Daycare Tour

We had heard from so many of our friends how you can't just make up your mind about day care the month before the baby comes. You have to get in there, investigate, figure it out and get on waitlists if you want to get your first choice. So, adhering to that advice, we went ahead and scheduled to take a tour of a day care this morning.

Our first choice is a place called Premier Academy nearby in Westlake. It's literally a two minute drive for either of us from work and so it's a perfect place logistically. We had heard it can be hard to get into (long waiting lists) and so we wanted to be sure if it was the right place to go see it and get the ball rolling.

It's located in an interesting complex of buildings and is broken up into different schools by age. It's free reign on the clothing they wear, but when your kid turns two, they are required to wear a uniform. It's blue pants or shorts, with the school emblem on a little red polo shirt. We arrived and went to the wrong building, which we found out because the nice lady told us we'd come to the school section rather than the main office/infant care area. So, we hoofed it over to the next building (2 minute walk). Noticed right off to get in the door it requires a code or you need to get buzzed in. And maybe some of this is standard, but it was all new to us. The lady giving us the tour apologized as it was a busy drop off time but happily walked us back to the baby area. The whole tour took 15 minutes max, and that was all we needed. Plus they had answered all of our questions (we had done a lot of investigating and question asking on the phone prior).

The infant area had 10 cribs and there were two teachers. So, they can accommodate up to 10 babies, but only put eight. There were probably four infants in there so lots of personal attention. Each baby had its own cubby hole where parents can leave diapers, bottles, extra clothing, etc. It was quite the set up, actually. Parents had bins labeled and all kinds of organized stuff. You are also allowed to bring in a mobile and a few other items to personalize your baby's crib. I thought it wasn't something people probably would do but each crib did have one. The next room over had a door with the top half open and it was the next step from the infant room. There were toddlers crawling all over the place and making all kinds of racquet. Happy kids!

The parents I saw coming in and out seemed to be happy to be leaving their kids and I didn't see any children really objecting to being dropped off (read as grabbing onto the door screaming their heads off).

The nice lady told us the current waitlist currently was longer than they would be able to accommodate in the next several months. So, if we were interested, we were encouraged to complete everything and put down the deposit. We told her it wouldn't be until the October timeframe and she went as far as to say "well, you really need to get on it and quick!" I was shocked to say the least - Emily didn't seem to be shocked at all.

So, here I have this application that I need to get filled out and turned into Premier Academy asap. I am kind of at a loss as to what to put on many of the sections though....particularly "What is the name of your Baby?" and "Boy or Girl?". Guess I’ll need to put TBD. You know, this just seems to add whole other level of ridiculousness to some of the things you have to do. And, I’m sure this is just the beginning!