Tag Archives: kids

Why don’t schools support working parents better?

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This isn’t the post I’d originally planned to post.

My first draft of this, written two days ago – the evening after I registered dd for Kindergarten – was far more cranky. Now, I’m not sure how I feel. Numb? Frustrated? Resigned to it all?

The long and the short of it is that I’m dealing with the emotional aftermath of realizing how much about our lives will change once dd starts Kindergarten. Of course, there’s a financial toll, but we’ve been paying such enormous sums of money to our day care center for so long that I’m just not as sensitive to that anymore. You could say that I’ve been broken down by it all.

What I’m trying to get past now is the fact that so many things need to be cobbled together in order to ensure that dh and I can continue to work.

Let me say that again: so that dh and I can continue to work.

Why should putting our dd in Kindergarten, in a public school – no less – have any kind of impact on whether or not we have jobs? After all, public schools are free and that should be an enormous help, right?

Well…not quite.

We live in a town with excellent schools, so private schools aren’t a consideration. I’m perfectly at peace with that; the quality of the school district was part of our decision to move here, and we’re both the product of public schools. Of course, our property taxes are through the roof, but that’s a function of the high quality schools and a NIMBY streak a whole town wide.

So, it kinda hurt when we found out that we have to pay for full-time Kindergarten. The half-day is free, because that’s a requirement set by the state, but full-time Kindergarten comes at a cost of nearly $4K before you get to any before and after care.

Why on earth would you need before and after care, you ask? Well, school only runs from about 9am-3pm. With both of us working full-time and still having commutes to contend with, that schedule is impossible to match. We typically leave the house around 7am to get both of us to work on time (with a day care drop-off by *somebody*), and I’m the first one to the kids at 5:15pm, if I’m running on-time. So, that leaves us in the unenviable position of needing both “before-care” and “after-care”. If we’re okay with paying for the before and after care offered at school, we can pay more than $5K on top of the Kindergarten tuition. As it is, we’re only on the hook for an additional $4K because of a before-care arrangement I struck up with a friend who lives up the street.

Now, that’ll cover us from the start of school (around Labor Day) to end of the school year (late June), not including various holidays, Christmas vacation, and two school vacation weeks in the spring term. There’s still a gap of however many weeks (9-12) during the summer where we need to have a better plan than leaving dd in the house with a window cracked. She’s pretty nearly outgrown her daycare, so next summer (and maybe even this summer) we need a camp. That’s another $4K-ish, with hours running from about 9am-3pm/4pm. BUT, you can pay for before- and after-care! Sigh.

I’ve started to price out camps, and the timeframes they offer span anywhere from 6 weeks to 12 weeks, in costs ranging from around $200/week to nearly $500/week. It’s all mind-boggling.

I feel like I have to pull together this patchwork quilt of solutions so that dd will be in an educational and engaging environment year-around, since quitting a job simply isn’t an option. The cost of living in the eastern portion of Massachusetts rivals that of New York City or San Francisco – I know only a handful of families with stay at home parents. I don’t feel like I can take out this frustration on any of the nice people at the school; they are all awfully nice and they could easily tell that most of us were deer in headlights: unsure of what questions to ask because we’re not even sure what all we’re getting ourselves into.

I suppose that, as long as I’m willing to open my checkbook and do far more homework than dd will have to do anytime soon, I can get all of these resources lined up. It’s just more than a bit overwhelming and I only hope that I don’t let anything slip through the cracks. The room for error, when you can’t just spend days at home to cover gaps that you didn’t plan appropriately for, is just miniscule.

 

The saga of the big boy bed

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Our dd was about 2-1/2 when she got her big girl bed – a hand-me-down from dh’s brother’s childhood days. She moved out of the crib (which converted to a toddler bed) and into the big girl bed a few months before ds arrived; that gave her a chance to get used to the idea of more real estate on which to sleep. Of course, this is now a cruel joke: what space she has she covers in stuffed animals, and she still routinely tries to get into our bed because she doesn’t want to sleep alone.

Still, when ds started to make noises about wanting his own big boy bed, not long after reaching the 2yo mark, we realized that we needed to plan this into the new year budget. Turns out, as he’s coming up on his own 2-1/2yr milestone, he’ll be in his own bed. We actually managed to pick a bed today, after a few weeks of hemming-and-hawing, and we found one that we think should have a fairly decent lifespan. Funny thing is: it’s not a bed for him.

The trouble is, we were having issues trying to find a bed that we liked for ds that was in our price range. It seems that even twin beds routinely run close to $500 before you get to the mattress (another $100, if you buy it at BJ’s) and the boxspring (another $80, if you buy it at BJ’s). That’s just nuts.

On a whim, I managed to go through the flyer for a national mattress chain and saw that they had beds there, as well. One bed was white, and since that matched dd’s decor, I figured we could swap the (dark wood) hand-me-down bed into her brother’s room and buy her a white bed at a more reasonable price. She was ALL about this idea, but I wanted to see the bed in person. And aye, there’s the rub. I called several local outlets for this chain, and each one told me that they didn’t have the bed on display but they COULD ORDER IT FOR ME. Well, that’s all nice and stuff, but what if I want to see the bed and make sure it’s not made of cardboard? These aren’t the things you want to find out after you’ve spent nearly $300 on a bed and the delivery men are now many miles –> thattaway.

One of the nice folks I talked to even suggested that it was an online-only bed, which was a little confusing: the web site had it “on sale” for $80 more than the sale price in the flyer. Huh?

So, I gave in and got into an online chat with a very pleasant customer service rep who went on to assure me he COULD ORDER IT FOR ME. Uh, no, I’d like to see it in person. I want to make sure it’s good quality. Well, he explained, we have 700 outlets nationwide and I can’t tell you which ones would have it store. But, he assured me, I CAN ORDER IT FOR YOU AT THE PRICE IN THE FLYER. This is where Twitter folks would typically whip out the #FAIL tag. I ended the chat and moved on with my life, fairly annoyed and definitely sure I’m never buying a mattress from them.

Onward and upward, we went to the same discount chain where we bought our entire bedroom set. The nice salesperson showed me several styles of twin bed, answered all of my questions (sometimes obliquely when he was trying not to say outright, “Don’t buy this one because we’ve had problems with it”), and proceeded to not be an ass when I took his card but decided not to make a purchase that day. Sure, dd told me she LOVED every bed she bounced on or came within 5 feet of, but that didn’t mean we were both ready to buy. I was, but dh wasn’t.

I continued searching, and since we both had MLK Day off, we dropped off the kids at day care and decided to head out without the added distraction of chasing down the kids. Buying-with-children is like being impaired by drugs or alcohol; you just wave your hand, “Whatever – I’ll take it”, because you’re so incredibly distracted/worn down/incapable of thinking through anything as you keep one eye on the salesperson and one on the kids. So, while I’m okay with buying-with-children for things like clothes for them, or maybe even small electronics, I’m NOT okay trying to do that with furniture purchases. It’s just too expensive and too long-term of a purchase for that.

We headed over to a large local chain store (not big-blue-and-yellow-box..the one next door to it) and checked out the clearance center, since their regular prices started at $500. Their selection in the clearance center was anemic and suggested that we were still out of our price range. So, we moved on to a used furniture store I’d heard about that’s a couple towns away. This HUGE warehouse location turned out to be…uh, small. And had about 2 beds. *cough*

Moving on.

We then went to the place where we bought our crib, but since they specialize in more designer furniture for kids, their lowest price was still a bit higher than I’d like (closer to $400). They did have the benefit of being just up the street from another place where we’d bought some chairs a few years back. Again, we were pretty close to the top of our price range and not finding anything that was so amazing that it inspired us to jump up the price bracket.

And so we came back to store #1, where we’d seen several beds and had dd actually give her opinion. And we picked one that we both liked and that was in a much better price range than we’d seen elsewhere. Our salesperson wasn’t there, but since I’d had his card and I was pretty fervent about “He’ll get written on the slip, right?!”, they made sure to include his name so that he’d get at least partial commission for the sale. And so, the bed will be delivered this week. This means we still have a flurry of activity to complete: get new linens for ds (he needs twin-sized sheets, plus a blanket, a comforter, a pillow, etc.), get a mattress for ds and a boxspring for dd’s new bed, take down the toddler bed and move the hand-me-down bed into its place…I’m tired just thinking about it.

We did manage to get a couple sets of flannel sheets for a steal ($15 at one place and $17 at another), a 6pc comforter set for $72, a pillow for $6, and we grabbed a mattress and boxspring (from BJ’s, at the prices I mentioned above). The linens were a bit of a PITA to acquire, but that’s mostly because girls have a selection that’s > ——— < wide and boys get a selection that’s > < wide. WTH?! (My BIL would claim that this is a constant, because there are some things where girls get ALLLLLL the selection and boys just get screwed. OTOH, girls have to beg, borrow and steal to get pockets in their work pants, and that’s just complete and utter b.s., as far as I’m concerned.)

So, all in all, it was a very expensive day, but by the end of the week, ds should be in his big-boy-bed, dd should be in her new bed, and dh & I will likely be ready for very tall drinks of something with a proof rating on the label.

All this, and we don’t even know how he’ll sleep in it.

7 Realities of Life After You Have Kids

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These aren’t all of them, mind you, but a few things have occurred to me since I had kids. Well – since I had KID, and then with KIDS comes some kind of strange new math whereby 1 kid + 1 kid > 2 kids. I hope they don’t put this on a standardized test. Feel free to add more of your own in the comments; my hope is that this will be both cathartic for me (and perhaps other parents) and instructive for those who don’t yet/won’t ever have kids. I feel like I endlessly need to explain to people that this is how things are, because if they don’t have kids, they don’t necessarily see things from that different perspective. I remember what my perspective was before I had kids. But everything’s changed. That’s not to say that I don’t love my kids (I love them immensely and can’t imagine my life without them). I’m just acknowledging that things in my life have changed, and part of why I feel like I’m always struggling for balance is because it’s not something you get back right away after you have even 1 kiddo. Your entire globe shifts by more than a few degrees, and it continues to shift daily (sometimes hourly).

So, here’s my list of 7 things that are the “new reality” for me, at least, post-kids:

1. You can’t just do/say/buy what you want whenever you want anymore. Your schedule is no longer your own, since you now have to rearrange things around when the egg timer expires on the sitter that you’re scrambling to afford paying or the day care that promises to charge you $3 for every 5 minutes you’re late. Saying whatever you want is also out the window, since there comes a point in every parent’s life when they realize that their small human child has turned into a small human-shaped parrot. Words you said five days ago will pop out of the child’s mouth at random points and you suddenly realize that it’s like carrying little tape recorders around in your car. (“C’mon – move it!” – d’oh!) And, of course, buying is a thing of the past without planning. I used to have what economists term “disposable income” (income above and beyond what you need to pay for your necessities, like food and housing). Once I had kids, my income was disposed of for me in Children’s Orchard and Old Navy, at day care, and in seemingly endless quantities of Pampers.

2. Tired is the new normal. Even when you get a full night of sleep, one fuss seems to drain it all out of you. I have a theory about this: since kids seem to have infinite energy at times, perhaps they get it by systematically draining us of ours? Some of this must have to do with keeping up with someone else’s needs all the time. Of course, when they let you nap (and don’t draw on you with non-washable marker), you should consider those kids definite keepers.

3. Your party circuit WILL have to change. Hey – I like a bouncy place as much as the next person with two bad knees…watching the kids play Lord of the Bouncy always cracks me up something fierce. Kiddo parties (or those organized by parents of small children) typically end up being ones that are the easiest to attend, since they’re typically timed not to start at their children’s bedtime. Becoming friends with your kids’ friends’ parents is a great way to continue to socialize; not only do you get to hang out with people who are typically right near you, but you also have a built-in way to find people who have kids of similar age to bounce ideas off or compare notes with on things like the local school system. This doesn’t mean that I am ready to cast off the shackles of my former party circuit; I miss my friends terribly. It’s just that going to, say, a soccer game or a party that kicks off at the kids’ bedtime means I have to get a sitter ($$$), miss reading bedtime stories and giving goodnight kisses to my kiddos (!!!), or risk having melty kids at an event that they’ll likely not enjoy from being so tired attending.

4. You may have to eat your favorite foods on the sly. Unless you plan to become what my mom used to term “a restaurant” (“I’m not making four separate dinners! Do I look like a restaurant?!”), dinners end up relying heavily on whatever the kids will eat. I was flipping through the grocery store flyer earlier and noticed they had shrimp on sale. Shrimp…I love shrimp. And no one else in the house will eat them. Sigh. Even if dh and I are the only ones who will eat something, we’ll typically try to find a way to seed the dinner with other things that the kids will eat. For example, we know that we promised the kids pizza one night for when we have a sitter coming over. We’ll be having a quick dinner before the sitter arrives, so I realized that this was the perfect opportunity to make something they WON’T eat. Crock pot turkey chili to the rescue!!

5. Embrace what doesn’t complicate your life further. This could also be known as “the crock pot rule”. I love my crock pots because they’ve allowed me not to have to fret about not having sufficient time to prepare healthy, tasty meals in the short time I have between when I get home from work with the kids and when dinner needs to be on the table. We eat family dinner together every night, and we try to eat it around the same time every night so that the kids’ routine won’t get thrown off. (Hungry kids and velociraptors have a LOT in common, including the sharp claws bit.) This isn’t to say that I endorse just dragging out frozen dinners every night, but there are nights when it’s a freezer raid to get stuff to the table and I refuse to apologize for it. Who should I apologize to? Every meal has some protein, some starch, some veggie and some dairy. That type of constant 4-food-group plate requires planning, and between weekly meal plans and the crock pot, we’ve been able to keep ourselves mostly sane about dinners for the last several years.

6. Balance becomes a lot harder to accomplish than ever before. There’s a section of Dr. Seuss’ classic “The Cat in the Hat” where the cat is trying to show how much fun he can be by balancing on a ball and successively holding more things in his hands, on his tail and on his head. Eventually, he tumbles to the ground under the weight of all of it (and hopping on the ball), because it’s just too many things to try to balance at once. I feel like that some days. Working full-time and trying to keep the house in some semblance of order while co-raising two kids sometimes seems like a ride on a hamster wheel redesigned by M.C. Escher. The things I love doing, like yoga, have become a lot harder to do in the context of our schedule and reprioritizing kid stuff higher in order to keep to our routine). I’m not resentful; I’m resigned to it. Things will get easier as the kids get older, just as there was this amazing evolutionary leap forward in my quality of life once the kids were both old enough to be left in the living room to play while I finished preparing dinner. Balance will continue to evolve; I just need to continue not to beat myself up about not doing/being everything I want to do/be all the time.

7. You have to do what works for you. This was basically the motto of the online birth group I joined when I was pregnant with dd. We found this oasis of sane in a whirling dust storm of negativity and “PARENTING: UR DOIN IT WRONG” that seemed to pervade the rest of the boards our group was a part of. We supported each other, gave advice that was open and honest and we didn’t jump down each other’s throats when someone who supports cloth diapering heard that another wanted to use disposables. There’s so much trial-and-error in parenting, especially when they’re young; it’s just impossible to follow a roadmap exactly and have everything work out perfectly. What works for one kiddo may not work for another, and what you loved as a kid may be despised by your own kiddo. Constant adjustment and refining is the order of the day. Feeling guilty, or giving others guilt, just is so counterproductive.

 

I’m sure I’ve missed some. These are just my highlights. These are the things I’ve come to realize over the last 5 years and 2 months. I don’t miss childless life any more than I miss the single life. I know the aspects of those times in my life will come back later (and I can just bypass reliving the aspects I didn’t like nearly so much). For now, for me, it’s about embracing where I am NOW.