Choosing childcare for the Little Princess

What, you are saying? Two posts in a row about the Little Princess? How about an update on Project Downsize Ass and Mummytummy.  Ah fine then - well it's 9pm and I am not at the gym tonight, as I'd planned to be.  I put this down to sheer and utter exhaustion caused by the fact that I've had three sleepless nights in a row plus the fact that I spent part of the day scraping dead banana out of the washing machine (don't ask).  Hence I am sat on the sofa, half comatose, trying to work out when the Apprentice will be back on TV.   On the plus side - I am not sitting here with an extra large tub of Ben & Jerry's clutched in one hand and a spoon in the other with a chocolate ice cream covered face whilst growling at anyone who comes near to try and take it away.  See, you always have to look for the silver lining. 

Seriously though - gym update and healthy recipe coming tomorrow.  Anyway, we've been going through the agonizing process of deciding whether or not to put the Little Princess in part time day care (nursery) when I go back to university next month.  Back in the months of the immobile, cooing little cherub who couldn't yet sit up, eat mobile phones, dump the fruit basket into the washing machine, or consume dead moths wing by wing, I naively thought I could easily manage both.  Commence crawling, and BAM...reality hits.  She is now almost a toddler and clearly all those people who told us the first year is the hardest were LYING.

Anyway...before I have to submit my first paper that is half eaten, half covered in strawberry mango slobber, and half written at 2am in a state of mental breakdown (yes I know...there is no such thing as three halves!), we began our childcare search.  Suddenly every well meaning, kind hearted babysitter and daycare full of shiny, happy people are potential dark pits of hidden dangers, murderers and sociopaths.  I used to half vaguely listen to coworkers returning from maternity leave with tears in their eyes on the phone to their day care centres ten minutes after leaving them, reminding little Johnny to drink all of his milk and half gag and roll my eyes.  Now I am that teary eyed mother and she's not even gone yet.

Before I fall asleep typing I must go compare the names of the people we've interviewed with the most wanted list on Americasmostwanted.com.  Just in case.  Not that I'm a paranoid mother.