The Calm After the Storm

I had every intention of getting this blog off the ground...and then life happened.

I wanted more than anything to be a stay-at-home mom, but living in New York would have made that almost impossible. Why? Well, imagine this: 

• Owning and living in a 1,700 sq. ft. condo (you do not own any of the property that is "your yard". 
• Paying $360 a month (plus an additional $140 a month during June, July and August) in maintenance fees (and special assessment fees) which basically covered lawn care, snow removal, and the concrete hole in the ground otherwise known as the pool. 
• Paying almost $8,000 a year in property taxes. Again, the only thing you own is the inside of your tiny condo. 
• Childcare was going to run about $2,000 a month. We checked out daycare facilities and a private nanny - the cost was going to be about the same.  
• Extras like Mommy & Me? These could run you an additional $200+ a month. IF you could find a place that tailored its hours around working moms. 

So, would it have been possible to stay home and live in New York? Probably. I certainly wouldn't have been the first to make it work. Would it have been ideal? Absolutely not. It would have been extraordinarily difficult. But, we were prepared to make it work one way or another. Then God stepped in. 

After years of hardships, God finally decided that it was time to make our new life a little easier. My husband, the amazing man and father that he has grown to be, was willing to make his work life even crazier than it already was by going to work in Manhattan. The hours would be longer, the commute would be torturous, but the money would be better and I could stay home with our daughter. In May, he had started interviewing and was seemingly about to be handed a position when this other opportunity landed in his lap. This new opportunity was for a position that he hoped to attain in the next 5-10 years of his career. 

Not only would this job put my husband exactly where he wanted to be professionally, but it would also relocate our family to Florida - a place with a much lower cost of living, real suburban communities, and, best of all, no more harsh winters - and allow us to live much more comfortably on one salary than if we were to stay in New York. 

At first, the answer seemed easy - let's go! We were excited and optimistic about the idea of moving. My husband submitted his resume and waited to hear back. And waited....and waited....and waited. 

I had practically forgotten about the job, and my husband hadn't actually expected to get it (according to him, he was too young and lacked the experience that was necessary). So you can imagine our surprise when he got a phone call in June from the head of the company asking him to fly down to Florida the following week for an interview. The rest happened with lightening speed.

I won't bore you with all of the details, but long story short we are now living down in sunny Florida! Moving from New York to Florida with an infant actually wasn't as bad as it may seem, and despite a little touch of homesickness, we have been transitioning pretty well. 

Truth be told, Florida is not AS cheap as I thought it would be, but we are definitely better off than we would have been up in New York. If we were in New York, I would be at work right now instead of writing this blog and our daughter would be somewhere doing God knows what. Her dad would probably be leaving for work before she woke up in the morning and getting home after she was already in bed asleep. 

I've only been here about a month and a half, so it still gets a bit lonely at times. But this new life is good, and I have faith that everything will fall into place just as it should. 

Daycare Fun

In my stockpiling post I brought up the dreaded childcare issue.  The first time my husband brought up the issue of daycare, my hormonal, pregnant self just started bawling uncontrollably.  I mean, seriously, anyone who walked in would have thought that my best friend just died.  The crying was on and off for about a week, and when I wasn't crying I was cursing the armpit of a state in which I live for being completely unaffordable for young families while telling my husband that we must absolutely get this house on the market and move down south so that I could stay home and raise our children.    

Anyway, after that week I finally put on my big girl panties and started thinking about how we were going to handle the childcare thing.  As far as expenses go, we can put $5,000 (tax free) into our FSA account specifically for dependent care (I think that's how it's worded).  Okay so that's a start.  Now to find a place.

In my area we have a bunch of corporate kiddie prisons.  They are the Tudor Time, Kinder Care, ABC whosey-whatsies and I have absolutely zero desire to even entertain the thought of putting our daughter into one of them.  When I was in college, I applied for a job at Tudor Time.  As I walked in the door to go to my interview, I knew right away that I didn't want to work there.  It was too sterile and seriously looked like a prison - bullet-proof glass and all.  Not to mention the fact that we have a 27-year-old girl who lives with her mom on our block, and she is just not.all.there if you know what I mean.  Well, she works in one of those places and she is one of the last people I would want taking care of my daughter. With the big corporate places off of the list, it was time to move on to some of the local private daycare centers.

The local daycare centers are either in someone's home (which really grosses me out if I don't know you so those are out), at a church (none close enough to me), or smaller, stand alone establishments (okay let's look into these).  This past summer I worked at a local camp which is a private school the rest of the year.  They have a daycare on site which I had seen all summer, but had never been inside.  I liked the way that the camp was run so I figured that this was a good place to start.

I emailed my summer boss and told her that I'm pregnant and would like to tour the daycare facility.  She was pretty sure that there were one or two spots left open for September and gave me the name and number of the daycare coordinator.  I called, left a message, and waited to hear back.......and waited........and waited.

Finally, my old boss sent me a follow-up email a couple of weeks later to see how it all went.  I told her that I never heard back from her daycare person.  My phone was ringing within an hour (she must have been mad because the daycare lady left a message riddled with excuses and apologies - whatever).  When I finally got her on the phone, the first thing I noticed was that it was really loud in the background...oh no.  But, the loudness was kids laughing and having a good time - that certainly couldn't be the infant room.  I set up a tour for me and my husband.

The next day, I got a call back explaining that oops.  They're actually full for September, but she put us first on the waiting list.  Do we still want the tour?  Sure.

Tour day rolls around.  The daycare isn't as big as I thought it would be.  You have to hold your ID up to the [glass] door before they let you in.  Then you walk in, sign in, and meet whomever it is you are to meet.  The room into which you walk is the toddler room, and it.was.LOUD!  Again, they're running around, laughing, and having a great time so really, I can't fault them for that.  Kids are loud I guess.

What turned me off was the the infant room was separated from the toddler room by what I can only describe as a barn door - top and bottom open separately.  And the infant room was small - 8 cribs, a table with two seats, changing table, and I only saw one swing, one bouncy seat, and one activity mat.  My first impression was that my daughter will spend most of her day in a crib.  I mean, don't get me wrong.  I like the fact that it's clean and that there's structure, but it may even be too structured.  Diaper changes are every two hours - really?  Well what if she poops an hour after diaper change time?  Will she have to sit in her dirty diaper for at least an hour?

In the end, we are still number 1 on the wait list because hey, why not?  It's an option.  But as we walked out, my husband immediately said "no" and told me that he now understood why I had such anxiety when it came to daycare.  And so began our nanny search (I'll put this in another post because this is already a shit show in and of itself).