slacking, thanksgiving, and daycare

OK, well obviously I've been a complete slacker blog-wise, so my apologies to my tiny handful of readers.

I don't have much to report baby-wise. I still feel crappy at times. I still eat often. I still haven't been to the doctor - although I will go on Friday.

We spent all of Thanksgiving week with my mother in law ( hi N! ), who I know reads this so I can't give away any of her dirty little secrets;) But I will say that we had a nice visit, and more importantly I was able to eat at Thanksgiving!! Yeah! Now I have to point out that quite a bit of a typical Thanksgiving meal is very carb/starchy food friendly, which translates into pregnant-Jena-friendly, but I did manage to eat some turkey as well, which was nice.

So now that I've caught everyone up on our doings, here's what's on my mind now. Daycare.

We've started thinking about what to do with the little bugger once she's born (I switch back and forth on referring to gender, we don't know and we don't plan to find out).
I plan to take 3 months off after little bugger's born (unpaid, but I still plan to take it).
After that… well, that's a problem. I would love to stay home. And it's probably technically possible for me to do so, but it would be a bit of a stretch. And really really scary. It is financially possible that I could work reduced hours and not have the bugger in daycare fulltime, but I haven't discussed this with my boss yet. (OK, boss doesn't even know I'm pregnant, I was going to tell him this week, but he's out of town for at least a week and a half, but I promise I'll tell him when he gets back!) What's also possible, and financially feasible is that I work full time and R stays home with little bugger. This would probably make me insanely jealous, but it's a whole lot better than any sort of daycare. However, that last option relies on me getting hired directly by Big Oil, for whom I work as a contractor. Getting hired directly is a possibility, but more like a 50/50 chance, not something I can count on, though I should know for sure by the new year - and would almost certainly mean that I get a nice raise.

So, exploring the more likely option of at least part-time daycare/maybe full-time daycare...
The really nice day care at my office would eat up a quarter of our current combined take-home pay - there's a discount if you're a company employee, but contractors like me have to pay full price. So that's out unless I get hired directly and the discount turns out to be amazing
But maybe it's not the best choice anyways… I mean it'd be convenient for me, but no way would R drive out here to pick up the little bugger, it's just too far and at rush hour it'd be a horrible drive for him (I drive against most of the commuter traffic, so it's not that bad a drive for me usually). So maybe it's just as well that we can't afford it.

The Kinder.care close to the house is $400 cheaper (per month). But when I looked them up on the official Texas day care licensing website, I wasn't very happy to see all the violations and incident reports they in 2005 at that location. Now it's true that they did much better this year, but still… if they've had problems with correct supervision in the past, how can I know it won't happen again?

So the state daycare site got me thinking about home daycare... how do you feel about home daycare? You know, the people that keep half a dozen kids in their home (hopefully at a better $ rate than the other places, though I'd be happy to pay Kinder.care rates as long as it doesn't come with Kinder.care style supervision). Anyways, I've always thought of them as a bit shady…I don't know why I think that, just a feeling, a suspicion if you will. But I found out that some of them are registered with the state. And that means that they get inspected, just like the big day care centers.

There are two of these registered home daycares in my little neighborhood. Both have been in operation since 1987. One has had no violations in the last 2 years (that's all the data that's available on the website). The other did have a violation, a fire extinguisher needed servicing, but she had it serviced and reported back to the inspectors within a week. The state site tells you to consider not only any violations, but what they were and how responsive they were in getting things fixed - so getting it done in a week is pretty good in my book. Neither had any incident reports. I haven't called these people yet, let alone toured their "facilities", I'm just trying to figure out what the options are.

So, if you were a new parent, would you consider home day care? Other options I'm missing?