Hellobee Boards

@FaithFertility: @TapDancer: @jaguar: our extra bedroom is what we call the library. Except we ran out of bookshelf space and now it's filled with piles of books. Although we had been hoping to move into a larger house, but it's looking more and more like we'll bring a baby home to out current house.

@Paddington10: with dd I got onto a wait list around this same time in my pregnancy. We were lucky that it was a Jewish daycare and as temple members we were priority. But I still didn't have a definite answer till I was on maternity leave so I was on other lists just in case.

This time dh told the daycare the day after I found out, before we even told our families! Ha! Again were still priority as members plus as a sibling. But I'm still anxious that last minute we'll need to come up with something else.

@TapDancer: She used to run the daycare at my best friends church!
When it closed she kept a few of the local kids at her house and it turned into her passion
My best friends niece went to her and her daughter and they LOVED her so naturally right when I found out in was PG with DD I told my friend to ask her if she had room!
I totally understand your worry! Me and DH knew if she couldn't take DS this year I would stay home!
I pray it works out, my sister is a nanny and in Care.com!
She is amazing! There are great people out there! Ask mom's you know, even people you know that have kids in family, never know who knows someone!!!!!

@Paddington10: A will go to the same center that H goes to now. I hope we can afford it without giving up too much! We also need to buy a car, so I'm looking at what bills we can cancel in order to not be super broke all the time.

Our third bedroom is our (extremely messy right now) office. The girls will share a room because I want to be able to sew and our house is small.

@Paddington10: It can be hard to figure plans this far in advance. It sounds like you have covered your bases by getting on all of the waitlists. For LO1, we started with a nanny who was an epic disaster and got on a waitlist for a daycare that was soon to open in our neighborhood. Since we couldn't keep going with the disastrous nanny, we were actually able to cobble together short term care to get us through until the new daycare opened by using a temporary nanny (hired knowing up front we only needed her for 2 months) and using Bright Horizons backup care that we got through work that sent a nanny to our house. In our frantic search for caregivers, we had found some in-home daycares and other short term options to bridge the gap until we could start at the daycare. This time we're planning to do a nanny again (and hoping for a better outcome!) because we moved to a new neighborhood without good daycare options and the nanny search really can't be started until a month or two before you need them.

An additional childcare-related question for you all - is it better to have your childcare provider close to work or close to home (assuming they are not near each other). I work on the other side of town from where I live. Assuming levels of care are equal, I'm guessing close to home is the best option (so my husband can also help with drop off/pick up, I don't have to drive across town if I'm home one day, etc) - but curious what you think?

@Miss Ariel: Ah, good point about the special events. I didn't think about that - it'd definitely be quite a hike for both me and my husband to get back to daycare/in-home/etc for anything during the day. Or if he was sick - it wouldn't be a quick pick up. Hmm.

@TapDancer: We've tried both and I prefer having daycare close to home. I hate sitting in traffic listening to my son cry/complain about the traffic and if either you or your husband ever works from home regularly or on occasion, then it puts all of the drop-off and pick-up responsibility on the person who is going into the office. I work from home every Wednesday, which usually means I get to pick up DS a little early. However, we're back to daycare close to work for the summer so now my husband is stuck with all the responsibility to get him there and home and he doesn't get to come home early.

ETA: It's also nice to make friends in the neighborhood. We often had playdates with daycare friends when daycare was close. We've been invited to do playdates with daycare friends from close to work but it's harder to swing when it isn't a neighborhood park and you have to drive 30 minutes.

@FaithFertility: Hi little cutie!

@FaithFertility: CUTIE!

@Amorini: it wouldn't hurt to research day cares. If they have a long wait list or don't they should let you know. Also, I'd for me it would be a lot easier to tour various places now than with a newborn.

@Miss Ariel: That's a great point about touring places now vs later. I actually have done some research and have it narrowed down to about five places to check out. Finding a nanny or in-home situation is another story... seems like word of mouth and care.com are the only options ... and weeding out potential nannies on care.com seems so tedious. Insert head in sand (okay, not really!).

@Shantuck: You mentioned that the nanny search is really best done a couple months before you need them. How would you go about feeling out the nanny pool (via care.com most likely) just to get an idea of what's / who's out there and cost? Is that something you recommend? We don't know people with infants to even ask around. Also I'm curious what happened with your first nanny and how you'll screen differently for nanny #2...if you care to share!

Happy to see all the great scans this week.

@charmed: Hope yours went well!

@Amorini: So funny you say that! I think he looks just like DH and such a boy face!

@charmed: Congrats! Boys are ruling the board so far. Hope she feels better soon!

I feel like my list got messed up somewhere, so let me know if I'm missing something for you!

@charmed: Oh boy!!! Congrats. Glad all is well though sorry your daughter isn't feeling well.

@Amorini: Our first nanny was a 29 year old who had worked at a Bright Horizons daycare for several years. On the first day she started, I also stayed home so she could see our routine, etc. She started making comments to me about how I was doing various things wrong (not enough neck strength, etc.) and how she was going to have to fix it. She showed up really late on my second day back at work, which of course didn't make me look good when I was trying to show I was committed to doing a good job coming back from leave. She also called my husband that day (even though I had been her sole point of contact thus far) to ask him if she could have friends over. One day she showed up hungover and mentioned that she'd been out since 4 a.m. and hoped that my little guy slept all day. She also would only empty his bottles out of the dishwasher but leave every other more "adult" items (aka anything that wasn't a bottle) in there (apparently trying to teach us that she would not be cleaning up after her) and refused to bring him to the Gymboree classes that I was paying for despite my asking. The straw that broke the camel's back was when told my husband that she thought feeding my pumped breastmilk to my son was "disgusting." Around that same time, he was starting to falling behind the growth curve and his pediatrician was concerned. So after one month, on a Friday evening, we gave her payment for the upcoming week and told her it wasn't working out. We hired a 21 year old as a temp nanny who was lovely and restored my faith that there are good nannies out there. This girl is now a nurse and is my son's regular weekend evening babysitter.

As for what I would do differently, I think we approached the situation looking for who has the most impressive resume on paper (but we failed to realize we were hiring a caregiver and not a lawyer, accountant, etc.). We also wanted somebody who spoke English clearly as we thought that would be how our child learned to speak. However, our temp nanny had a strong Polish accent but was extremely hardworking and loving. It's hard to believe I was so fixated on something so silly. I think my husband also filtered out "older" candidates as he wanted somebody with more energy to bring our little guy places. That also seems like a silly thing to have done as a grandmotherly type would have been wonderful. I will be clear this time that I expect some light housekeeping (i.e. emptying all of the dishes from the dishwater rather than just the bottles or tidying up the family room). I'm not looking for somebody to clean my underwear while I'm at work but I do think that this person should be willing to start dinner or do any other household tasks that I would do if I was home watching my child. I also think I have more confidence this time to call out BS when I see it!

@Shantuck: What a nightmare!!!

We are still on the waitlist (for G!!!) of the best local centre, but when she was 2, we found an awesome other centre (bit of a drive, but worth it because she LOVES going there) -- so it's ok to keep on a waitlist while finding alternates in the meantime.

I still hope to change her closer for preschool next year, but in the meantime, she's happy!

Last call for anyone wanting to contribute to our gift to winniebee.