Preschool? Already?

I was talking with another mom the other day about C starting daycare, when she asked me if I'd begun looking at preschools.

Whoa. What?

Considering I had just psyched myself up to leave my child with relative strangers both big and small -- granted friendly and playful relative strangers -- I was decidedly un-ready to think about the next step.

Even if the next step was something along the lines of "Preschool Musical 3."

"Wow, you're worse than we are," she said.

"You got that right, sister," ... I said in my mind. (You'll notice I do a lot of that.)

"Some parents have had their kids on waiting lists since birth," she said.

"OMG, I'm like the worst parent ever," I said in my mind and in real life. It was like total panic. In stereo.

But then I thought, wait a minute. She must be joking. This early? C isn't even 2, although that will change in a matter of weeks. Even this mom's boys are barely 2 years old themselves. But, she told me, they'll start in the fall, when they're almost 3. In the meantime, it was time to pound the pavement and find the right place. Actually to find the right place to put your name on a list. And wait.

She told me I should pick up the Whitney Guide to Preschools and gave me a list of some reputable schools around L.A. Now, we're talking private preschools here, so it's not cheap. But considering the costs of daycare, it could end up being relatively similar. Or maybe I'm just rationalizing.

Anyway, my brain is still swimming in this new and bigger pond, but now I have one more thing to obsess over. And, trust me, I will.

In the meantime, here is a partial list of recommended preschools:

Pilgrim School
Wagon Wheel (yes, the school is called Wagon Wheel)
Hollywood Schoolhouse
Delaney Wright Fine Arts Preschool
Christopher Robin
Fountain Day School