Day care!

Leaving Cradle Club was one of the hardest parts about moving, so I knew finding a new daycare that was similar would be though and it turns out I should have started hunting much sooner.  Keith started searching when he first moved back, then we slowed down on the hunt and are now left with only a few options. 

Our biggest issue would be that Keith and I work in opposite directions, so the ideal solution would be to keep them in Baxter.  Then they wouldn't have to spend an hour+ on the road every day.  I checked with a few homes and everyone is full, we looked at the center in town and decided against it for right now. 

So then we thought we would take them to Bondurant because they have a daycare that Keith really liked, which was right on my way to work. They have about 5 kids on the wait list.  So we landed to taking them to Ankeny.  The good is, if needed both of us can get there quickly from work, the bad, it will add an extra 30ish minutes to our 30-45 minute commutes.  So one of us will drop and one will pick up.  Here is where we landed with day cares (if any of you know much about these places, please shoot me an email) and we did just do tours and mostly based our decisions on instinct and how comfortable we felt with the staff at the places, so I'm sure we missed out on many pros/cons on these places in our short search:

La Petite - Keith toured and said no

Apple Tree - we had a couple really good referrals, but too pricy

Tender Years - they have several locations, all the Ankeny ones were full except the location right by 35 and it was OK, but we didn't love it and received a couple negative word of mouth comments from people.  I do want to check out a few of their other facilities.

The Tree House - we still need to tour this and I have heard great things, but they said the boys probably couldn't get in until March 2012 - WOW! 

Little Endeavors - we got great recommendations here and toured it as well today.  We are 12th on the list, so the boys may make it to kindergarten before we get in. 

So we landed at a place called ChildTime.  They don't take infants, so that is a negative for when that time comes.  We took the boys there for a few hours today to start adjusting.  It sure was really hard for me to leave them, they have really gotten comfortable with me being home with them and in Minnesota they have been at the same place since they were babies, so it wasn't really like I left them with a bunch of strangers.  They said they did pretty well, but when we walked back in, Carter grabbed my hand and went straight to the door.  They must be tired though, they have been taking a long nap today. I hope they like it there and depending on where we end up living we may change, especially if we end up in Polk City. 

There are a couple other places that I will check out as well.  I'm looking forward to going back to work, but am dreading having them back at daycare full-time.  I know I am going to really miss being with them.  

Also, I should note, on our quick search we didn't even dig into homes, so I am sure there are a lot of great ones out there that we didn't explore.