Scratch that one off our list

I have to share our morning with you - we had an appointment at 10am to meet with a potential child care provider at her in-home daycare. We were optimistic but cautious - as we had never met this woman nor had we heard anything good or bad about her.

I found her on craigslist - and before you start judging or sharing opinions...craigslist is an excellent way to find community resources including child care - as long as you do your research, and are cautious - dealing only locally! In fact, several of our friends have found their in home child providers on craigslist - and they can't say enough about them.

So we took a chance and set up a time to meet with this woman. In her craigslist post, she said that she was a stay at home mom with a nine month old that was looking to supplement their income while doing what she loves - staying home with her child. She said that she had a flexible schedule and was willing to work with the family to make sure that your child was happy, healthy and safe. Sounds great - let's go meet her and see how her in home daycare stacks up.

So this morning when I was checking my emails before getting ready to go meet her, she sent me an email providing her address. It was an apartment complex. Not wanting to jump to conclusions - because there are several new, large, nice apartment complexes in Rio Rancho, I decided to keep an open mind. However, when we pulled up to the complex - my heart sank a little. Not that I was thinking this would be the one - there is no way we were going to get that lucky - but I am not even kidding when I say...this was hands down one of the worst apartment complexes I have ever seen. We found her building, parked and got out to find her apartment.

The second she opened the door - I knew this was not going to work. Every part of me wanted to run in the opposite direction - but trying to be nice, we walked in and looked around. The apartment was small, dark, dirty and in no way a place that I would want to raise one child, let alone call it a daycare. It smelled of smoke and cats - there were two cats just roaming around. Her daughter was sitting on the couch in only her diaper and her husband/boyfriend/baby daddy looked like he had not seen a shower or a clean shirt in a week. We sat down at the table to "chat" and I went through my list of questions. I made it through four before I couldn't even force myself to keep going. Mike just sat to the side, not even knowing what to say.

While I am sure these people are very nice - they seriously looked like meth heads and this was their way of getting money to support their habit. Things like this came out of her mouth...

• What sort of time frame do you need if we decide that our daughter won't be at daycare that day - "well if you don't drop her off by the time you say you will, we will just assume she is not coming - so no notice"
• what sort of things do you do during the day - "don't worry - if the baby cries, we pick them up, we don't just let them cry"
• "dude (looking at her husband/boyfriend/baby daddy) you left the lighter on the floor"
• "we smoke - but don't worry, we don't smoke in the house, we go outside"

I could keep going - but at this point in time - I was done. We thanked her, told her that we were looking at all sorts of possibilities and that we would be in touch.

So we crossed this particular daycare off our list and we keep trucking along. Hands down one of the most stressful parts of preparing for Lainey's arrival.

We will keep you posted on our future meetings - hopefully the next ones go slightly better!