The road that brings me here to Family Child Care is a long and twisted one. I'll admit, it was never a dream of mine, never my plan. When I had my oldest daughter (J who is 5), I was ready, even eager to get back to work. I've been working since I was 14. It's part of who I am. I always knew that I would be a working mom. It's what I knew, and what I wanted. I've never had to depend on someone else. I liked going to work every day, seeing my friends and coworkers and bringing in a decent income. I enjoyed my job.
I took advantage of the whole 12 weeks maternity leave I was entitled to, and when it was up, I was ready to go back to work. I even felt a little guilty that I wasn't very sad about dropping her off at daycare the first day. I called and checked on her, because I was supposed to. But I felt very comfortable with her provider from the first interview, and I was not worried about her.
Being a full time working mother had it's challenges, but overall it was where I wanted to be. I liked the structure of it. Myself, I am not a very structured person, but I respond well to structure, responsibilities and deadlines. There were times when it didn't work as well for me. We went through a slew of providers, and thank God I had a flexible job. There was a while that she spent more time at work with me than she did anywhere else. But I still never had a desire to stay home full time or to do daycare in my home.
THEN I had my second daughter. (Mac, who is 2).
Something was different. Even before she was born I was dreading going back to work. And then when she came I dreaded it even more. But I also wasn't ready to give up my job and responsibilities yet, not to mention it wasn't an option financially. So I did what had to be done and she went to daycare along with her sister. I was happy with their provider. But I still hated dropping them off every day. I started to fall apart more and more. Not really emotionally, but more, physiologically... I couldn't get out of my own way. It wasn't uncommon for me to be 20 minutes late to work, my work was getting more and more behind and unorganized. And it just kept getting worse until the only real solution was to stay home. There were a million other factors, but it all really added up to the fact that I just didn't have it in me any more to work full time outside the home and be a good parent and wife.
There was an entire week in March that I was home sick with a bad cold/flu type thing. I only brought the girls to daycare one day that week because I was sick enough that I didn't really feel like driving them over, but not sick enough so as not to be able to take care of them. Even though I was miserable that week from being sick, I really enjoyed the time with the girls.
And for the first time I really WANTED to stay home and open a daycare at my house. It kind of started as a joke. I sent my DH a text and said "I'm going to quit my job and open a daycare here at the house." And he texted back and said "Figure it out. As long as we're not losing money, go for it." And it went on from there. I asked around locally if people thought there would be an interest or need. I took my training hours and made contacts and started the licensing process right away. By the time I gave my notice at work I was half way through the process. I created a facebook page to start advertising and went from there. I started getting phone calls and it all started getting very real!
My last day at my previous job was June 3rd and I opened on June 6th. And here I am 5 months later!
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