this woman’s work

You are browsing the archives from 2005 July.

My childcare situation isn’t so stunning right now. Madison is taking time to warm up to my little sister and I think that she will — just in time for my little sister to leave for college. So I’m feeling like I need to look for alternatives now because I really don’t want to spend a long time breaking things in around here only to change them drastically. If something fabulous came up before my sister left, I’d have to fire her.

Sucks to hire (and fire) family.

Part of it is her fault for not getting in here when I first asked her, too, (we would be a month ahead of things if she’d come in when I expected her to) and part of it is my fault for not hammering at her to get her tush over already, damn the excuses.

Anyway, I have feelers out for other people to come over and hang with my kids but someone on the homeschool list offered to have Madison over to her house because she used to do childcare but slowed way down when she decided to homeschool.

That made me start thinking about homecare. I wondered what that would be like — dropping Madison off two mornings a week (my plan was to have someone over three days a week but that seems like too many to have her out of the house) and going with Noah to the library or a bookstore to work. That could be good except for this one little problem.

I don’t want to do it.

I have a lot of personal opinions about daycare, none of them particularly positive. My bias is only partly rooted in reality because I know many people who have ideal daycare situations that work for them and their children are thriving and lovely. But see, considering daycare reminds me of how much I don’t want to use it. I LOVE being home with my kids. I find it pretty darn fulfilling. If money were no issue, I’d be perfectly (well, mostly) happy writing when I can snatch some time. But money IS an issue (as it is for most families) and so I need some focused time to work and if I got that focused time to work, I would be a nicer, less stressed mommy and I would also get to see my husband again without a computer screen between him and me. (Right now, most evenings find me in front of the computer.)

Also, without solid chunks of focused time, I find my work bleeding way too often into the rest of my life making me distracted and scattered and altogether crazy.

So childcare — solves all the problems, right? Yeah, it does and that’s why I’m looking but I’m not going to like it.

My ideal is still someone lovely who comes over and is crazy about Madison but I’m just going to roll that idea around in my head — having Madison at a nice mother’s house a couple of mornings a week. She’s resilient and bright and sunny and I’m sure she’ll be fine. Except if she isn’t.

Oh I hate this!