Re: How does minding compare with old lifestyle
I was a restaurant supervisor in this posh restaurant in town. A typical day started when ds1 woke up and ran around the flat playing while I tried to rest off the evening shift from the day before. Breakfast, some cleaning, get ds1 to nursery/childminder then off to work for 10am. Open restaurant, clean it, organize staff, try to motivate staff (college/uni student without a care for the job...) work til 3-4pm. Rush home for food/shower, sometimes pick up ds1 from nursery for an hour of play before heading back to work for 6pm to do it all again, but busier. I'd get home from work anytime from 10pm to 2am depending on how busy it was, eat, sleep.
Some days weren't split shifts, usually I'd get two days off a week but hardly ever a weekend. Poor df saw me for a maximum of 1 hour a day apart from days off, ds1 was shited from childminder to nursery, home with mummy or daddy, hardly ever both of us together. Only good thing was that my mum was his childminder so he spend some quality time with her (she didn't have any other mindees).
So yeah, much different to now! Ds2 has never been left with anyone apart from df, and that's usually only a few hours at a time! We do the school run for ds1, go to the park, play with toys, have mindees to play with aswell. My house is clean (not really tidy, but clean!) and I spend more time at home in a week now than I did in a month back then!
Oh and we spend weekends doing things as a family, days out, teaching ds1 to ride his bike, baking, cinema. It's lovely.
I don't think ds1 missed out as such, he had a happy 0-3 years, but it was completely different to what ds2 is getting now.
Best career change I ever made, family comes first.
''We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.''
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