This past weekend, I had to bring home work. In the process of completing a huge RFP application for funding seven child care centers operated by ESS. Early childhood education is only one of ESS' nine family welfare programs. Been drowning in RFP writing madness. On top of writing and hanging onto our existing sites, we're also exploring other possible sites, so that means doing site tours of other child care centers in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx. While I'm no child care expert, I certainly have become more well informed about child care not just in preparation for this RFP, but also in preparation for our child yet to be matched with our family.
Strange how early childhood education was not a huge emphasis when I was a toddler, and now it's all the rage especially in relation to providing opportunities for children from low income families to get a head start in the educational pipeline while supporting the entire family with wraparound services -- medical and mental health, job training and employment, literacy and financial management. Then there's subsidized child care vs. private pay child care.
As I've toured a couple of child care centers, I can't help but (very secretly) get excited about our waiting preschooler. Puppets, ocean creatures and all!
A summer wish
A. said being in the adoption process is like being unemployed. I have to agree just a little having been unemployed myself some time ago. We know it'll eventually happen. We will get a child at some point in the (what seems very distant) future. Will s/he be the child we've hoped for . . . for so long? I think . . . job hunting when one is unemployed seems just a bit more daunting than waiting for our child referral.
I was pleasantly surprised by a shooting star as I gazed into last night's shore sky. A passing summer blessing no doubt. Maybe, just maybe, our little one made a wish too?
