

The thing that I found troubling was that K did not seem in the least bit surprised when I called her to give notice. Granted, it's probably common sense that we wouldn't want to do dual drop-off in the mornings and that we'd want Kirk to be with his sister. But that implies that she would have known that when she gave away our infant spot. She didn't tell either Mr. b or I that we were in competition. That she was interviewing another family. She just announced to me, via email, while I was pregnant that oh, by the way, she won't be able to take the new baby. And that hasn't sat well with me all this time.

Friends and co-workers have been rather vociferous on the subject. But I honestly have only the best things to say about the care that Kirk has been given during his couple of years with her. Yet there have been some other professionalism issues that have come up, all having to do with scheduling. Largely they were the result of miscommunication but it was frequent enough that we actually had to have words about it. And I think that since that point we have been passive aggressively pushed out. Even Mr. b agrees with me on that theory, and he is notoriously unaware of subtext. It's sad and I don't understand why we got that treatment but there it is. So now we'll get to start all over. I'm just glad to have the frantic search completed. I feel really positive about the new place.