Beautiful weekend, less back pain! Oh, and the ridiculous daycare situation in this city.

Ever since yoga ended, my back pain has lessened significantly.  I hate to think yoga was the cause because I'm pretty sure it's supposed to work the opposite way.  I ran on the treadmill 4 times this week and once outside and no back pain!  Hmmmm. 

Several months ago I joined two different listservs for mothers in the Seattle area.  One of the listservs is extremely active with dozens of new messages everyday.  The messages range from items for sale to parenting advice to compiles of commonly used services (babysitters, nannies, cleaners, etc.).  Already the community has proven invaluable.  I learned of a new home daycare center a few block from our house on the listserv.  I'd never seen it advertised or mentioned anywhere else.  We plan to take a tour tomorrow and get on their waitlist.  (We ran by today to check-out the neighborhood and the house.) 

We're currently on about 7 daycare waitlists with no guarantee that there will be any availability for us in January 2011 (one year out from when we got on these lists!).  Daycare in this city costs anywhere from $1500/mo on the low end to $2000/mo on the high end.  At this point, we've invested about $200+ getting on these waitlists and it's really frustrating that no one will commit to us.  A couple of months ago, we started considering the possibility of a nanny share.  Earlier this week, I posted a message to one of the listservs asking if there are other families in the area interested in a nanny share. I've received a few responses, which is a great sign.  It means that even if we don't have the situation figured out by the time Tray arrives, there are definitely other families in our situation!  And now I have them on my radar and I'm on theirs!

Another recent benefit of the listserv:  I scored a bag of around 8 parenting/newborn care books for free!  Most of them had never even been cracked open and several were already on our to-buy list!  I love free stuff.  We've given away enough free stuff in the last several years that it felt good when the karma came back around. 

We had a lovely sunny weekend.  It wasn't all that warm, but boy that sun felt good.  Now it's chocolate chip cookie time.  And tacos for dinner.  A perfect ending to a really nice weekend!