Sometime last spring, my husband and I were seized by a kind of madness. We polled friends, made numerous site visits and created complicated spreadsheets.

Yes, it was time to choose a preschool for Zoe.

Where does one start? Montessori or The Creative Curriculum? Church basement or free-standing? School lunch or packed lunch? Summer vacation or no summer vacation? Pick-up times, drop-off times, weekly rates, monthly rates…my husband diligently entered all information into a massive spreadsheet.

Not that any of that helped us. When it came down to it, it was what we felt in our gut rather than hard numbers that swayed us. One school seemed too industrial, with its grey brick walls. At another, the kids seemed too wild. The metal cribs where babies napped at another school reminded me of a Romanian orphanage. And then there were the killer high-heeled black boots worn by one principal. I wondered: would she be more concerned about fashion or my child’s wellbeing??

At one point, my husband and I both fell in love with the idea of sending Zoe to Lake Country School. Friends whose kids go/went there spoke of it with the zeal of missionaries. We walked into the gracious red brick building, saw sunlight streaming in tall French windows, sat for a morning’s observation during which the children served us tea (chamomile, darjeeling or green?), watched a video on Maria Montessori and of kids gardening at their summer Land School, and were completely won over.

But wait. Did that mean we would become - gasp - private school people? Were we setting ourselves up for a lifetime of annual fees that rivaled that of a private college? (As one friend put it: You can pay for this every year, then pay for college. Or you can just pay for college.)

We agonized for weeks. We filled out application forms detailing our goals for the nurturing of our child’s brain, body and soul. We even took Zoe to the Lake Country audition. Well, they called it a playdate. A few weeks later, she got an offer in the mail. Our girl got an offer! A sign, of course, that she was on the right path to Harvard.

There were many reasons not to do it - a temporary single-family income, the uncertainty in the newspaper industry (would I still have a job in a few months?) and the fact that Lake Country didn’t take anyone under three and we’d have to find somewhere else for the baby’s daycare. In the end, it was my mother-in-law who brought us down to earth. Now imagine, she said. You’ve got a meeting to rush to. It’s winter. You have to drop Zoe, then take Maya somewhere else. Do you really need the stress?

But it’s My Child’s Education.

It’s Preschool.

It’s Feeding her Brain.

It’s Preschool.

In the end, we decided on another Montessori-based preschool and daycare, closer to home and where the two girls will be in rooms next to each other. It’s a little cheaper too, though not much. Friends have raved about it and we like the teachers.

The girls start this week. The madness has lifted. Until first grade.

Two a.m. The nursing baby in my arms is soft and warm and I am so tired. It would be so easy to drift off to sleep…

WHACK! That’s my Maya batting my boob away after she’s done. She likes to go back to her crib after nursing and she’s not shy about letting me know. So back to her room I trudge, in the dark. Two fingers in her mouth and she falls asleep immediately.

For others, the choice isn’t always so clear. The Sunday Strib examines the ongoing debate whether to let your babies in your bed, and for how long. One Minneapolis mom of four confessed she’d “not gotten a full night’s sleep in almost 10 years.” Another woman, who grew up in India, says she’ll let her three-year-old stay sleep with her “until he grows up.” Her husband concurred, noting that he slept with his parents until he was 15. Meanwhile, experts weigh in on the safety issue. (For babies, that is. I think it’s safe to say a 15-year-old is unlikely to be smothered by sleeping parents….)

One mom had a big scare - she woke to find her baby was turning blue. Things turned out fine in the end, but she was left with the excruciating, unanswerable question of whether she had caused her baby to stop breathing by having her in bed, or whether she had actually saved her baby by being close enough to notice…

(And for those of you who missed it, guest blogger Samara Tilkens Postuma wrote a while back about why she’s adamant her kids stay in their own beds.)

It’s been on the nightly news, it’s been in the papers. The latest study  by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development reports that “keeping a preschooler in a day-care center for a year or more slightly increased the likelihood that the child would become disruptive in class.”  The report also found that “time spent in high-quality day-care centers was correlated with higher vocabulary scores through elementary school.”

Here is the article from Monday’s NYT.  And it’s summary from that article in yesterday’s Star Tribune.

This portion from the Newsweek interview with Margaret Burchinal, co-author of the study about what these findings mean summed it up for me: 

So what is the big take-away from this study?

The take-home message is parents of young children need to figure out what makes their lives work so they can be the kind of parent they really want to be with their children. For some parents that might mean having both parents work so they can have economic security. For other parents it might mean making the decision to cut back on work so they can have the emotional security of knowing they were the only ones caring for their children. Parenting matters far more than any single decision about child care–or all the decisions put together. Quality parenting predicts school success.

We are interested in what you have to say regarding this study. How useful is this information to you, and how much weight to you put on the findings? 

Realizing that this is a hot button topic - I wanted to quote one of our commentors and say “Let’s all play nice in the crib.”

Guest blogger Samara Tilkens Postuma weighs in on the martini playdate.

On Friday, January 26th, the Today Show did a brief piece on the newest chapter in the Mommy Wars. Cosmos and Mommies! Playdates and Mixers! Meredith Viera invited a mommy blogger and a psychologist mother to share their dueling views on the issue. It started a hailstorm of blog posts nationwide, who’s doing it and who isn’t.

Basically, the argument is: Is it okay for mommy to drink with other moms at playdates? Even if it is just a glass of wine or a cocktail? The mommy blogger said yes, she knows her tolerance level. The other mom said this is a bad idea and can lead to drinking problems for moms.

When I asked Minnesota moms for their feedback, I heard from several who were strongly against it. Just two moms, one in Plymouth and one in Eden Prairie, said they do drink and socialize with their friends during playdates. One mom said men are never questioned if they have a beer while out with kids, so why the double standard?

On the Today show, Meredith Viera said something some moms found offensive. She asked the mothers how they would feel if their babysitter drank while watching their kids.

I received a response from one mom, Melissa Schlosser of Blaine, asking how we would feel about teachers drinking at school. She makes the point that teachers are role models, but parents are even greater role models.

So really, is this not a Midwest thing? Is it? Are Minnesota Moms doing it too?

The Strib’s workplace reporter writes today about what to look for when you’re signing a contract with your childcare provider — Paid vacations? Paid sick days? And more….