Who Watches My Kids While I Write This?
My turbulent ride to ample(ish) childcare PLUS: Winter crafts we've done this season, ranked.
From my perch in Brooklyn with all eyes on L.A. (and now D.C. 🙄), just taking a beat to acknowledge that while I’m kicking out a regular post, my sympathies are on the West Coast and particularly with displaced parents of young children. As if they don’t have it hard enough…<3
A few months ago I was invited on a podcast to discuss childcare options, a topic that I’ve reported on and personally approached from every angle since I became a mom almost five years ago. Initially, I refused the interview: Having made many bad (and worse) childcare decisions, I didn’t exactly feel qualified to advise new parents in this department. But then I realized that none of us are experts here; we’re all just trying to make the best decisions we can.
After recording the episode, I thought I’d write a companion piece about the ups and downs that brought us to our current and most stable childcare situation. After all, I love it when parents are transparent about their coverage; for those of us prone to comparing ourselves to others (ahem), understanding how much help other parents get contextualizes how much they’re able to accomplish beyond child-rearing.
The story I thought I wanted to tell here was that we hated our first daycare, hired awful babysitters for spotty coverage, and finally found a wonderful part-time nanny who seems to love our kids as much as we do. For whatever reason, though, I’ve struggled FOR WEEKS to get this out. And once I wrote a first draft? It sucked. (Even David said he liked a previous draft of this essay less than anything else I’ve written here—gotta love an honest spouse!)
The reason why it fell short, I’ve realized, is that I should have been working on a different and more honest story—one about how my hesitance to invest in ample childcare from the get-go strained my marriage, ended the most lucrative chapter of my full-time career, and took my mental health for a real loop. I should have written about how it’s really, really hard to be a part-time working mom—and even harder to admit you need help. So I tried:
How it started
I gave birth to our first child in March 2020, when a cruel combination of a pandemic and postpartum anxiety left David and I trusting no one to be around our newborn—even after I returned to work following an abbreviated maternity leave. Like everybody else with an office job during the pandemic, we worked from home that summer. The flexible setup and cautious climate enabled us to write off childcare as a too-dangerous luxury.
Instead, we tossed our infant back and forth between us while we worked, careful not to book conflicting Zoom meetings. In full PPE, we flew to California, where willing grandparents babysat in the mornings, and the time difference left my afternoons wide open to watch our baby after East Coast offices closed. As a result, I settled into parenthood thinking I could be a stay-at-home-mom who also worked full-time—joke’s on me.
Back in Brooklyn in the spring of 2021, we enrolled our then-one-year-old part-time at a fancy-looking Montessori-style daycare. Although they asked us to bring a pack-and-play for sleeping, we soon found out they withheld morning naps until every kid had passed out on the floor—a situation I didn’t love. Regardless of what went down there, nothing would have met my expectations. In my postpartum fog, I felt without a modicum of doubt that I was the best (and safest) person to supervise my son.
But I was still working full-time. At my desk, my bones would ache to be with the human I felt like I’d made yesterday; I mourned every second of fleeting babyhood that I missed. Everything I did at work began to feel insignificant compared to the value I brought to my son, who was very clearly happiest by my side. Beyond checked out, I can’t say I was surprised when I was laid off. Instead of finding a new job, I went freelance so I could work on my own schedule and make sure nothing would ever, ever keep me from my kid.
While this sounds like a happy ending, there was one big problem: Although reason dictates that working parents require childcare to do their work, I still thought I could be a stay-at-home parent *and* have a career—I didn’t want to have to choose.
Plus without my steady salary, the cost of babysitting was extra hard for me to swallow. (I’ll continue to intentionally use “me” and “I,” not “we” since this was my hill to die on; David wanted full-time childcare all along.) I struggled to accept how every hour I’d spent so freely on myself before having a child suddenly came with a hefty price tag. And it didn’t feel fair that my out-of-pocket investment remained the same whether I was looking for work or on assignment, and whether my kid was bouncing off walls or asleep in his crib. (The injustice of paying for coverage during naps—I still cannot!)
Trying to fit my writing into the margins of full-time parenting left me feeling harried and burnt out. My stress turned into resentment toward David, who was working full-time on opening Hotel Lilien and had never signed up to be a stay-at-home parent. If I could do it all, I thought, why couldn’t he at least pinch hit when I was on deadline and our kid refused his nap?!
Both of us felt overwhelmed, under-appreciated, and stretched thin. Neither of us was thriving. We both struggled with work-life boundaries, especially after I joined David in working on Hotel Lilien. (Cohabitating with a co-worker is…not easy.) Hobbies and friendships fell by the wayside. Self-care seriously suffered. But it wasn’t until after our second child was born that it became clear: something had to change.
How it’s going
Before I get into our status quo, let me make one thing clear: We still haven’t fully cracked the childcare code. If I’m being honest, I don’t think there will ever be enough hours in the day for me to be a present parent and slay on the freelance front. And I still want both despite knowing better.
But here’s where we are: Our oldest is (finally!) in public preschool, and our two-year-old hangs with a wonderful part-time nanny (no notes!) four mornings a week so I can write stuff like this and this, maintain this very Substack, and work on all things Hotel Lilien (in no particular order). On our nanny’s day off, I pray our little one naps so I can stay on top of all of the above.
I watch both of my kids after school every afternoon, which is either the best or worst part of my day, depending on everyone’s mood. David takes over around 5pm so I can make dinner, then we double team to clean up the day’s carnage and wrestle both kids into bed.
We both reopen our laptops every night after our kids go down. And while we wish we had more time to hang like we used to—to watch a show together or read a New York Magazine article and compare notes, we tell ourselves that this is simply a season that will pass. And then we try to believe it.
While I know it’s a privilege to work part-time on my own schedule, and to stay home (or get out and about, as the case may be) with my kids as much as I do, I often envy the parents who got full-time help and went right back to the office, business as usual, after their kids were born: With their crisp clothes and hustle to the subway after school drop-off, they certainly seem to re-enter the world seamlessly as high-functioning, independent persons every day. This is more than I can say for ahem, a certain mom overdue for a shower who is writing from her couch while her nanny gets over a stomach virus, her kid naps in the next room, and her feet are propped up on the coffee table, a hundred Brio tracks underfoot. On these days, I feel like I’m treading water.
How would things be different had I gone right back to work dresses and board meetings and eating chopped salads for lunch every day at my desk, with solo time to work or window shop or simply sip a coffee that wasn’t cold every weekday from 9-5 since maternity leave?
Like many mothers who work part-time or stay home with their kids, I’ll never really know. But I’m finally feeling ok about the way I spend my time and my money. I’m ok with the moments I inevitably miss while I work, and I’m open to missing more if a project comes up that I want to pursue. I’m mournful, but at peace with the career sacrifices I’ve made to be present for my kids. And I’m accepting of the fact that choosing to freelance part-time while being a part-time stay-at-home parent means that I probably won’t have free time or firm boundaries for…a while.
But my kids are happy. (So happy!) And on most days—which are admittedly messy and hectic and chaotic—I am too. This, I’ve found, is all any parent who wants it all can hope for.
So there you have it: How help helps me get (most of) my shit done, the 17th version :)
With a polar vortex comin’ in cold this week to put the icing on one of the most frigid NYC Januarys on record, I’m ranking the best winter crafts I stole from Pinterest this season, plus a gross one that I made up myself and ranked number 1, naturally. Reminder: My kids are 2 and almost 5 (and very into crafting!) so these projects are geared toward those ages/ interests.
#5: Egg Carton Snowman
How to make it: Cut one three-section portion from the bottom of a white styrofoam egg crate. Lace a pipe cleaner in and back out of one side of the “head” and repeat on the opposite side. Wind each end into a circle to create ear cups. Halve a second pipe cleaner and knot the first part as a scarf around the top and middle sections. Thread the second half through the middle section to create arms. Stick on adhesive googly eyes, and use school glue to secure sequins, real buttons, beads, or construction paper circles to create the snowman’s buttons, and try to do better than we did with the nose :)
Parent prep time: ⏳ | Keeps attention for: ⏲️ | Supervision required: 👀 👀 | Potential for extreme mess: 🙅♀️
#4: Salt Snowflake
How to make it: Place a piece of construction paper (we used blue but I recommend white) in a craft tray (I use these constantly to contain crafts and activities—#need). Use school glue to trace or outline a simple snowflake (draw an X + a line through the center, then turn the lines into arrows facing inward to jazz it up). Cover with table salt and shake to coat. (I did these parts for my kids, but imagine they’d much prefer to take the reins on the salt part.) Arm your child with a dampened water color palette and a paintbrush, then watch them explore color transfer by touching a color-coated brush to the salt.
Parent prep time: ⏳ | Keeps attention for: ⏲️⏲️ | Supervision required: 👀 | Potential for extreme mess: 🫠🫠
#3: Cotton Ball Snowmen
How to make it: Cut a circle out of a spare cardboard box and use double-sided glue dots to stick on cotton balls until the circle is covered. Use colored felt or foam sheets to cut out a hat, mouth, carrot nose, two narrow rectangles to use as a scarf, scoring the edges with a scissor if desired. Finish strong with jumbo stick-on googly eyes.
Parent prep time: ⏳⏳ | Keeps attention for: ⏲️⏲️⏲️ | Supervision required: 👀 | Potential for extreme mess: 🙅♀️
#2: Secret Snowflake Reveal
How to make it: Use a white crayon on white paper to draw a snowflake. Give your child a dampened water color palette and paintbrush, and instruct your kid to paint until they reveal the secret shape.
Parent prep time: ⏳ | Keeps attention for: ⏲️⏲️ | Supervision required: 🙅♀️ | Potential for extreme mess: 🫠
#1: A Very Shitty Snow Sensory Bin
How to make it: Fill a craft tray with actual snow (or crushed ice if you must). Encourage your kids to soil the snow using food coloring and any sprinkles you now need to get rid of thanks to Red No. 3, or, try my kids’ personal favorite: watercolor crayons. Offer sand shovels or ice cream scoops to combine colors until they…look like poop. Then plop in a plastic dog or any other animal figurines you’ve got on hand, blame them for the mess, and brace for giggles.
Parent prep time: ⏳ | Keeps attention for: ⏲️⏲️ | Supervision required: 👀 👀 👀 | Potential for extreme mess: 🫠🫠🫠
I so needed to hear this today. Thank you, Elizabeth. I am a SAHM of two, 18 months apart. My oldest is a month younger than yours. I have been trying to write and be present with my kids for a couple years now and have had the hardest time. Just before reading this, I wrote in my journal that maybe I should just put writing aside for a while and focus on my kids/marriage/home life… I can’t do it all and trying is making me bad at everything!
Another great one!!!!!!
Love the poopy snow craft --BRILLIANT!!!!