Drop-in daycare sticker shock. Ouch!
Now that school’s out, Darling Angel has joined Baby Brother at our neighbors home daycare. So convenient. The risk of home daycare of course lies with dependence on a single individual’s availability. Hence, I made sure that I kept up both kids registrations at their former group daycare. If they’re unable to go to our neighbors, I’ll just drop them off at the group daycare. Great plan! Except, er…I neglected to confirm what the drop-in rate was. You see, I thought I knew. And you know, what you think you know but don’t know can hurt you. This did. Well, almost.
Last night, our home daycare provider received some very bad family news. Her mom had passed away. My heart goes out to her and her family. Of course the news meant daycare is suspended until she’s ready.
Hubby and I discussed how to work around each others schedules. “I’ll go to work, come back at 9:30 so you can go to your 10 o’clock meeting. You’ll be back at noon, right?”. “That’ll work, but I have to go back for a 2 o’clock meeting.” “Hmm.”
“You know what”, I say. “I’ll just drop them at their old daycare. That should be no problem.”
This morning we get ready as usual, but before hopping into the car, I made the call to the daycare to make sure they had room for both kids.
“No problem”, they told me. “But you know for drop-in you’ll have to pay today.”
“No problem”, I respond. “It’s 30-what per day?”
“I’ll have to look it up.” Clock ticks on…tick tock… “Er, the amount due today will be one hundred and twenty-..”
“What!!!”, I cut her off. “One hundred and twenty-what!?”
She gives me a break down. “But I thought it was 30-something per day per child”, I wailed.
She tells me something about that rate applying if Darling Angel was a school-ager but she’s not a school-ager yada yada. Since we’ve been using a home daycare, I’m no longer used to the rates that group daycares charge.
I take a deep breath and tell her that I’m not bringing the kids in anymore.
I log on to my work email, send notes to my manager explaining that I’m taking an impromptu vacation for the day. I send a note to people I would be meeting with to explain that I’ll not be at the meeting. I offer reschedule options.
A vacation day. I had planned to take a few this summer to take the kids to local attractions but hadn’t scheduled any yet. “Better not waste today”, I say to myself.
It’s pouring rain outside, so a park is out of the question. Ha, the Childrens Museum of Cleveland. We’ll be indoors. I had mentioned to the kids that we would go to the museum sometime. Darling Angel had looked doubtful. “Don’t you want to go?”, I asked her as I pulled up my computer and went to their website. “I want to. I want to go.”, she squealed. She said she thought it was a museum of just statues but his one has toys.
“We’re going to the Children’s museum!”. Darling Angel danced in excitement. Baby Brother followed suit.
I felt a twinge of guilt having fun when someone else was going through one of the most distressful times of her life. It was, is, more than a twinge of guilt…
Guilt aside, we went, the kids had a blast. I had to do a lot of begging to get Darling Angel to try on an astronaut suit. It seems she’s scared that pretending to be an astronaut may cause her to launch into space. As soon as I took my picture, she quickly scrambled out of the suit. Baby Brother loved the water exhibit most of all. I’m not sure if that was because it’s one of the few exhibits that he could also put in his mouth, but that was the very reason that I kept pulling him away from their.
I was exhausted from trying to keep my eyes on both of them. And after two hours, I extracted two reluctant kids from the center and brought them back home.
“But we’re not done yet”, Darling Angel lamented.
“Then we’ll come back”, I told her. I spent $70, just over half of what one day at drop-in daycare would have cost, on a one year family membership. It was money well spent.
Of course we still have to figure out what happens on Monday.
