Long silence

It's been quite a while since I've last posted. Apparently more than 4 months, although it sure doesn't feel like it. Of course that time was filled with travel (and lots of it), several colds for both BR and myself (and DH on occasion), and the ever wonderful search for daycare.

When it comes to travel, I think we got very lucky. Having covered over 22 thousand kilometers by plane (Mtl<->Warsaw, Ott<->Seattle, Mtl<->Hfx), with maybe a total of 10 minutes of crying, most of the credit goes to BR's sunny disposition. However, I think one of the factors contributing to the success of the plane trips was her age. I'm not sure she would be quite as amenable to air travel now as she was over the summer. She doesn't go to sleep quite as easily these days, and is not as easily amused anymore. I may have to travel with her again in a few months, so we'll see how that works out...

As far as daycare hunting is concerned, all I can say is if you're in Ottawa, you have to get yourself put on the centralized waiting list as soon as you can. As soon as the pregnancy is confirmed and you have a due date if possible. I procrastinated a bit, mostly because I was in denial I think, and that almost backfired big time. We got pretty lucky in the end to get a spot in an actual licensed daycare center. If you can believe it, in the whole city of Kanata (population of over 50 thousand people), there are only 20 spots for babies under 18 months in licensed daycares. Which means the great majority of babies are sent into home daycares. After visiting a handful of those, I was thoroughly depressed. It's pretty hard to find a nice place, in a nice area, with a good daycare provider, and good kids. A few of the things I saw when looking for a place for BR were:

• a daycare in a home that's in the middle of a construction zone; with construction equipment zooming by, shaking the whole place, noise and pollution abounding;
• a place where the carpet I put BR on (and sat on myself) had black, stinky stains, and children running up and down the stairs unsupervised
• a daycare where the whole "play area", consisting of the whole first floor of the townhouse, was smaller than my kitchen, filled with a mess of toys, but dominated by a giant flat screen TV...
• a place where the daycare provider's kids were undisciplined and screaming at the top of their lungs just to get Mum's attention, while Dad was busy playing computer games upstairs...

Just to name a few. None of the home daycares provided me with any sort of warm fuzzies. I'd anticipated the search for a daycare would be painful, but it certainly surpassed any of my fears. In fact, even though we have a spot reserved at the daycare center, I am still not sure I want to send BR anywhere for 9 hours a day. It just doesn't seem right. We keep doing all sorts of creative math to see how far we can stretch DH's salary and keep me at home most of the time. We'll see what we come up with :)

In the meantime, I am planning to do some more posting here. Really, it shouldn't be that hard for me to come up with post ideas. I've almost doubled the list of blogs I am following in my reader, so if nothing else, I can look for some inspiration there. But I have lots of ideas bouncing around in my head anyway, so there should be lots to read over the next little while...