Hooray for Andrew Fleck - Ontario Early Years Centre

On my quest to find day care for Robyn, I attended a Child Care Connection meeting last night. The meeting brought together parents looking for care and providers with spaces available to meet and exchange contact info - no on the spot interviews please. I'd already made contact online with two women in attendance who are available in January, so it was nice to put faces to the profiles I'd read. I found the meeting kind of intimidating because it was a bit like being wooed by everyone, even if I wasn't interested I felt the need to take their name and number to avoid hurting their feelings. There were a couple other women who I thought might be appropriate if needed but I'm going to set up meetings with the first two women and go from there. No men care givers were in attendance, not sure there are a lot of them out there.

The best thing that came out of attending this meeting was the location it was held in: The Andrew Fleck Child Care Services Centre. I had heard of Andrew Fleck only in relation to the centralized child care waiting list. I had no idea the services they actually provide: play groups everyday, circle time everyday, a book lending library, a toy lending library with tons of awesome toys we can borrow for up to 2 weeks, workshops and programs for parents and kids and information and referrals all for free to children ages 0 to 6 years and their parents/providers. I can't believe I hadn't known about this sooner but am so pleased to be able to take advantage of it in the future. I'm especially happy about the toy lending library, our condo is so limited in space that we don't have room to buy and store tons of toys but this way Robyn will have "new" toys every couple weeks!