Because I only work 3 half days a week, it makes no financial sense to put Eleanor in a day-care b/c they would charge me for 20 hrs, regardless if she was only there 12-15 hrs (this is our situation with Henry--he could have a nanny for what we pay but we send him to school for the socialization). But for a baby, a nanny is perfect.
I've been looking at doing a nanny-share (this is when you share a nanny with another family to reduce costs) and then found out about a very small in-home daycare about 1 min. drive from my work, and across the street from our favorite park. She was perfect. She has two sons and would watch my daughter and possibly one other baby but probably not. So a daycare with 3-4 kids is pretty great, especially when the mom lives in a super clean awesome beautiful house with great toys and nice kids and she's really about the closest thing to my style of parent out there. She was really perfect but then I heard about one of Henry's classmate's nanny's looking for work MWF. So it looks like that's what we're going to do (ahh...hope it's the right choice). She is the same price as going with the in-home daycare, and she will come to my house and Eleanor will have her all to herself. She does not speak English though. Justin and I both took several years of Spanish in school and are pretty decent and I'm excited that Eleanor will be bilingual (Henry's classmate is..and she only has this nanny 2 days a week). But I worry that her English will be behind b/c of this...we'll see.
Eleanor is doing well. She is still sleeping all through the night and I nurse her about every 2-3 hrs without her waking. I am getting a good 7 or 8 hrs sleep a night, so that's pretty great. But she gets fussy at night and we have to rock her sometimes for an hour to get her to fall asleep. This makes no sense b/c she practically sleeps all day and we begin the rocking regimen within 45 min of her being awake (as all the books say I'm supposed to do) but she still seems so overtired and will cry no matter what we try. She seriously can not handle being awake longer than an hour. She starts yawning and flailing her arms and if rocking does not begin immediately after, she will fuss. So...lots of patting and rocking going on over here.
"it has been shown that exposing young children to more than one language actually helps their language skills in the long run. By the time your child reaches his later elementary school years, you may see above-average vocabulary, sentence structure, and comprehension skills."
ReplyDeleteYou both give Henry and Eleanor such awesome experiences that I do not think it will be a problem. Just keep up what you are doing with Henry and read, read, read.Reading, talking and life experiences are what helps with excellent vocabulary, sentence structure and comprehension.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work.
Love, G.Aunt Sandy