Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

The final hours before tax day are ticking away. And if IRS statistics are any indication, the country may be dragging its feet. Through early April, about 4.5 million fewer returns had been filed than last year, a difference of about 5 percent.

If you’re one of those people who have turned tax procrastination into an extreme sport, we want to hear from you. Send us an email telling us a little about yourself, where you live and why you’re waiting until the last day.

You can also share your thoughts on Twitter using the hashtag #TaxDayStories.

Selected responses may be used in an upcoming story.

The "Hello" sticker on my jacket identified me as Rebecca to the preschool's new-parent breakfast, but it could have just said "Hi, I'm Crazy Paranoid Mom."

The timing was either very bad or very good: I'd just learned of reporter Chris Hansen's Dateline investigation, in which he discovered thousands of day care workers with criminal convictions, from grand theft and domestic violence to child abuse and manslaughter. We assume state regulators and licensing agencies prevent people like that from watching our kids — turns out, not so much. 

So there I was, grilling the preschool director about criminal background checks while the other parents chatted merrily about drop-off times, curriculum and tuition (like normal people, my husband might add).

I'm not totally off my rocker. I do realize that even though the Dateline investigation is terrifying, most day cares are good, safe places staffed by hard-working people who really care about children. Odds are, your child's day care is not run by a murderer. Part of me doesn't even want to think about the Dateline investigation, because I feel working moms already get saddled with too much guilt — now we have to worry about this, too? 

Still, the examples Hansen found are real. And I'm not going to let my own guilt get in the way of asking questions that might keep my child safer.

Back to the preschool director, who smiled politely as she described their criminal background checks and safety precautions, and even mentioned that all the classroom doors have glass windows, so anyone can see what's going on inside at any time. Then I asked about emergency plans, and she proudly told me they can evacuate a five-story building of 220 preschoolers in under five minutes. (I struggle getting one preschooler out the door in under 20 minutes.) She looked at me seriously.

"You know, I stay awake at night thinking about this stuff."

That's really what I wanted to hear. Parents worry anytime we let our children out into the big, wide world. (And I can just imagine the parents of teenagers laughing at this now, thinking, ha! Just wait till he hits the teen years, then you'll know what worry really is.) A good day care should share the worry with you, not add to it.

Hansen has some good tips below, but perhaps the best advice I've heard for parents evaluating child care is: trust your instincts. Research and investigate, yes, but even if all the checks come up clean and all the references are glowing and everyone says this is the best school in town — if your parental Spidey Sense tells you something feels wrong, listen to it. Intuition can be a powerful defense for our kids — use it.

And if that makes me Crazy Paranoid Mom, so be it. It's a label I'll wear proudly — as I check the location of all the preschool's fire exits.

How do you check out a day care or school for your kids?

Hansen offered TODAY Moms the following advice for parents who want to learn more about researching child care providers.

Q. What’s the most effective way to do a background check?   

A.  There is no single site for background checks; a thorough check requires consulting several sources, some of which are only available to law enforcement. Our experts say the best solution is to pass a federal law requiring ALL states to run fingerprint checks through law enforcement databases on state and federal level, as well as through sex offender and child abuse registries nationally. Until we do that there are no guarantees. However, to have some measure of confidence that a person doesn't have a criminal history, you can do your own check of both state and county criminal records, as well as sexual predator and child abuse registries.   

Every state has criminal history searches available online — usually there is a small charge for each search. Our advice is to stick with the government sites; there are some commercial background check sites as well, but there’s no way to know how extensive their databases really are. Try various searches like "criminal records (state name)" and "court records (county name)."  

Q. How do I find the Sexual Predator and Child Abuse Registries?

A. You can do an online search for these by state. Try searches like "sex offenders (state name)." Here are some sample search results:

Florida sex offenders: http://offender.fdle.state.fl.us/offender/homepage.do

New York sex offenders: http://www.criminaljustice.ny.gov/nsor/index.htm

Here is a central site where you can check abuse and neglect registries in each state:

http://www.dfps.state.tx.us/Child_Care/Other_Child_care_Information/abuse_registry.asp

Here is another collection of national, state and federal registry links & related sites. This one also includes military conviction and federal prison sites:

http://www.flsexoffender.net/offender/Registries.jsp 

Q. What should I look for when choosing a day care facility (or making sure the one I’m using is a good one)?

A. As a first step, there are MANY checklists of questions to ask the provider (most don’t address the background check issue, so be sure to handle that in addition to whatever else the checklist suggests). 

One watchdog group is the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies (NACCRA): http://www.naccrra.org/

The NACCRA recommends a checklist for parents that is provided by the National Resource Center for Health and Safety in Child Care. 

That checklist is here: http://childcareaware.org/parents-and-guardians/child-care-101/choosing-child-care

Also, each state licensing agency publishes information about its daycare facilities online. Keep in mind that each state has a different name for its licensing agency, so to find the name of the agency in your state, try searches like “daycare licensing (state name).”

Here is an example of info for parents on the Texas state site: http://www.dfps.state.tx.us/Child_Care/Information_for_Parents/default.asp

… and here are links to Texas child safety campaigns: http://www.dfps.state.tx.us/Child_Care/About_Child_Care_Licensing/child_safety_campaigns.asp

Q. How can I find out about the policy governing day-care providers in my state?

A.  A good resource for this is also NACCRA. Note that each state has a different policy governing background checks for daycare centers and family daycare homes (smaller centers caring for kids in homes). Remember that even though a state might require fingerprinting, they may only check state criminal records (as opposed to federal, county, sexual offender, and child abuse records), so parents may have false sense of security. We still recommend doing your own check of all the available records.

In the meantime, here are some links to NACCRA information about background check requirements for daycare providers in different states:

Here is an overview of the issues and pending legislation: http://www.naccrra.org/public-policy/policy-issues/background-checks

Here is a comparison of the different state background check polices — child care centers: http://www.naccrra.org/node/1761   

Here is a comparison of state requirements for the smaller family child-care homes: http://www.naccrra.org/node/1762

Q. How can I tell if my child might be experiencing abuse?

A. There are GENERAL listings for spotting abuse or neglect anywhere, not just in day care, from the Center for Child Protection and Family Support: http://www.centerchildprotection.org/report_abuse.htm

Rebecca Dube is the TODAY Moms editor and mother of a 2-year-old.

Madonna and Matthew Badger cry during the arrival of their daughters' caskets at Saint Thomas Church in New York on Jan. 5, 2012. At the rear, holding their shoulders, is her boyfriend Michael Borcina.

The father of three girls who died in a raging Christmas Day fire in Connecticut is seeking to administer their estate, a maneuver that would allow him to represent it in any potential lawsuit -- about which no decision has been made, his attorney said Monday.

The estate filing was made last Thursday in Stamford Probate Court on behalf of Matthew Badger, whose daughters -- 10-year-old Lilly and 7-year-old twins Grace and Sarah -- perished in the blaze in Stamford.

"All it seeks is a very simple thing: to appoint Matt Badger as an administrator of his children’s estate," said his attorney, Richard Emery. "In order for him to represent the estate in any potential lawsuit -- about which there’s been no decision whatsoever -- he has to be the administrator of the estate. So that’s a prerequisite but it’s by no means a commitment to sue or even a decision to sue."

The girls' grandparents, Lomer and Pauline Johnson, also died in the fire. Their mother, Madonna Badger, and her boyfriend, Michael Borcina, a contractor who was renovating the Stamford home, escaped without serious injury.  

Authorities established that embers in a bag of discarded ashes started the blaze.

"There are certainly very substantial concerns about his (Borcina) having allowed kids to live there while he was the contractor in that event," Emery said. "The fact that there was a severe fire hazard there, there’s no doubt about that."

The New York Post first reported about the estate filing, saying it could be used for a potential wrongful death claim.

"There are any number of possibilities, none of which have been decided upon," Emery said. "This is just a preliminary matter and it preserves the right to do things later on. But it certainly does not commit us to any course of action."

A judge would likely make a decision on the estate filing within a month, said Emery.

"The kids had some property and that property has to be disposed of and ... that (having estate control) also would give him the authority to dispose of that property," he added.

According to CBS 2, construction workers told police the alarms and extinguishers had been taken out of the house and stored in the garage, as painters began working on the interior.

The police investigation was ongoing -- about 90 percent complete -- but they were expecting to meet on Tuesday with the local state’s attorney about their findings thus far, said Capt. Richard Conklin, of the police's bureau of criminal investigations.

They will be "giving him a large portion of our investigation even though it’s not complete, so he can start reviewing that and come up to speed and see if he has any input or additional questions," Conklin said, adding that he could not comment on their findings. "It’s such a lengthy, large investigation that we want to get him what we have so far so he can begin to digest it."

Emery noted that: "We have and we are continuing to conduct a very thorough and intense investigation of what occurred there."

Madonna Badger attempted to take her own life in late January, reports said. Her attorney, Stan Twardy, Jr., declined to comment on the filing. A call placed to Borcina's attorney was not immediately returned.

Emery said his client was working on a foundation in memory of his children to help other youth and to help avoid such disasters, but he was "a complete wreck."

"It’s unimaginable how depressed and upset he is. ... His whole life is burned up in that fire," he said.

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