Big Dilemma!

I need some help.  Major help.  If you are an interior designer, or a magician, then I will beg on my knees for you if you will help me!  Here's the story:

We are living in a 3 bedroom townhouse, with the 3 bedrooms and full bath upstairs, the living area and half bath on the main floor. and an unfinished basement.  Currently we have the master bedroom set up as the main day home play room, the other 2 bedrooms are set up for my daughter's bedroom and the nap time room, with the adult bedroom in the basement.  After a while of having the set up like this, I have realized that hauling kids up and down the stairs 5-6 times every day for meals and outside time is completely impractical, not to mention unsafe when I have 2 under 2 who don't know how to do stairs on their own.  So I decided that I would set up our kids picnic table upstairs, and make sure to do lots of slow cooker meals, and casseroles that I would be able to grab from the kitchen and bring upstairs to the kids to eat.  Well, in comes my home visitor from the agency and she tells me that is a big fat no-no to leave the kids alone even for 2 minutes to grab a meal and bring upstairs.  My husband and I sat down to brainstorm again, and came up with the idea to get a loft bed, or a futon for our 6 year old to sleep on, and convert her room into a kitchen for the day home.  As I thought about that idea I thought of how awesome it would be to have the day home area completely separate from the rest of the family home.  It would feel great to go upstairs to work, and come back downstairs to my home, so I got excited thinking about getting a mini fridge, and putting a toaster oven and slow cooker on nice shelves upstairs, until I realized that my daughter is starting school in one week. 

Now I'm not sure what to do.  As you may remember from some of my earlier posts I am open late hours, and will most likely have children here until past 9 pm.  With my daughter needing to be up at 7:30 am, she is going to need to be asleep by 8:30 at the latest in order to continue getting the sleep that she needs, that means getting her into bed by 8:00.  If any if you are parents then I'm sure you know that getting a kid to sleep with other children awake somewhere else in the house is no easy task, and getting a kid to sleep when there are other children just across the hall is damn near impossible.  So I am lost and do not know what to do.  I've come up with some ideas, but all of them have some pretty big negatives to them, so I'm enlisting your help in coming up with a solution that will work. 

Here are the options I have thought of so far, and a few of the negative points associated with them:

• Option 1: Day home stays completely upstairs, my 6 year old stays sleeping upstairs, she may or may not get enough sleep at night, making her grouchy, irritable, and miserable, consequently making the entire family grouchy, irritable and miserable.
• Option 2: Move the day home space to the main floor, and convert the master bedroom into a living room.  The two big cons of this are that we would need to get new furniture as our current couches would not fit upstairs, and we would have to watch TV at very low levels so as not to wake up the kids sleeping beside us.
• Option 3: Move the living room into the basement, day home goes on the main floor, all family bedrooms go upstairs.  The big cons of this scenario are again, needing to get new furniture as our current couches would not fit through the doorway to the basement, and of course having the main living room in a dark unfinished basement is not very appealing.

As stated earlier, if you are a magician that can magically solve this problem I would love you forever and literally do anything for you, because I'm not seeing a way out of this bind without causing a lot of trouble for everyone in our house.

Things are looking up!

Lots of good things are happening with my dayhome and I am excited!  My case worker from the agency stopped by today for her final visit, so I am certified under the agency, which means more money for me, and more potential clients headed my way.  I also have a very nice lady with 2 children who is now ready to start, bringing my total count up to 3, which means I only need to find one more space and I am full.  The 2 families I have on board now are both needing afternoon/evening care, which fits perfectly into the schedule that I wanted.  The one little guy who is here right now is only part time because dad cannot afford full time fees, but when I mentioned that I would be accepting subsidy he was excited because he does qualify, which means he will be paying less money and I will be getting more money, so we both win! 

It seems like it's been a long time coming, but it looks like everything is finally falling nicely into place, so can you see why I'm excited here?  We've been struggling a bit financially these past few months, but it looks like I'll be getting a nice paycheck by the end of month, not to mention getting to spend some time with some wonderful new kids!

Why I love having a dayhome

My first child has started, a wonderful little boy that started off very shy, but after only a couple of days is really letting down his guard and getting along splendidly with my daughter's.  Yesterday I was watching them play together and it made me think about why I love having the dayhome so much, compared to working in a daycare.  Essentially, they are they time thing: taking care of children, but there are plenty of differences.

1.  I don't have to leave the house.  This means no commute, no fighting with rush hour traffic, no bundling up the kids in -40 weather to get to work, no running to catch the bus.  If I don't want to leave the house all day, I don't have to.

2.  I can let kids be kids.  In a daycare setting when you have anywhere from 12-20 kids in the same space together, things can get out of hand very quickly.  Kids are always being reminded to be quiet, and don't rough house, there is quite a long list of "no's" that you have to tell the children.  With a dayhome, there are only 6 children at the most, and 2 of those are babies, so with 4 kids running around, it's relatively easy to keep the under control, without having to say "no" very often.

3. My kids can sleep in.  Is there anything worse than having to wake up a child in the morning before they're ready to wake up?  I think not.

4. It forces me to keep a clean house.  After all, I can't expect parent's to want their children to be playing on a dirty floor, or eating off a table that hasn't been wiped in days.

5.  It makes me keep a routine.  I know that having a daily routine is practically an essential for any kids well-being.  When kids know what to expect during the day there are less tantrums, less fights, and they are happier children when they can learn what to predict throughout the day.  I know all this, yet when it is just my own kids I slack off, having other children to take care of means I need to keep a predictable schedule so everyone stays happy.

6. I don't have to pay someone else to take care of my children, while I take care of someone else's children.

7. I set my own schedule.  If I don't want to work a certain day, I just let my parents know I'm not available that day.  Likewise with holidays.

8. My monthly income is not finite.  In a daycare my income is limited to how much the owner is willing to pay me, which usually isn't much, and is always the same whether I am watching 4 kids or 8 kids.  In my own dayhome I can choose my income.  If I only need a little bit of extra money, I only need to watch one or two kids, if I want to make lots of money, I can take the maximum of 6 children, plus some part time or drop in kids, and keep my dayhome open extended hours.  It is up to me, and I love that.

9. I don't have to sell my self short.  Working in daycares I found my boss never appreciated me, always putting the needs of parents above the needs of the staff, and sometimes even putting her needs above both of those.  Some parents didn't appreciate what I did, and only viewed me as nothing more than a teenage babysitter.  When it's my business, it's my rules.  If I feel that a parent is not respecting me, I can tell them to take their kid somewhere else.

10.  I get to be my own boss!  Need I say more?

Still Procrastinating

First off, let me start by saying I know that once my dayhome is officially started I will be the most awesome worker, my house will be clean, the kids will have fun, and everything will be great, but in the meantime, I really need someone to give me a good kick in the butt.

I know I need to get started, we need the money, we made the move specifically so I could finally start my day home, I have been dreaming of having a day home for years, so why is this so hard to get started?  Maybe it stems from my childhood shyness.  Maybe I don't want to give up all the free time I have every day.

I think I'm scared.

I'm scared of starting this thing that has been a dream of mine for so long, only to find out I may not like it.  What if I HATE being at home all day with 4 extra kids in tow?  What if I find myself losing patience, what if I let my husband down?  What if I let my children down?  What if I let myself down?  "Gulp."  I  don't think I can handle that.  So I find it easier to procrastinate, instead of actually moving on with my life. 

But why?  I know I love children.  I know I love being around kids.  The only thing that drove my crazy at my most recent daycare job was the boss, so why would I not enjoy running my own day home where I am the boss?  I'm sure I will, but there's that tiny voice inside my head that keeps saying "what if?"  and it scares me.

So this is me saying I am not going to be scared anymore.  I know this is what I want to do, I would not have turned my life upside if it weren't.  So I am going to start this, and I know I am going to enjoy it, because this is my passion.  I am going to stop letting my fears get in the way of what I truly want to do.

Trying to get things going

I must admit that I have been lazier than I should be in regards to getting the ball rolling with my day home.  I've got the play room mostly set up, but still some clutter and some space management issues I need to sort out, So far I have only posted 2 kijiji ads looking for clients, and only one interview with a prospective parent, which I thought went well, but haven't heard back from yet, so maybe it didn't go as well as I thought.  I still have some loose ends to tie up with the agency before I can get approved; getting my police check, installing a few safety features in my home, and getting a first aid kit set up, to name a few. 

Just yesterday I was sitting down to think and I realized why that is.  I am not a morning person.  My husband works nights.  I put the kids to bed at 10:00, sometimes even later, then stay up for a couple of hours waiting for my husband to get home, we'll chat, play a game, watch a show together, and usually head to bed around 1:30.  I enjoy sleeping in until 10:00 in the morning, and I am NOT looking forward to waking up at 6:00 in the morning to get ready for someone to drop off their child first thing in the morning.  Then it hit me.  Why don't I cater to the people working nights shifts, and weekends, and shift work?  There's got to be plenty of parents who struggle with baby-sitters, and have their children in multiple care centers to accommodate their schedules, so why not cater to them.  I am happy to have children show up around lunch time and stay until well after supper, that suits me just fine. 

So I tweaked my kijiji ad, and am hoping to get some people who read it and say "Finally, someone who welcomes my alternative work schedule, and will be happy and alert to care for my children all evening."

My first blog post

After much deliberation, and the help of a great friend I decided to finally start blogging.  It took me some time before I decided on a good subject to blog about, after all, hasn't it all been done before, so what's the point?  Not quite, after seeing so many moms in my online moms group asking about , baby wearing, EC friendly, cloth diapering day cares, I realized, isn't that what I am doing?  Yes, I am in the process of opening up a day home for July 1, 2011.  This is something I have been dreaming about doing for years now, and it is finally coming to be a reality, and no better timing than right now.  I am excited to be able to offer many "attachment parenting" ideals in a day home.

Since this is my first post I will keep it short.  I plan to keep my blog updated with what is going on in the day home process, and the day to day happenings of life with 1 adult and 6 children.