Wanted: One Good Day Care Center (Preferably Near Campus)

For the last two evenings, I've been camped in front of the tv with my feet up on the coffee table and the laptop on my lap, searching for day care centers.  The good news is that there are plenty of options--the bad news is that it's a little overwhelming to try to narrow them all down. 

My husband and I work in different towns, and live in between the two.  We could look for someone near our home, but I think I'll have the most options bringing our Baby Girl in to town with me (not to mention that my commute is shorter, and he shares rides with three other guys...which could be weird for everyone involved).  I have about four different routes that I could take to come into work--one which is clearly the most convenient (and fastest)--but again...options can be overwhelming.

So my husband came into town today for our appointment (more on that tomorrow--he's working on homework on the computer with the scanner at the moment), and then we spent the next two hours driving around town, plugging in three pages of day care options into our GPS.  Being the data-driven guy that he is, he asked if we could grade them on a scale of 1-10.  Sounds pretty normal, right?  Well, he tended to score each site as a 6...which kind of defeats the purpose of having a scale in the first place.

We got halfway through our list (based on the two easier commutes), and found one location that he scored as an 8 from our drive-by.  Apparently that was enough for him to want to return, and stop in to check out the facilities.  It was the one and only location in which we actually went inside (so far), but we were mostly pleased with the services (he--being the computer nerd that he is--was especially impressed that they have live video internet feeds so that you can watch the infant room).  We timed the drive back to my office, and it was only about a five minute drive (unfortunately, the location is beyond my work, rather than en route).  However, this five minute reference was at 6:30 pm during the summer...whereas I'll be dropping her off closer to 7:15 am and picking her up around 4:45 pm...and I'll have to battle not only the college students who live along that corridor, but the most direct route takes me past a high school as well.  So what was five minute today, could easily be fifteen minutes during the academic year.  They also give a 10% discount since I work at the University, which would be nice.

I don't know--we'll see if anything else looks to be any better.  But it's nice to not only have options--but to also feel comfortable (so far) with at least one (so far).  Any thoughts or suggestions as we look for a day care facility?  After she arrives, I don't plan to go back to work until January, so we've got plenty of time (and we can hold a space for her at this location with a $25 deposit--which seems reasonable). 

Today's blessing is one of my colleagues who is so willing to help out on various projects.  We discovered yesterday that one of our online projects just disappeared--and the IT department apologizes profusely, but they don't know what happened to it either.  So now I have to "reinvent the wheel", which will be a rather tedious process.  But we're blessed to have discovered it now when things are a bit slower in the summer, and we're blessed to have this colleague as part of our office.