Having worked in a creche and been a mum with a child in care (occassional care) I can see both sides. From the carers side it can be very tricky having phone conversations in the middle of the day when there are lots of transistions: coming in from play... have to wash hands... change nappies... clear tables for lunch... heat bottles... settle children down to their meals... feed babies... deal with non-eating... toileting... getting ready for rest time... patting to sleep if required... calming active children... writing up documentation (in each child's diary). It was the busiest time of the day. Any phone call at that time of the day was kept very brief. If parents wanted a longer chat with the carers then it was better to wait until about 2pm when most children were up from rest time and settled back into activites.

Your centre might be different... but I would imagine that most centres would at least be preparing for lunch (if not actually having it) at about midday. Also this was the time of the day that the usual carers often had lunch and a roving reliever carer would fill in.... in which case they might not know much about your child either.

Could you call closer to 2pm? We rarely received calls from parents every day... like you said it's hard to talk on the phone and watch little children... and more-so for childcare workers. We usually only received calls if there was a specific issue to be discussed or if the child was new.

Also our director tended to take most calls from parents so as to make it safer for the children (an un-distracted staff member is safer).