The Miller Mix

So the tour of the potential new daycare was ... informative. Here's the scoop:

#1: The building interior looks crazy old. As in, peach sponge-painted walls and brown trim. Also, everything has that old look - like when you go into a paper-based office and there are yellowing papers tacked on the walls everywhere.

#2: The "teacher" was outside with the children in their tiny playground. The 1 and 2 yos play outside together so there were a LOT of kids out there at one time. We went into the 1 yo/2 yo split room through the back door and I was immediately hit with the stench of NASTY A$$ DIAPER. OMGosh it was nauseating! I couldn't believe the teacher neither mentioned it or apologized for it.

#3: The "teacher" talked about how she doesn't focus on the "art stuff" or "learning stuff" and it's mostly free play until they move to the 3 yo room. She said she does redirection and timeout for misbehavior and mostly instructs on boundaries. She said for language, she does repeat what the children say and ask them to communicate with words. However, her country accent was so thick that I could barely understand what she was saying. Um, yeah.

#4: The room was dirty and the fabric on the naptime cots was both stained and torn in many places. The "teacher" talked about how she does work with them on picking up after themselves, etc but that the room pretty much stays destroyed. About that time, all the kids came in from the playground and at least 75% of them had big green ropes of mucus steaking their faces. Nice. Oh, and the "teacher" was wearing a gray hoodie covered in stains and spills. I suppose that's to be expected, but it looked as though she hadn't washed it in weeks.

On the plus side, when we were leaving to meet with the director about the possibility of speech focus, one of the little boys yelled "bye bye pretty!" to Bella and she blew him a kiss. It was very sweet! All the little boys (98% of the class) rushed up to touch and love on her. Of course, I promptly picked her up - no mucus ropes for us, thankyouverymuch.

So, in case you couldn't tell, we won't be going to that center. Esp when you consider all the above and then I tell you that the price is the same as my at-home sitter who keeps a spotless house, cooks with the children, and does learning play even though she relies on the tv a lot and is tacky as hell.