License to Care By Day

PG, as you might expect, has had a new daycare provider since we moved across town in November. We've liked her (the daycare provider - although we do find PG to be pretty nifty too.) She's responded to our requests for adjustments in care - more lunch, earlier naps, e-mailing us daily updates, that sort of thing - and she makes an effort to teach our kid. She's a bit odd to chat with, in that she never gets particularly animated about anything, but the care has been good, and so has the weekly cost.

Shame it all has to end.

The Monday before last I arrived to pick up PG and was told that 1) there was a 13-year-old foster kid from Georgia in the house now, and 2) when she called daycare administration to let them know, they informed her that she couldn't be licensed for both daycare and for foster care. So she relinquished her daycare license and was going to continue on as an unlicensed daycare provider. Amazingly, she saw no problem with this, since she planned on following the state guidelines anyway. Even more amazingly, we were the only parents who had a problem with this.

Besides the elimination of oversight from the state, our other concern was that M's work reimburses her, partially, for daycare costs. We were worried that a lack of tax ID number for the daycare would mean no more reimbursements. The good news: we could still get reimbursed so long as we provided the daycare lady's Social Security number. The bad news: she wasn't comfortable giving that out to people who had entrusted the care of their child to her. The combination of losing the reimbursement and the extra shadiness of not wanting to give out her SS# pretty much decided it for us. Time to find a new daycare.

But not necessarily right away. PG is just a couple months away from turning 2, an apparently magic age that causes more doors to open, daycare-wise. Not quite the magic of turning 18 and suddenly allowed to vote or get shot at professionally, or turning 21 and no longer having to worry about getting in trouble with the law for drinking a beer (or, in PG's case, finally getting the opportunity to try beer for the first time,) but it's something. So we figured we'd gut it out until April and then find somebody.

Child care administration had a different idea, however. I'm a bit hazy on why they were cool with our daycare being unlicensed one week and then deciding to shut her down the next, but that's what happened. I was informed on Monday that she had to shut down. My immediate thought was "Oh good, things are winding down and I won't feel bad about essentially firing her (even though she knows we're leaving her and why,) because admin has done that for me!" But when she told me that it was effective immediately but that she could probably get away with keeping PG on until Friday, a deadline much sooner than I was anticipating, my thoughts took a more panicky turn. I took home some of the things that we were keeping there, just in case.

Happily, we had a backup plan. PG's old daycare had heard about our unlicensed problems from a mutual friend and had already offered to take PG back while we looked for somebody else on our side of town. M had already declined the offer, but circumstances being what they had become, we're now taking her up on it, figuring that we know and trust her, and PG has friends there. So, starting next Tuesday (daycares far and wide are closed on Monday for Presidents' Day,) I'll be taking the 40-minute round-trip twice a day to drop off and pick up PG. Looks like I'll finally get to use my EZ-Pass at the tunnel tollbooth!

In the meantime, we'll be interviewing new daycares and have already lined up three or four interviews over the next week or so. PG's spot at her old daycare is all hers until at least August, so I think we have the luxury of being choosy. The daily commute might motivate us not to drag our heels too much, though. A traffic-free hour-long-commute to Hagerstown is one thing. A dragging commute through the Ft. McHenry Tunnel could be another thing entirely.


(No song reference this time. The song references have become a "whenever something that works comes to mind" kinda thing. You can look at this title as a James Bond reference, however, particularly because that's how it was meant to be looked at.)

He Wrote The Music! He Wrote The Words!

You all have probably already seen this on my Facebook page, but far be it for me to not spread the wealth.



Interestingly, one of the Related Videos on this video's YouTube page was "President Obama Addresses Economic Recovery House Meetings." Elmo and Economic Recovery - like peanut butter and jelly.