Not entirely unexpected

Our day care provider for Miriam royally screwed us over yesterday. Excuse the language, but that's the best word I can think of to describe it. We have not trusted her for a while (read the blog and you'll know why) so we found another place the last few days of August and gave her notice Sept 1st that we found a new place for Mim. We told her that we will leave her daycare around October 1st, right before the Jewish holiday of Sukkot when her day care is closed for a week. That seemed like a good time to make a transition since the day cares are closed a lot of days this month for many Jewish holidays. All told, I think there are about 8 days off this month.

I have to say that I wondered if she would be o.k. with this arrangement, but we gave her one month's notice, as agreed ahead of time, and paid for September.

Yesterday, when I dropped off Mim, she ambushed me. She tells me she must talk to me first. She waits for the other parents to leave. The upshot is that she felt we were not honest with her, that we were looking for another place while we were telling her we were staying (the year starts Sept. 1st) and that meant that she gave us the special rate for the August camp, and not the rate for people not returning, etc etc. She starts to cry about how we were not honest and she feels like we used her. I cannot BELIEVE this woman.

She's accusing us of being dishonest when all I can think of is that she manipulated the truth at every turn whenever the converstiaon had to do with money. I had no idea there was another rate for kids not returning. She took our August payment without telling us that this money did not, in fact, pay for August, but for August vacation for the providers and we had to pay for the August camp separately. She did NOT EVEN TELL US that there was a kid in the daycare who had lice. NOT AT ALL. I found out from another parent. And, she tells me that since we signed a contract with her (which we did not,) we will owe her a penalty of one month if she cannot find a replacement. However, later in the same conversation, she says that since I didn't sign the contract for next year she is worried every time Miriam is sick because she is not insured for kids who don't have a contract.

The truth is, until August 28th or so, we were planning to stay with her. The truth is, we are cancelling our post-dated October and November checks to her TODAY. The truth is that we did like her assistants very much, and thought they were loving and caring towards Miriam.

The worst is that she told me in front of Silvia, who just could not process what had happened. She acted out all afternoon, broke down in a true hissy fit over dinner because the Cheerios were IN the bowl with the milk and not OUTSIDE of the bowl with the milk, etc. etc. When we said, "are you upset about Gaby?" she replied, "yes. That was very mean of Gaby to kick out Miriam." Yes it was. Poor thing had to listen to the whole conversation, the crying from Gaby, and not understand exactly what it was about.

I think I'm past the shock of the fact that we were kicked out. I'm only sort of past the disappointment that I won't have more than a day or two off of childcare before I start school again in October. However, I visited the new daycare today with Miriam and sat in on their music class, which was wonderful. I watched Miriam play outside in their playhouse, and when I told her it was time to leave, she said "no!" very emphatically with a head shake. I think she'll like it there!

We're off to the zoo!