Being forced to eat a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich on gooey white bread and a styrofoam cup full of chicken noodle soup from a can.

Being forced to nap on a thin, blue mat in a dim, crowded room when I wasn’t tired.

Being forced to carry home a plastic ziploc bag with wet undies in it for everyone to see.

And that horrible smell.

These are my main memories from the daycare center I went to when I was a kid. Luckily, I only had to go there every now and then…like when my Mom had a doctor’s appointment. I can’t remember liking anything about it. I hated daycare. I didn’t want to be in daycare, and I don’t want my kid in daycare.

When we found out Anya was on the way, we spent a long time pondering options: Would I stay home or go back to work? I really wanted to stay home, but when we found out that medical insurance through Andy’s work would cost half his take home pay, we realized it wasn’t really a good option. We found a lady sort of on our way to work who had five kids of her own and just seemed to love kids totally. Her family seemed nice. She met her husband online. She’d use cloth diapers for us. Sounded good so we reserved a spot.

Anya has been going there for about three months, and things seemed fine. Yeah, I always had something to complain about, but I think that had to do a lot with me being jealous that the daycare person (DCP) was spending more time with Anya than I was. There were a few things that went beyond that, but they were things that didn’t matter so much to me with Anya so little but made me think it would be a good idea to move her when she was older…like seeing DCP’s three-year-old eating from a bag of fritos at 8am one morning in plain sight of DCP. Everything changed on Wednesday.

My parents are here for a while, and I met them and Andy for lunch and went home with them. I planned to pick Anya up early. (My parents weren’t watching her because they were here to get a bunch of stuff done around the house, and we also wanted to keep Anya with her regular routine.) Andy asked if I’d called DCP to let her know I was going to be there early. I said no. She’d told me I should pop in unannounced from time to time, so that was my plan. DCP had a habit of going places without telling me even though she said she would. It bothered me a bit, but not too much. I wondered on Wednesday if she would even be there when we arrived. She wasn’t. As we turned into the driveway, I saw right off that her big, kid-toting vehicle wasn’t there. I decided to call her with my Dad’s cell phone, but his phone didn’t get service there.

I asked my Dad what time it was: 4:08.

I decided to stay and wait for a while. I went next door to see if the neighbors were home, so I could try to call DCP. No one answered the door. My parents and I played with DCP’s cat. We peeked in at the dogs. My Dad and I walked down the long driveway and back up.

I asked my Dad what time it was: 4:33.

I decided to leave and have Andy pick Anya up after work. We started to get into the truck to head out when I saw DCP’s vehicle on the hill aways away. As we waited for the car to pull into the driveway, I got all bouncy. I bounced and waved at DCP as she pulled up and parked. I headed towards the car to get Anya. DCP got out. Her kids started to pile out. DCP got all babbly and said something about how she had to go out for a few minutes and Anya was sleeping. I was confused. The doors on the car were all closed now, and DCP and her kids started heading to the house.

The house where Anya was. Alone. For half an hour or more.

I was still confused and a bit in shock. I acted like nothing was wrong. I got Anya, and we all got into the truck. When the doors were closed, I asked my parents, “Was it just me, or was that really bad?” Andy and I spent the evening trying to decide what to do. Do we pull her out of daycare and try to find a new spot? A spot for a baby in this area is almost impossible to get short notice. Most places have 3-6 month waiting lists. The better places have waits of one or two years. Or, do we send her back and hope this was a one-time thing…maybe have a serious talk with DCP?

In the end we decided to stop sending Anya to DCP and to try to find a new place. I contacted about half a dozen places yesterday, and none have openings. I’ve talked to a dozen or more people at work and asked them to keep their ears open. Andy has a list of another half dozen or so places he is calling this afternoon. I am not hopeful. There was that one listing on craigslist for someone with five spots open, but I don’t want my kid being taken care of by someone who believes that “and” does not have a “d” in it. For now, she’s at home with my parents.

Even if we do find some place, I won’t be happy. I’ve been looking at daycare websites for hours and hours the last two days. I don’t want Anya growing up in any of those places. I don’t want her being forced to eat hot dogs and tater tots every Wednesday. I don’t want her being forced to sleep from 1:00 to 3:00 every day because that is what’s on the schedule. I don’t want her being embarrassed because she didn’t get to the front of the line for the potty in time. More than that, I don’t want to miss her first step. I don’t want to wonder if that bruise on her forehead was from me bopping her head when I took her out of the car or from someone doing something to her. I don’t want to sit in some cubicle with nothing but clerical peon crap to do while her picture is staring at me.

We don’t really need medical insurance, do we? We can just ignore the calls from those pesky collections people, right?