How to Find a Daycare In Northern Nevada Step 3: Licensing Information

Perform a Licensing Background Check

So, you've researched, called and interviewed prospective daycares and finally decided on someone you feel confident will care for your child.

If they're licensed, which I would highly advise you stick with licensed daycare providers,  you'll want to check up on their stats. Washoe County's Child Care & Early Childhood Development Services is a government agency that uses "the laws and regulations set by the State and the County to insure a minimum level of care is provided to children to maintain and facilitate their normal development, health, safety, and welfare."

They have regulations and laws that they uphold by performing bi-annual inspections of in-home daycares. The inspection results are available online at

Washoe County's Child Care Inspection Web Portal

• To search for an in-home daycare provider, type in their last name only. Not the name of their daycare, but the last name of the person who is licensed.


• For daycare centers, type in the name of the daycare facility.


• If you can't find their licensing information via the website, call the helpful Child Care Licensing Unit at 337-4470.

Now you get to look into all the daycare's inspections.

Keep your eye out for any bold non-compliances and read those notes. You want to avoid notes such as this:

The facility's operation did not promote the health, safety, and welfare of children as evidenced by upon this

workers arrival a 4 year old child answered the door and the childcare provider was unaware of this workers

presence as she was in another room. The care provider had left the children unattended for approxiamtelyfor 14

minutes. She was unaware that the children could unlock the door.

Compliance compliance compliance is all you want to see.

What we've found when checking the licenses is that it either confirms any suspicions we've had or solidifies our decision. Also, it's always a little scary taking someone's word for it when they say they're licensed. Before we knew we could check up on people's licensing and inspections we just took their word for it, never seeing  a license or having any idea what's required to be licensed.

It's not a bad idea to double check and make sure the person you're paying a fraction of your income and trusting your first-born to is doing what they say they are.

Check check and double check again.  Take advantage of this service, it's been put in place for a reason.

*****************

We interviewed a few daycares that we decided against and just when we thought we were doomed and would have to compromise on a crappy situation we didn't feel comfortable with, we found a craigslist posting. Two hours later we were sitting in this woman's living room asking if we could sign Gwen up right then and there.

When we checked her licensing information, which came up perfect in everyway, I looked up all the other people we had met and turned down. Every single licensing inspection reiterated our concerns and made us even more certain of our decisions.

It's a good idea to check those licensing reports.

*****

This is Part 3 in a series of How to Find a Daycare in Northern Nevada

You can find the other parts here:

How to Find a Daycare in Northern Nevada Step 1: Research

How to Find a Daycare in Northern Nevada Step 2: Interview

 

 

 

 

 

The World's Most Delicious Chocolate Cake Recipe

I forgot to share with you the chocolate cake I made when we had guests over for dinner the week before Easter, so here it is. It was my favorite chocolate cake recipe, which I normally make into cupcakes. Sometimes cake is better than cupcakes and a dinner soiree is just that time.

While browsing the Easter aisle I couldn't believe how cheap chocolate bunnies were and thought it'd make such a great decoration. While cute, it was a bit puny in the midst of a giant chocolate cake and could've used some more buddies, but for $1 he did the trick.

My favorite chocolate cake in all the world is the recipe off the back of the Hershey's cocoa powder, believe it or not. You think boxed cake mix is ok, until you discover a great recipe. It ruins boxed cake mix for you, fair warning.

Also, since the baby is drinking whole milk I used that instead of our usual 1%. Let me just say it took the cake up a few notches. I didn't realize it needed to be taken up anywhere but now that we've gone whole we'll never go back.

[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:4]

Enjoy!

DIY Dr. Seuss Lorax Nursery Mural

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="The R House"][/caption]

In honor of  Dr. Seuss's birthday today I thought it a good idea to re-post Gwyneth's Dr. Seuss nursery from the archives. What did you choose for your child's nursery?

This post was published on January 3, 2011.

Dr. Seuss, The Lorax Nursery {Pt. 1}

Part 2

So I left off with the nursery when we had finally gotten the wallpaper off the walls and began painting our base colors. Nobody really understood what we were going for when we decided to base the nursery off of Dr. Seuss' book the Lorax.

How did we come to this decision?

We wanted a nursery that was gender neutral. Our plan is to move baby #1 out into the next bedroom when she gets older, giving her the luxury of choosing how to decorate her room while baby #2 gets moved right into the pre-designed gender neutral nursery. Makes sense, no?

So we went through our pool of ideas and settled on Dr. Seuss. Whimsical, not too feminine (Pooh Bear) or masculine (Mario Bros.) and fun. But what Dr. Seuss story? I originally thought Horton Hears a Who was the best choice, but Sir Sunderland disagreed due to (what he thinks) are the horrors of Jim Carey ruining the movie....

He then proposed The Lorax, a story of capitalism and environmentalism  with an adorable little character, the Lorax, who protects the trees. After reading the story, I was all but inspired but loved the trees and the little character. A compromise was made. We'll go with the awesome Dr. Seuss trees and add a cute little Lorax character in there somewhere.

It sounded simple enough.

• get a projector


• get a copy of the book


• project the pictures up on the wall


•  trace


• paint.

That was until we realized that neither of us has any artistic capabilities to speak of. I immediately tried to find an Etsy vendor to produce vinyl trees. In the end our original idea was the way to go as the vinyl wouldn't be up to par and twice the cost. Enter my 18 year old brother in law's girlfriend who piped up one evening during dinner that she had some sort of artistic talent. Boy did she regret that!

Wall #1 took  two  grueling days where we traced, painted and she outlined/shadowed. She was able to freehand the tree trunks and the grass on the bottom of the trees and boy did it make a difference.

It worked out well.  As the girls did the painting the boys got to work on building the furniture and finsihing things around the house. They built her crib, her changing table/dresser, both of her play yards (which aren't called play pens anymore), her swing and took care of some home maintenance that needed to get done.

Fastforward a month, four long days and more cost than I would like to mention.....our little Gwyneth has her nursery set and ready to go!

 

Doesn't the crib go great? My grandmother nearly had a heart attack when I said we were getting black furniture for the nursery.

It came out even better than I could've ever imagined and is exactly what we wanted. And look at how cute the Lorax came out! I would've never imagined it would be so exact and detailed.



Sure it was stressful, a whole lot of work, and I may have shed a few tears filled with anxiety if we'd ever get it done, but wow, it really is just what we wanted.

And you know the best part?

It took help from the whole family from my Dad, to our siblings, to the generosity of family members who gifted us her gorgeous furniture and everyone really stepped up to make it happen which fills my heart with joy.

 This is one lucky little girl who gets one cool/practical nursery!

Post-edit:

Present day.





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things to Do When It's Cold Outside {1. Go to Target}

Somedays you just need too get out of the house. With our crazy Northern Nevada weather you can't always depend on the park to be a viable option so we need to get creative which is why we're starting a series of Things to Do When It's Cold Out. To kickoff the series we are starting with one of my all-time favorite things to do when cabin fever strikes,

Go To Target

I personally find going to Target to be an adventure comparable to Disneyland. Now that I've got my shopping habits under better control it is a safe place to go, pick up a pretzel or popcorn, pop the baby in the basket and  spend some quality time browsing. For some reason it's different than any other store and it really does fulfill that need for an escape.

At Target you can:

[caption id="attachment_2678" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Check out this year's latest bathing suits. Polka dots with ruffles and matching cover ups? Yes please."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_2680" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Imagine dressing your daughter up like Carrie Bradshaw in Paris."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_2681" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Treat yourself using the change you dug up from around the house and have a coffee with your cutie."][/caption]

My husband thinks I'm nuts anytime I talk about Target as a source of entertainment but I know I'm not the only one who feels this way about the place (Lee La La wrote about it here and also Thrifty Decor Chick wrote about it here, to name a few).  It will be noted that I rarely ever actually buy anything but will always leave having eaten either popcorn or a pretzel from their food court and come out quite refreshed. Except for the day I drug the family there after already grocery shopping at Walmart. That was not the same.

But seriously, this tops the charts as one of my all time favorite things to do when it's cold outside and you need to get out of the house. And I mean, you can always pick something up that you needed and find something you never knew you needed. Insert Target Dollar Spot plug here, if they were paying me to, which they aren't, but still, why is that section such a magnet for stuff you need but don't need?

Stay tuned for more ideas on things to do when it's cold outside. Where do you like to go when cabin fever strikes?