adventures in babysitting, part deux

we last left this with us thinking we couldn't afford day care at all. i had called all the daycares in the yellow pages with no luck. but we also can't afford for me to not work. not even close. so pretty much we thought we were screwed. but then... we had a yard sale a couple of weekends ago (partially because we're trying to fit 2000+ square feet of stuff into a 1400 square foot house and partly because we need to pinch/make every penny we can to be able to keep afloat until the richmond house finally sells.) as far as yard sales go, it was pretty crappy. we had an early rush but just lookers, not a lot of buying. our richmond yard sales always went very well - people seemed to really like our stuff and wanted to buy it. not so much out here in the country. we pretty much could tell if people were going to buy anything by looking to see if they were wearing flannel. flannel-yes = no sale, flannel-no = potential sale. i overheard several times, "oh it's from ikea, no wonder it's so nice." now i love ikea but it isn't exactly the nicest stuff in the world, just nice enough for the price. but any how, i digress... this lady and her husband stopped by because they saw from the road that there was a bookcase for sale (an ikea billy, actually.) she mentioned that she runs a day care and is always looking for sturdy bookcases. our billy didn't work for what she needs because she needs permanently affixed shelves, but we got to talking about her daycare. she explained about how all day cares in massachusetts need to be licensed by the state and that there is a website where you can search for all licensed providers in a particular town. she even had openings at hers. unfortunately her location doesn't really work for us. but it opened up a whole new avenue to explore - home-based daycares. woo hoo. i played with the website a bit, but it doesn't really give much more info than the names and addresses of people with licenses. i didn't really feel comfortable just calling these people because they are listed with just their names. i have no problem calling mary's family daycare but worried about calling just mary. i was about to suck it up and just call people when i had an epiphany. craigslist. heck. i stalk craigslist for baby stuff, like 3-4 times a day. i went right to the site and saw the childcare link i had never noticed before. there were a lot of sketchy type postings - random peeps who stay at home and want to make some easy cash by watching your kid too. but a few were for legit home-based daycares that are licensed by the state. i emailed a few of them to find out if they had availability and to find out their prices. one in particular sounded perfect. it is about halfway between home and work which is awesome. if we went with something close to home, i wouldn't get into the office until after 9 and would have to leave at like 3:30 in order to make their hours. if we went with something close to my office, jeremy wouldn't be able to pick the boy up early on the days he gets out of the hospital during daylight hours. so halfway is perfect. she also has exactly one infant spot available. and she only charges $35 a day (about $700/month.) SOOO much better than $1900 a month! i went to check it out today and really liked it. she never has more than 5 kids at a time and quentin would be her only infant. her policies are all very reasonable (i.e. she doesn't charge you for the days she's on vacation - couldn't believe that some of them do!) so i think we're going to go with her. now i just need a job to go to to justify bringing the boy to daycare! also, on the way home from the daycare visit i spotted a free diaper champ alongside the road. (an aside - i don't know if people do this everywhere and i just never noticed or if it's unique to this area, but people here love to put stuff they don't want out in front of their houses so that passersby can take it.) i've been stalking craigslist and freecycle for a second diaper champ so that we could have one on each floor of the house. the ones on craigslist are always too far away to justify or too expensive for a used poopy diaper holder. but free. that's my style. a little bit of bleach and that bad boy will rock. it will pretty much complete our first floor "nursery" - i.e. his pack n' play which serves as both crib and changing table. good day! now to find a job. and sell the stupid richmond house.