School daze

Kindergarten has been my odyssey this week. Over the past 4 weeks, Wayne and I have looked at 4 different schools. Mostly, I’ve been really jazzed about school. I’m so excited for Sara to go to the big K. It seems like a lovely adventure. I love watching how the teachers teach. Some parts have been more stressful. The after school care part has not been so much fun. I think I need to get different friends (I say this tongue and cheek). Most of the Moms I know don’t need to figure out after school care. The moms from my daycare going to after school care all have siblings already in school so they’re not scrabbling for spots in schools or after school care. So I’ve felt a little rutterless despite having an awesome network of parents I know. That said, I’ve been shaking trees and I’m thrilled with the contacts my friends have helped me get. I’ve talked to 7-10 other families that my friends referred me onto once I advertised my need for advice. I thought I was paying attention to after school care. I would tour on site facilities when we’d see one on a tour. I’d note the brochures about after school care in the packets of info from schools. I just made a poor assumption. I figured enrollment deadlines would occur after we found out which school we’d be assigned to at the end of May. WRONG. I called a popular after school program and was surprised. I got a fire lit under me. I needed to start working. Ironically, the program wouldn’t give me references for privacy reasons. I was left pondering a childcare situation which I had to sign up for within a week with no recommendations. So I did the proverbial shaking. Luckily, Mom’s been visiting so I’ve had time to talk on the phone. Wayne’s been busy writing a talk in the evenings. I talked to the head of our current daycare, my friend from swimming, pulled out 2005 rosters from Mom’s group, scoured my church directory. And I got results. One day I got 6 messages. And lots of rave reviews for certain programs. So today, I did the footwork. I toured facilities with and without kids. More questions came up. More calls. At one point I had to wait 30 min just to talk to the Seattle Public Schools enrollment office. So I felt a little protective of the application as I handed off officially today. But that’s done. Now I just have a 9 page after school program application to do and a line to wait for at 6:45am one cold morning. Sigh.