My husband Jon and I got a super surprise when we decided to have a baby – we ended up with fraternal twins. In the two hour conversation after our fateful 18 week ultrasound that showed two boys, we said this about one million times:
Two infants in day care
TWO infants in day care
TWO INFANTS in day care!!!!!!
For five years, we wrote a painfully large check to day care every month. Goodbye vacations, goodbye expensive dinners out, goodbye disposable income. As our boys got closer and closer to kindergarten, even the day care employees counted down the remaining payments with us. Kindergarten, to us, was FREE school. It was the holy grail. It would literally be thousands of dollars back in our pockets.
Oh people, if only someone ANYONE anywhere on the internet had talked about how much more work kindergarten is! With day care, we wrote a big check every month and we didn’t have to worry about anything. Meals were provided. Field trips happened. Music , arts, crafts, and sports enriched their daily life so our evenings were all about family fun time.
Then along came kindergarten. Daily packing of lunches and snacks. Insane amounts of paperwork. One evening I filled out 14, yes 14!!, field trip permission slips with the same exact emergency contact information on them. And don’t get me started on homework…. my boys each had 30 minutes of homework every night and it could not be done at the same time.
School also comes with constant requests. Whipped cream for the ice cream party! Exactly 100 items for the 100th day of school! Contributions for a class gift! An extra binder for a special secret craft! Scholastic book orders! Science fair project! Send in a favorite photo! Literally every week there were “extra” things to add to our never-ending to do list, often with no advance notice.
School is rad in many, many ways, but I wish someone had warned us it comes with a significant time cost. From reading tons of LWM posts, an ongoing theme is time is at a premium with working parents. It was a big adjustment to suddenly have a daily to-do list after work, other than just keeping the kids alive. With our rookie year of school behind us we finally know what we’re doing but it was certainly an adjustment year.
Don’t get me wrong though. Even with all the time lost, we are still laughing our way to the beach with some sushi takeout with our disposable income back.
Laura Case is a data warehousing professional by day, a twin mom and photographer by night. In her free time, she runs, reads, holds the fort down when her husband Jon travels for work, and tries to inspire people to follow their wildest dreams.
You can find her personal blog about being a working twin mom at Laura’s Mommy Journal. And you can check out her photography website here. She’s also tweeting as @lauracase.
I’m sorry, I had to laugh. I just went through the exact same thing. Down to the whipped cream for the damn ice cream social and the 100 things for 100 days. And I just had ONE kid in kindergarten. I have another in her last year of preschool, so I’m looking forward to the reduction in daycare cost, but wow is it a whole other world in public school.
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I’m totally with you. I have one in 3rd grade, one entering Kindergarten and another that will enter preschool this year. I’ve found that as the kids exit out of preschool, yes we get a little more money, but we need to manage a zillion more things. And to be honest, with the struggles of public education and budgets, parents are being asked to fork over more cash every year. Oh … and those forms. Can someone seriously help the schools automate that stuff so we don’t have to fillow out the same emergency/health contact information every year?!
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Kerry, being in software, IT PAINS ME to see manual forms being used. My school is pretty tech-savvy but they have to follow the county process.
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I don’t have twins. (My kids are 3.5 yrs and 18 months) Still, I fear of the things you described. I’ve chronicled on this site my struggles with pre-school logistics. I’ve finally given up and am sticking with just daycare. That will work fine until Kindergarten. Then I have to start worrying about the things you are worrying about (although only for one at a time).I have an additional concern since “full day” school is a shorter day than my “full day” work. That will mean paying for after school programs. School will definitely not be free.
Still, as you summarize, school will be cheaper than daycare. I’ve already told my husband that the first month that we don’t have daycareI want to go to a ridiculously expensive restaurant and blow much of what would normally be the childcare check. That’s just month one though. After that a lot of it will go into savings. College isn’t free either.
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I am mom to 5 kids, ages 17 years to a 1 year old. I currently have 2 high schoolers, a middle schooler, Kindergartener, and 1 in day care. Trust me, the demands on your time and financial requests get worst the older they get and peak around middle school. By the time they enter high school, the demand on your time goes down, but the financial requests go up. It’s a definite challenge, but you get used to it after a while. Hang in there!
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This makes me giggle while I cry because ZOMG, give me back my 6month olds with little more than diapers + bananas + that cute top to buy for.
Now? I have two schoolers and if I can go a week without being asked for this $2 and that signature and holy crap the 100 day of school thing (and who was the genius that’s asking my 38lb kid to drag 100 of ANYTHING on the bus with her??!) then it’s been a good week.
School costs, and I don’t necessarily mind paying it…but calling it free is a farce:)
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Oh yes, Laura! I totally feel your pain! My three are starting preschool at a local private school (they will all be in the same class — won’t that be fun? ha!) and thus far I’ve only paid one month of tuition, bought their supplies, and started peddling their first fundraiser and I’m already overwhelmed. It’s a very family oriented school and Bo attended last year — so I know what to expect — but thank Heavens I do have the ability to work at night, because my time and energy is definitely needed for school related activities and events often during the day. I’ll be helping the 8th graders with the yearbook at school for one hour a week and I’ll be a room mom again – on top of all of the other stuff. Our school seems to send home something to sell or that we have to buy every other week as well — on top of the tuition. It’s so, so, so far from “free”!
BTW: I love the year round school concept that your school operates on. We are in the home stretch of a seemingly long summer and I can’t help but feel that type of a routine would be so much better.
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OK sorry HOMEWORK IN KINDERGARTEN?
I knew I feared school for more than just the logistical nightmare that will come with not having a 7:30am to 6:00pm window in which she is not my responsibility.
100 things? WHAT THE SHIT IS THAT ABOUT? Oye.
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And you officially have me NOT looking forward to the schooling years! Hahah. And I just thought of another thing…SPORTS! So, let’s do all those extra extras for school then add in sports for good measure. I can see all of our “free time” disappearing as I type this.
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14 permission slips? Ok, that’s insane. I guess the moral is that there is no such thing as free! But seriously, I remember when my coworker’s daughter started kindergarten and being amazed at the preparation involved: a special folder for this, send communications to and from in that pouch, staggered entry, etc. Seems like when I was in kindergarten, we were dropped off and told “see you after school!” Ok, yes I sound like an old curmudgeon
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This does not make me happy!
Seriously though, it’s good to know this ahead of time. I”m hoping to be able to work more from home once the girls are in school, or get a nanny who can help with some of the homework. At least I know what to prepare for now!
I think this is almost word-for-word about what we went through last year (except we only had one in Kindergarten). I’m hoping that with the shock of going from daycare to school under our belts, this year goes more smoothly. We’ll put our second one in Kindergarten next year, which I’m sure will be a learning process for us all over again.
Ok, my heart sank when I read this. I have 3.5 yr. old twins and a 2 yr. old. All in daycare. While we don’t want the kids to grow too fast my husband and I have been longing for the time when we don’t have to write that big check every month. But lately, that fear (about pretty much everything you just said) has been creeping into my mind. Everyone keeps saying “Oh, it gets easier.” Lately, I’ve been saying to myself “I am not really seeing how it gets easier.”