Who You Calling A Jesse?

Last week, on a cold November afternoon, a little girl joined our family. She was born at 15:17 at Grand River Hospital in Kitchener-Waterloo weighing 7lbs 3oz and 21 inches tall! She has an older brother that loves her loads and parents that are still getting over the whole OMG WE HAVE TWO NOW! We are truly blessed to have another amazing kid in our lives—these little humans certainly put things in perspective.

I was thinking about being off all of December but it seems that isn’t going to happen. Oddly I really feel like blogging more and organizing my home office. I just can’t get time in front of the computer because I would rather be playing with the toddler (the older brother) ;) It has been a really tough week and a half (yes that is sarcasm).

My past few months have been complicated by issues that every new parent has had to deal with at some point. It all centres around daycare… They aren’t new to more experienced parents but they are new to me, so I post.

A certain local daycare that is on or very near campus finally called us up the other day after two years on the waiting list to say they have an infant spot in September for what will be our 19 month old son. Their recommendation was to stick him in the more expensive spot with cribs, supervision, and day plans, etc. What they don’t know is that our little ‘infant’ can tackle a four year old already. I don’t think he would do well in an institutional style daycare with kids younger than him… but who knows. We won’t find out as he isn’t going.

Currently he is in a home care environment with a an amazing family. He gets to play with all older kids that don’t really care he can’t speak a language they know yet. It is not ideal in that there is no back up if she is ill but in my mind it is a lot better experience. However, finding someone you trust is a lot harder. Finding someone at all in Waterloo is pretty hard.

Then there is paying for it. Generally Waterloo salaries are at a professional level with both parents working (when there are two parents). Even so, the cost is close to a mortgage payment if you find a spot. Do any regional employers help out employees with that? Sure you get some back in taxes but that first year is hard.

Even with daycare, kids get sick (a lot) and you don’t work

Then there is the issue of the bugs these kids share. It doesn’t matter what you do, the moment kids start interacting in groups they start sharing bugs.

The Baby started daycare in January of this year, by the end of the month he had his first cold. Four weeks of coughing later with fevers that would last a day or two then go away for a few days, he clearly had something more going on.

A whole rant on the good and bad service you get out of Ontario’s health care system could fill this void but lets just sum it with: three rounds of antibiotics, a few visits to emerg, and many days off of work later was topped off this weekend with the messiest of all viruses that had two newb parents celebrating solid poo in the nappy.

On a positive note we did get a week and a half away with no medical drama. Funny enough, the baby wasn’t in daycare for 5 days leading up to leaving on that trip… Having to live through virus spreading period of daycare has left me scrambling for time to do anything.

My wife and I are lucky though. We work at the University of Waterloo where generally you can take time to deal with things like a sick baby. What do other people do? Take vacation?

What could be fixed?

Not sure. I have a suspicion that larger employers in town do not do a whole lot to help out the young professional family starting out in the world but I could be wrong. University of Waterloo does nothing to help its staff or faculty get spots in daycare or afford them. It does try to encourage an environment that does give you time to deal with family issues though and that is worth something.

I think the ideal would be to make daycare a taxable benefit from the employer coupled with the ‘family focused’ environment for staff that allows them the time to at least ‘adjust’ working hours so that issues can more easily be dealt with. Burning precious vacation days only punishes young staff by taking away their only opportunity to actually get away. I certainly feel like I get the time but every month I wish I didn’t have to pay so much to have someone watch my kid so I can earn money so I can spend it to fuel the local, provincial, and national economy. Never mind the future tax payer.

“Suck it up, we had it worse” are normal comments I receive if I moan about this. I know the cost and availability is far worse in Toronto as well so I am thankful to be in Waterloo but it still isn’t great here either.

Our ‘plan b’ is to actually go with a live in nanny when the next one arrives. Its far less money than two times daycare costs!

Finally managed to take some proper vacation and head on down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. On the way we stopped in to see Stef which was a nice way to start the week. She is only 1600 or so KM from where I live, short drive ;) All told we drove 3600 KM and managed a decent 7.1L/100KM in our car. The little guy seemed to like the drive as long as a bottle of juice was close at hand.

I would certainly go back there around the same time next year. The weather is about a month ahead of us and its nice to jump a bit ahead for a week or two.

After two full days of meetings I think taking only 1.5 weeks off was nowhere near enough. On the task list for me in the coming weeks is a bunch of stuff ranging from fixing this blog (it crashes way too much) to mapping out the GUI development for the summer on the new jobmine system and a bunch of blog posts that are floating around in my head.

Addison (my son) had his 9-month visit to the doctor this past week. All things are good, he is developing quickly, healthy, etc. But when referencing the baby height/weight chart the nurse found he was 25th percentile in weight, 75th or so in height. Concerned for his weight meant a friendly lecture from the nurse and an order to increase the fat in Addison’s diet. Keep in mind, this kid has more energy than anything I have ever seen. If he is awake he is moving and/or making noise.

So my wife comes home, thinks about it, and then last night found a paper explaining the chart our doctor’s office uses. As it turns out the research they use is from one town in the mid-west US and has bottle fed babies. Breast fed babies deviate significantly and negatively, especially those from other parts of the world. So the chart’s data source is flawed yet modern nurses and doctors follow it.

I wonder where the obesity problem starts? ;) Lesson of the day, if you are handed facts and you are not comfortable with them always do a little research. The web is really handy for that.