Trackrick's Self-Indulgent Ramblings: A Belated Mother's Day Message and a Few Updates

Here's a fun fact. There are four nations in the entire world that do not offer some sort of paid leave to new mothers. They are Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, Liberia and the good ol' USofA.

Here's a Mother's Day card, addressing that general topic. Just click "Start" to see it.

Just thought I'd share.

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On a slightly related note, we have finally secured day care for PrettyGirl when M goes back to work in early July (a few weeks after the vacation pay and disability pay have dried up.) I thought I had been giving updates on all this, but a review of my past few month's posts show nothing. So here's how things went down...

Back in January, we started looking, and, after going though listings and doing drive-bys (and being unimpressed, for the most part,) we happened upon a home-based daycare right in our neighborhood, a couple of blocks from our house. We met with her and were blown away. She was everything we were looking for, plus a little more. She doesn't just watch the kids, she teaches them too! And, best of all, a client was moving out of state with their infant twins in July, meaning there was an infant spot available for us!

So we called her references, who gave glowing reviews, and decided that this was definitely the person we wanted watching our baby. So we called her up... and found out that the twins weren't moving after all. There was still a chance that someone else might be moving on, since there were some kids on the verge of being pre-school age, so we held on to that little hope, but it was pretty slim.

It was probably that hope that made us drag our heels a bit when going back the daycare search. That, and the fact that we had so much else to take care of before the baby was born. We called our neighbor daycare lady from time to time, to check for openings, to keep ourselves on her radar and finally to get phone numbers for other providers she knew.

And so, it was last Friday, and we still didn't have any daycare lined up for July. I took the day off work because PG was making it difficult for M to juggle her and calling daycares at the same time. M started off by calling our neighbor lady and leaving a message to get back to her with those phone numbers. Then, she called someone on the list she had gotten, and, miracles of miracles, she actually had infant availability for July!

We were talking about how promising that was, when the neighbor lady called, not to give us numbers to other providers, but to let us know that the mom who had been hinting at moving her daughter on to pre-school had finally made up her mind to do just that. That kid's last day: June 25. Even though a lot of people had called her over the months (over the past week, even) to inquire about daycare, she had kept us at the top of the list, and the open spot was ours to take. We took it. You better gorram believe it.

The lady who was moving her kid to pre-school was informed that afternoon, when she came for pick-up, that her spot was filled and there was no turning back, and by 7:00 Friday night, the contracts were signed and we had ourselves at daycare provider!!!

We're really happy now. Now all we have to do is figure out how we're going to pay for it!

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PG is starting to show signs of acknowledging my existence. For the first few weeks, she seemed to consider me as just that voice she hears in her head sometimes. But last night, she looked at me while I was talking. It was very nice of her! I also think she might be using her arms for actual tasks. I know it's way too early for that, but I could swear that she's using her hands to push the pacifier away when I try to stick it in her mouth while she's trying to convince us that she wants to feed for the 345th time that hour.

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I added a picture to the most recent album...