@greyweld Just my take: IME, buy the cheapest thing on the market re: crib made recently, it will be safe for sleep and also will prevent your back from hurting. We did pack n play but it was not great for sleeping on for little dude and it isn’t safe to add another mattress in. Floor beds are cool and trendy but safer to cosleep on something firmer if you have to because the sleep deprivation’s pretty wicked IME. Floorbeds are super awesome when kids are older because you don’t buy a bed you just pull your crib mattress out and there you go. Bassinets are cool if your baby actually will stay in them while you’re on the couch, but my kid hated his. A baby carrier you can put on half asleep without thinking. Wishing you a good sleeper with all my heart. THAT SAID, what you really want to invest in is some bomb ass swaddles. Velcro and zippers! More than you think you’ll need because there are gonna be some magnificent poop blow outs.
This ends my deluge of only semi-relevant-to-you advice. Forgive me for my sins.
That reminds me, my day care ladies taught us the magic of double swaddling. Swaddle baby, then swaddle again so those lil’ arms stay in there instead of hulking out.
I’m in a “plan daycare as soon as you get a positive pregnancy test” part of the US, so I’m thinking through my learn about daycare strategy. Our amount of leave from work is hazy but in the 3-4 month range. I have learned that if we do want to be picky about preschool for a 2-3 year old, now is the time to get on lists, which is bananas but here we are.
Anything else you all would add to be prepared to make a decision?
Ordered Cribsheet to read for the childcare sections
Will talk to my retired pediatrician mom to get her advice
Joined some local moms groups to get a sense of the market, cost, feel out how gay friendly the vibe is or isn’t, etc
Assuming scan next week goes well, talk to some parent friends of mixed race kids about how they’re approaching things (once our hypothetical kid is preschool aged, we don’t want them to be in a school where they’re the only kid with an East Asian parent, and we’re in a part of the country where that takes planning)
Your state’s department of children and family services should have a public record of day care inspection reports. I want to say in my state they go back one or two years? No day care will have 100% perfect record over that time frame but it can give you a sense of how much they have their shit together. My state has infractions categorized as a 1 or 2 or 3. A 3 is minor, e.g. a prescription medication was laying around and the day care providers immediately threw it out while the inspector was there (common with prescription diaper cream in a locked drawer with 10 other tubes of cream). I think a 2 was like cleaning chemicals weren’t locked away (it might be that someone forgot to redo the child safety latch on a cabinet after grabbing something out of it). If any day care has a 1 then give them a wide berth, that’s like “Oh we didn’t latch the front gate and a kid wandered out into traffic, whoopsie.” For what it’s worth I didn’t come across any 1’s in my searches. Your state may have things set up differently, of course.
@anon51297825 once compiled a huge list of question to ask a childcare provider and posted it on the Baby and pregnancy chat on MMM. I don’t know if she has a copy, or if you’ve ever been over there, but it was an amazing resource if it could be located again. I would go there and look for you, but it’s blocked on my work computer. #rude
Honestly, touring will probably give you the most information you need. We chose ours because of “good vibes”. Which shocked me honestly, considering who I am as a human.
Things I learned:
Yes wait lists are long but often parents are on multiple lists making them artificially longer. Of the 4 places we called/toured one had availability when we needed it and the other 3 said middle of 2024 for an infant. 2 of those 3 have already said a spot opened within our time frame. So 3 of 4 could have worked for us.
When we toured we looked for:
How long have most employees been there (the range for the one we chose was 5-15 years)
What is the demographics of the kids? We live in a more diverse area (for Denver) so it was nice seeing that the kids mostly matched our neighborhood demographics. (We have about a 1/3 ratio of Latin, Asian, and White in our area and that was about the ratio of caregivers and kids, not exactly if we were to count the people but close).
They speak equal Spanish and English (Spanish is a very common language in my area)
How much outside time do the infants and toddlers get?
Do the kids look happy? The center we ultimately chose had infants-afterschool care and they all looked happy. The toddlers were going for a walk around the block all dressed up in their coats and it melted me.
Location was a priority for us and having something less than a mile away was IDEAL.
How did we feel talking to the staff? Were they on their phones or interacting with the kids? We got such good vibes from everyone we talked to. The person running the center seemed genuine and passionate and the other caretakers were engaged with the kids.
Price below $2400/month. Here is the pricing for our daycare.
TL/DR You can do as much research as you want before hand, and I think that is great!! But you will likely find what is a good fit for you by touring the options near you. There was only so much “on paper” that we could gain before seeing the options in person.
There’s a lot to read online, but one super helpful thing for me was just to talk to a variety of parents about their very different childcare situations. I learned about a lot of out-of-the-box solutions this way and in hindsight, am glad I didn’t do things “by the book”.
A few random things:
One friend, whom I like and respect a lot, told me about a home care they love. They’re licensed childcare businesses, operating out of someone’s home. Quality depends a lot on the owner, but often there’s more flexibility of schedule, etc. I think these only spread by word of mouth, so you can try to find out about them in parent resource groups, referrals, etc.
We lucked out on a lot of fronts with our daycare but one of our tipping points was that it is Black-owned. Our mixed-race kid is one of about 7 nonwhite kids? (16ish students total).
I looked into daycares that were officially Montessori or whatever. I really thought that’s the direction we’d go. But the ones near me all had long application forms that asked how we, as parents, would be contributing to the school and that all felt a little too “gala dinner” for me.
A friend who works hospital hours (7am start) is leaning hard towards nanny share with a neighbor because options for that schedule will be very limited.
Ultimately we picked ours based on “good vibes” too (and within bike/walk distance), haha.
I’ll just add that you can always make changes, the first choice doesn’t have to be perfect. As long as an environment is physically safe for the kiddo it can give some breathing room for longer-term decisions.
In Pipsqueak’s two years on this planet she’s been in the following care situations
0-5 months: home with one or both parents on parental leave
5-7 months: mix of parents flexing work hours with some grandparent support
7-11 months: 2 days a week at a large daycare center, one day with grandma, one day with grandpa, one day with dad
11-18 months: 4 days a week with a nanny, 1 day with dad. Nanny gave notice after getting a professional job offer.
18-20 months: 5 days a week in a Montessori daycare that didn’t end up being a good fit
20-27 months (today): 5 days a week in a different large center daycare that we all really like
Any tips for getting rid of toys kids have outgrown without meltdowns? Our toy collection is out of control and every time I try to re-home a toy there is a meltdown. Even toys they literally haven’t played with in a year. Tried to do it with them giving input and watching, tried to do it without them in the hopes they wouldn’t notice, same result. Help, I’m drowning in toys!
Do you have room to stash them away out of sight for three or four months?
Speaking of which, thank you for the reminder that I’m going to gamble and move Kiddo’s toy kitchen and tool shelf around. Tool thing will go into the shed temporarily, toy kitchen will go where the tool thing was to see if that reminds him of its existence so he actually plays with it. He has played with the tool thing probably a total thirty minutes in five years.
The minimalist mom has a whole series about decluttering with kids. One of the suggestions I’ve seen (don’t remember if it’s her or someone else) is to let the container be the bad guy. For any particular category, get a bin and they get to pick what fits in there. Everything else in that category goes. I’ve also seen parents buy their toys off their kids then they can use that money to buy a new toy. Personally, we do some toy rotation (which mainly means I keep a bunch of her toys put away, swap stuff if I’m overwhelmed and hope she’ll play more or if she asks for something). I find it makes it a lot easier to quarantine a toy this way and see if she asks for it back. She still does remember everything and ask for them back down the road, and sometimes I just have to sit with a meltdown- it’s honestly made it easier so far that it’ll be something insane like the piece of tissue paper she got from grandma last Christmas. So I just try to empathize and validate and then redirect (aka I’m not sure you always can avoid melt downs, but sanity and a home not so cluttered with toys it’s safe to walk around is a legit need!)
I just sorted through things and used the box in the garage for a while method. If nobody asked for it in a couple of weeks, I pitched it.
However, I had three kids, and toys lasted a long, long time at my house. Once #3 outgrew things, I kept the best things for visitors. We eventually passed a fair number of things onto the grandboy.
We talk a lot about how we got to play with the toys and love them but there are other families that need those toys now. We say bye-bye to the toy and then they get to put it in the buy nothing bin. We also talk through it anytime we get hand me downs. We talk about how the old family didn’t need it anymore so now it’s our turn to have it and when we don’t need it anymore we will give it to a new family.
Thankfully we haven’t had any tantrums. I usually only pare down/give away stuff that they aren’t playing with anymore. One exception was a little mini radio Flyer wagon. Both girls learned how to walk by pushing it, and it was an OT recommendation. They are both drastically too big now but played with it constantly still and kept leaving it places where Ry would trip on it and fall down. I decided it had to go. We just talked through that it’s made to help babies learn how to walk and they both could walk now so we needed to give it to a new baby. The family we picked on buy nothing has a 15 month old in OT and PT who isn’t walking yet. B just brought it up yesterday that the wagon went away to help a new baby.
When do we send our toddler to school in underwear?
He’s got potty training down pat at home, except sometimes he doesn’t tell us if he needs to poop. We’ve only taken a few trips out in public, where we successfully convinced him to go in the toilet for pee but not poop.
Preschool wants him to be pretty much potty trained when he goes to school, but the main thing is that at home / out with us, he’s always near us to be able to communicate / go to the toilet proactively. I understand that preschool doesn’t want to potty train him, but putting him in diapers now runs the risk of regressing because it means he doesn’t have to communicate to go to the bathroom.
We’ve been working on it slowly since November (Thanksgiving) and then got more serious in January. So it’s not like sending him after a 3 day weekend…
So should we start tomorrow in underwear at the preschool or have a few more weekends/another month with outings before trying preschool?
(aka I’m not sure you always can avoid melt downs, but sanity and a home not so cluttered with toys it’s safe to walk around is a legit need!)