I hadn't intended to post twice in a day, but a) the Red Sox are playing late in California and b) I was scanning through my previous posts and wanted to keep up to date with the news of our first year over here.
Everything was seemingly OK with the kids daycare, until 2 things happened. The first was that Sophie's main teacher made it clear to us that she felt she was struggling to make a relationship with Sophie. This became more apparent by her lack of enthusiasm when greeting Sophie in the morning, and when discussing her at pick up. Now Sophie can sometimes be picky about who she wants to be held by, especially when tired first thing in the morning, but she's a happy kid on the whole and has a thousand-watt smile that is hard to resist. This rang some alarm bells.
The second difficulty was a letter we received home, written in the owner's inimitably confusing style, which concluded with the brief statements that the centre would close at 5pm and that the fees (which we already felt were high) were to be increased by 5% in September. Given that we'd already had some trouble being late for 5.15, the early closure would mean even higher fees.
This meant that we were on the market for a new daycare. Whilst my parents were visiting, we drove through the town where my school is and we spotted a daycare literally on the other side of the road to my school. I investigated and found that it had spaces. It also felt much more like Jake's daycare back in Leeds, with plenty of kid artwork on the wall, small seats even in the infant section and lots of toys in the outdoor areas. The best part is that they feed her as part of the fees!
More tricky to organize was Jake. We're moving to a town with just under 4000 people, and one school that runs the gamut from K - 8, so daycare options there are limited. We were keen to have him start there, however, as this time next year he'll be starting kindergarten (given the spate of "first day at Reception" photos I've seen on Facebook, I feel quite relieved that he's got another year before formal schooling starts). Eventually we found an in-home care which also runs the before and after school care at Strafford school. Not only will Jake get good pre-k support, but he'll also start visiting school as part of this club in January, meaning that he'll already have an idea of where his kindergarten is and who will be in his class.
All of this has taken some time to organise, including who will drop off and pick up the kids on different days. However, the benefits include: Me leaving my classroom at 4.55 and cuddling Sophie at 5.00, no time limits on picking either kid up and no charges for not attending over the summer vacation. We should end up saving a bit of money in the short run, and even more when they turn 2 and 5 next summer. Going on vacation to Europe will suddenly save us $450 a week! Both kids seem to be enjoying the transition, and Sophie even gave her keyworker a cuddle this morning instead of screaming the house down. Watch this space for more developments in the future, but we think we've found a good system that works.
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