Childcare Happiness

I think we all know by now, that I don't relish the idea of sending my kids off to spend the day with some other person. But, we've found a sitter that makes the leaving a little less traumatic for us all.

A friend of ours with three kids of her own is watching the girls. Can you imagine the looks she must get when she takes my kids and her kids to the park together? 5 kids 5 and under (girl (5), boy (3.5), girl (2.5), boy (18 mos), girl (11 mos) - heck those must be the same looks that Mike's mom was getting when she had her 5 kids that were 5 and under.

The age spacing seems to work well for this mix of kids. The older girl is really quite nice and helpful (as much as 5 year old girls can be). She is also old enough to realize that if a 2 year old yells because you touch their toy that there are plenty of other things to play with and will happily pick something else. I'm not too sure how much the 3 year old boy and Morgan interact and play. I do know the 3 year old boy really likes Kenna and wants to trade his younger brother for her, sweet.

I think the friend and I parent very similarly; so, my kids seem to know where she's coming from and have adapted well. Kenna will even let me walk across the room at their house without crying or crawling straight toward me. She still fusses for about 40 seconds after I leave the house, but that's much better than crying for longer.

They sometimes come to our house and I sometimes take the girls to their house. It seems to be a fair trade for the kids and they all seem to like trading places. They live pretty close to us (not that most things in Richmond are very far apart anyway), so it is a pretty easy to drop-off and pick-up routine.

This arrangement sure makes me less stressed out about going to work. I'm pretty lucky to have it as well since, I just happened to ask this friend if she wanted to watch my kids in a joking way because I figured there was no way she would really want to watch 5 kids all afternoon 3 or 4 days a week. I'm quite happy that I did ask her.