Daycare Woes

I thought we had this pretty much in the bag. Turns out I was wrong.

Months ago we talked to this nice lady who does home daycare. She comes highly recommended and we were comfortable with her. The only hitch was that she wasn't sure if she would have room for him, but she was pretty sure she would. If not, her daughter also does daycare and she lives around the corner from us. She isn't even close to being full so it sounds like if one doesn't have room, the other probably will.

Today I went on a little quest, trying to find out about other daycare options as far as centers go. The FAA has an awesome, 3 star, NAEYC accredited daycare but we'd pretty much ruled it out based on cost. But I found out that there is a subsidy program so I started looking into that, and trying to figure out if we could get some help through Darrell's new position at Tinker. No dice on the FAA daycare, and Tinker only offers a subsidy program for the daycares on the base. They look awesome (also 3 star, NAEYC) and would be affordable, but it wouldn't work right until Darrell gets out of school. He could take Ethan to the center, but I'd have to drive 20 miles to pick him up which hardly seems practical or worth the savings. We decided to get him on the waiting list anyway though, since I'm actually going to start applying for jobs out there.

Anyway, back to the home lady. She had asked us to call after school started so she could tell us something definitive, so I did this afternoon. To my dismay, she doesn't have room. The girl she thought she wouldn't have ended up coming back this year. No problem, I rang her daughter. SHE is full too.

Ugh. I'm so frustrated. We went from having several options to seemingly none and time is running out now. I have some other names to call but I'm tired and discouraged. If we go with a home, how in the world can I figure out who to trust and who not to? I don't want to put him in a center that I'm not 100% sure we can trust, and I really don't want to put him in one that's not nationally accredited.

I feel bad because Darrell has been asking me to call for weeks but I figured it was all going to work out, and she asked us to call back when school started, so that's what I did. But maybe she would have known sooner, meaning we would have known sooner. Dang it.

I need a cookie.