Last night DH and I toured our first daycare center. There were a lot of positives to it, but also several things that were concerning, though as a FTM I'm not sure how concerned to be.

On the positive side, it's 5 minutes from our house and on the way to our offices, it's a very nice facility, has great hours, allows any type of cloth diapers, and in general had great answer to most of our questions.

But there were a couple things that stood out as potential concerns. For one, I'm concerned about the infant room and the mix of mobile babies with non-mobile babies. They do have 2 infant rooms and they put the "older babies" (that are under 15 months) in the other room. But there's no criteria who goes in which room. And at the end of the day they consolidate and whoever's left goes into one room.

Another thing about the infant room that bothered me (and maybe this is silly) but there didn't seem to be great alternatives to put the babies other than the crib. They had no jumperoos or exersaucers or bumbos. They cribs, activity mats, and they would prop up tiny babies with two stacked boppies (which they did while we were there.) So I'm wondering how much time babies are spending in the crib, and when that gets to be too much? I'm also a little concerned that they're using boppies in a way that they're not necessarily meant for. It seemed fine when there were two kids there and one teacher. But what about when it gets busy? I feel like there's a lot of potential for DS to fall over or get knocked over by a mobile baby.

The other big concern was their attitude on food. Now, I consider myself pretty moderate about food choices, but it is a huge goal of mine that DS have better eating habits than DH or I. While I was there I was told that we "needed" to have DS start on cheerios or mum mums by ~10 months or he'll have issues with table food and textures. I plan to severely limit cheerios as snack items, so that didn't sit too well. Plus I'm pretty sure it's a load of BS.

I also wasn't a huge fan of their snacks, particularly in the afternoon. 4 out of 5 days on their sample menu had some crappy carb included - graham crackers, pretzels, and townhouse crackers. When I questioned that she said "oh we don't feed the little babies pretzels because they're dangerous, we feed them something with more nutritional value like goldfish." My jaw about dropped at that point. Goldfish aren't exactly the worst thing on the planet, but dear God, they don't have much in the way of nutritional value. They did sometimes have fruit included, but no mention of any veggies for snacks.

She also told us about ice cream Fridays, which they have as snack every other week. And she commented that "of course they don't feed that to the younger babies because they can't handle the dairy." Um, how about the sugar?? And I guess every other week isn't that often, but do toddlers need ice cream as a regular treat?

So with these two main issues, I'm not sure how concerned to be. Maybe the mix of infant ages won't be an issue? And the upside of the food is that it's provided, so less time and expense for us. Though the downside is, we can't bring in our own snacks once he's in the toddler room.