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The Pit Parenting Thread

We held our son out of daycare early on and eventually pulled him out as we had paid $6K for him not to attend. We split daycare with a family in the neighborhood with both kids spending half the day at each house. The wife of that family was pregnant (delivered today) and was really cautious about exposure because she was a high risk pregnancy. Now my wife is expecting and her doctor was adamant not to unnecessarily expose because there was limited data and what existed wasn’t good. The neighbor we split daycare with put their son back in daycare after the wife was vaccinated to let him acclimate so we were on our own with a 2.5 year old. We just hired a part time nanny but she’s only here until 1 and we both work. He should have a spot in daycare by 6/1 and my wife is fully vaccinated and I get my second next week. I’m very much looking forward to him being in daycare and me going back to the office several days a week.
 
My wife has had more flexibility in her schedule the last few years so that has really helped us. She was senior enough at her org to be able to set some hours and then last year she set out on her own to start her own business. I've been working east coast hours from Denver for the last couple of years so I start early and my wife handles drop off. In the afternoon, I shut down and pick up the kids at 4:30 and I very, very rarely have to work again in the evening. She usually works until 5:30 or so and then is able to shut it down to join us. We're fortunate to have reasonable hours and a good, albeit expensive childcare situation.
 
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Without daycare we’d have a pretty nightmarish work situation. And we’d have had that many times from breaks from daycare from the initial shutdown last spring/summer and then 2 week quarantines/shutdowns when cases pop up. When they’re in, we can have a fairly normal schedule except for like laundry and dinner prep breaks.

My older daughter is actually supposed to be in kindergarten this year but their daycare offered a private kindergarten option which we jumped on vs virtual public school. But far as I can tell it’s been kind of glued and pieced together over the course of the year with no obvious curriculum and kinda frequent teacher turnover (usually former public school teachers that left for new public school positions, hard to blame them). And because it’s covid we have very low visibility or communication with what happens day to day in what I consider the “black box” she enters and exits at the end of the day. I think she’s very bright and will be able to handle first grade next year but it’d be nice to have some solid curricular/academic justification for that opinion.
 
Guess we should have gotten our son on daycare waitlists earlier than 6 weeks before we need him to start daycare oooooops
 
Guess we should have gotten our son on daycare waitlists earlier than 6 weeks before we need him to start daycare oooooops

Yeah. We talked to places that had an 18 month waiting list for newborn classes.

So you’re telling me somebody is planning to get pregnant a almost a year from now?

We put our son back on the list on 12/1 and he might have a spot 6/1 and that’s only because he was already admitted for a few months and we paid 3 months tuition (without him ever stepping inside.)
 
Guess we should have gotten our son on daycare waitlists earlier than 6 weeks before we need him to start daycare oooooops

There was like a 3 month period in late 2020 where daycares in DC were wide open. But if you missed that window, I think you are screwed.
 
Guess we should have gotten our son on daycare waitlists earlier than 6 weeks before we need him to start daycare oooooops

...for your sake, I am hopeful this is a sarcastic naïve post?
If not, I really hope this works out for you.

Husband and I toured and put our names on waitlists when I was ~10 weeks pregnant. We did not have a confirmed spot at any daycare until daughter was three months old (I had 20 weeks mat leave). Part of me is convinced we only got in because I called or emailed just about every day until I had a definitive answer. This was pre-pandemic. Granted, little one only attended for two days (!!) before pandemic sent us all home. We kept her out of daycare until August (luckily this facility didn't make us pay during that time). At that point I had been checking routinely and was able to enroll her at our first choice daycare. We only got lucky because the pandemic/parents pulling kids out cleared a spot in the infant room. Otherwise, we were told it would have been unlikely for little one to get a spot there until she was 3 (just because of their retention rates and class size ratios).

So yeah, good luck.
 
since we were adopting and were going for anything from newborn-12 months we couldn't do any daycare waitlists. and as soon as we brought him home we started looking and no one really had any sort of adoption sympathy, just get to the back of the line. I get there isn't any easy solution, but these things like 18-month lists or getting on lists as soon as you're pregnant don't work for this scenario, especially if you don't know if you're going to have an infant or toddler.

so we got him in a daycare right before Covid hit that wasn't great by any stretch, but since he was an infant he just really needed somewhere that was safe, clean, and he was watched after. we got on a waiting list for a few others, and his daycare shutdown a few weeks into the pandemic, reopening in July. it was easy having him home at that stage since you could just set him places or down for naps.

our top choice reopened in August and had a slot for him, which has worked great since. no way in hell I could WFH with him right now.
 
Not being sarcastic! We were sorta on the fence between nanny and daycare and seeing what would shake out with covid stuff, and waited way too long now. We have the nanny fallback option available to us, but it seems like the daycare waitlists near us are in the 2-3 month range for infants.
 
We pay a retired lady down the road 20 bucks a day to watch the 2yo and she’s become like a 3rd grandmother. Your daycare stories and the amount you people have to spend terrify me.
 
My wife and I will both be fully vaccinated and are planning a trip next month for our five year anniversary. It will be our first trip in a year and our first trip alone in 2 years.
 
My wife and I will both be fully vaccinated and are planning a trip next month for our five year anniversary. It will be our first trip in a year and our first trip alone in 2 years.

Grandparents watched the kid for the first time ever alone so Wife and I could go to a bar for 4 hours 2 weekends ago (my birthday, with friends) and it was amazing. I felt like real human again.

Hope your child care situation gets worked out soon! Having to balance that much responsibility w/work is ridiculously tough.
 
Yeah. We talked to places that had an 18 month waiting list for newborn classes.

So you’re telling me somebody is planning to get pregnant a almost a year from now?

We put our son back on the list on 12/1 and he might have a spot 6/1 and that’s only because he was already admitted for a few months and we paid 3 months tuition (without him ever stepping inside.)

Bright Horizons in W-S told us the waiting list was probably 12-14 months when we signed up and paid $150 application fee for our son maybe 4 months before he was born? We thought we had enough coverage from other options to get him to a year if needed so went ahead and applied since it was clearly the PFIZER of daycares. Got an email a week later saying the waiting list was 2-3 years and we were on it. Thanks!
 
V jealous of twin parents. That first 2-3 months has to be exponentially more terrible, but man I imagine I'd feel so much better about the future knowing my kid had a built in best friend for life. Also I don't wanna raise an only-kid, but I am not sure I have what it takes to make it through another infant (and we got soooo lucky with our son, so I don't really have any right to be scared).
 
We went straight from the OB finding out we were having twins to the daycare to put them on the wait list. We didn't tell our family for another month that babies were coming.
 
Who’s got some easy, kid friendly recipes for me. Bonus points if they make leftovers that reheat well. In a cooking rut, and the whole figuring out the grocery list and dinner planning stuff is terrible.
 
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https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/hoppin_john/

We’re making hoppin John with a recipe similar to this tomorrow. Depending on your family size this can last 2-3 days when you double the recipe. Reheats pretty well too. Just make a ton of rice at the same time to also reheat and you’re done with cooking for half the week.

Or stuff like chili (that’s not too spicy) or a big batch of homemade pasta sauce. Mostly made of pantry staples so shop once and you have options.
 
Those of you with full time nannies, are you paying them under the table or are you doing full tax forms? Are you paying them for days off during the week? How are you all doing it.

(other than Mako who pays the old lady down the street 20 bucks a day)
 
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