I didn't want to like her

I went to “interview” the in home day care lady yesterday evening. I got there earlier than I thought I would because traffic wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, and someone pulled their head out of their butt and made the lights work together through the construction area…imagine that!

I got to her house about 15 minutes before I was scheduled to arrive and rang the doorbell. I got no answer. I thought it was odd that she wouldn’t be there just 15 minutes before a scheduled interview. I knocked. I waited. I started to walk back toward the truck to call her and see what was going on. But she answered the door as I started to take my first steps. She apologized; she had been in the back yard. The little girl told me several times that they had been “bwowing bubboes.”

She immediately asked me if it would be ok if she asked me to take off my shoes. So I did. That’s a pretty normal request in situations where people care for infants, so I’m fine with that. I didn’t plan for it, but thank goodness my feet didn’t stink.

She gushed over the baby, her daughter pulled out all her toys one by one to show Landon, maybe he’d like a plastic peach to eat, or a plastic plum. Oh, here’s this little TV thingy I bet he’d like to eat that. Here are my teletubbies. And the “scary” dragon. (Looked like a pretty friendly dragon.) She clearly had prepared for me to come over, and after seeing how neatly everything was put up in the living room (play area) prior to the “show and tell” – I understand why she had taken the girls outside. I think Landon will be very happy there.

We talked about various areas of concern for me. That he’s not always hungry, just because he’s crying. That he’s colicky and her second daughter was colicky, so she has some experience with that. She seemed very eager to do the background check. She’s going to register with the state of Texas, and they will do those background checks, not just on her, but on her husband as well. I told her my concerns about how he got sick. She told me that she only expected to maybe get 1-2 other kids, and that she would expect me to keep him home if he were to get sick, and that she would also make me aware if she or her children were sick, that she’s looking for a backup person, but also that I could make other plans if I needed to. (Hi Mom!) She’s got her CPR and First Aid and will be taking a class next week to renew it.

I told her that I was working on a plan to be home by August, and that at that point I would only need part time day care or possibly not at all (i.e. switch to Mother’s Day Out). She was very excited for me, and hoped that worked out.

She’s supposed to send me a reference today. I hate to be one of those people who only talks to one person and hires her. But I didn’t expect to like her this much. I wanted to not like her. I wanted the traffic to be terrible to get over there, I wanted this to be an easy “Nope, Mom, you just have to keep coming to take care of him, while I keep looking.” And it’s not. Because I liked her.

I’m still going to talk to my neighbor again, just in case, because just the ease of walking him next door instead of driving across town would make me feel better. I’m also going to talk to Clint’s cousin Jay’s wife. She offered to watch him, but I don’t know how serious she really was about it.

Ok, here’s the spectacular…fine, maybe not spectacular, but it has the potential to be, once he’s doing more fun stuff, also once I figure out how to get the thing in better focus: