Children: Bottomless Pits Of Money Sink

I was dropping off an extraneous stroller to a friend today whose elder two children attend a local preschool, we begin chatting about said, etc. And she reminded me that, should we want Peabo to attend preschool, now would be a good time to get her on some waiting lists. Let's also remind ourselves that the youngest age preschools usually accept is 2 years, 9 months. So that is a good what, 22 months away? Yeah. Um. Hm. I don't doubt that what she is saying is true, it just startled me a tad. And then she told me how much they pay. Which is not the most expensive in Redwood City or surrounding. I admit I threw up a little in my mouth...does Peabo *really* need to be around other children for three hours a day, twice a week? Couldn't I just let her, I dunno, run around the dog park for a while or something?

Sigh. We'll do it, of course, and should I be accepted to my master's program of choice, it really would help to have a couple hours per week where I could get reading done, etc. It does point out, however, that we had it pretty easy with Bean. Because of her disabilities, basically someone came to us and said 'here is where she should be going in the fall and we'll walk you through everything'. And we didn't have to write a check, ever. Okay, granted, our taxes were paying for it (and yours, thank you), but it was pretty idiot-proof. Now I'm actually going to have to visit preschools. And market my child, and us. And...ew. It's going to be even worse if it becomes more clear that she is her father's daughter and thus will not be able to cope with public school, so we'll have to start the private school preschool finagling and oh my god and maybe I'll just go live on a commune where there are hordes of other children and THAT will be how she gets socialization time.

Heather, back to normal. I recognize this is hardly an epic tragedy, and god knows we don't *have* to do it, but just to even have to think about it is taxing on my brain this Monday early afternoon. So I think I'm going to have a third cup of coffee and maybe fossick around in the kitchen for something bad for me to eat.

Mmmm... I don't know how preschool and daycare compare (since I'm ignoring anything further than a couple months away right now) but the issues sound similar; I do have a choice, in a way, since I'm choosing to work, but once I've made that choice my options suddenly narrow very quickly. We've got Eric in daycare 5 days a week, from 8:30 to 3:30; it costs $45 a day, and we're damn lucky to have a spot at all, since we only put him on a waiting list a few months ago (as soon as we found out we were moving). We're on 6 waiting lists for public, licensed care, and are months-to-years away from a spot in all the other places, including the one on campus. Sigh.

On the upside, Eric seems to love it where he is -- which is good, since we wouldn't have been able to take him out or put him somewhere else if he didn't!