Dot Dot Dot

It Finally Happened

Before I became a parent, I was unaware of many things. One such thing was the ins and outs of child care. I figured that when I needed someone to watch my child, I would just call them up, let them know she is coming, and then drop her off. Needless to say I was surprised to find out the usual policies of "drop-in" care. And this morning, those policies finally caught up with me.

Basically, any organization that watches children as their business, wants you to commit to bringing your child in a set amount every week. This is well and good if you have one of those "normal" lives with fixed schedules. (Read, not a student or a nurse.) Consequently, Lisa and I rely on drop-in care whenever our schedules collide.

The way drop-in works is you call the morning of you want to drop-off your child and hope they have availabillity. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. If you try to call and make arrangements in advance, they tell you to just call in the morning. Now, I understand this from a business standpoint. A business can't just sit around hoping you'll drop off your child so they can watch him. But the uncertainty of this arrangement puts a parent in quite a predicament. You are putting your child in daycare is because you must do something, but you cannot be assured that you will actually be able to do what it is you must do.

As a resourceful parent, I have a list of the only three places in Corvallis that provide drop-in care. None of them were free this morning, so I stayed home to watch Emily. Fortuanately, there is nothing critical in class this morning, but that's because the midterm that was scheduled, was turned into a take home exam. I can only wonder what I would have done if I still had a midterm this morning.