Day care

-WARNING- This post may turn into a little bit of a rant, but stick with me.

Over the last few months, my wife has very diligently been going to various day care options around Leeds, turning up unannounced with Jake in tow to see what's going on. She finally found one that she liked and we went to visit last week. What I saw was a well run operation, running out of a two storey building. The first floor is for babies and has one large room split into three different sections and two smaller rooms, one for sleeping, one that acts as a multi-sensory room. When we went, the main room had three workers and five children who were sat in various positions singing songs. The rest of the area looked very much like a large living room with toys and play areas. The multi-sensory room has some fairy lights, a disco ball and lots of things to play with. On the whole, it feels like somewhere that I would be happy to leave Jake for the day as we both got good vibes from the workers.

All well and good so far, until you start to talk about money. This is one of the cheaper options for daycare that my wife found and they still charge a whopping £40 a day. For five days a week, this would work out at £800 a month. Fortunately this day care allows you to choose a term time only contract, so we only pay for the 39 weeks that I'm at work. However, this still comes to over £500 a month which is more than our monthly mortgage payment. They also expect you to pay a £100 registration fee to assure your child a place.

For the majority of people in the UK, where the average annual salary is around £22k, this is an enormous expense. My wife's paid maternity leave runs out in January and even if I was earning my previous wage, there would be no way that we could afford for her to be a stay at home mother. Our only other option, therefore, is to put Jake in day care, which leaves us only marginally better off each month. I just find it incredible that in a time when the government wants people back in work, in particularly women, that there is no help available (bar the £80 a week we get for child benefit) to help make ends meet. Fortunately, we have saved up for this eventuality but still it sticks in my craw that the options are so limited.

I guess it's a problem of our own making, so to speak, but it's not something we had fully considered when we made the choice to get pregnant. We've now signed up and Jake is due to start at some point in the new year, so watch this space for updates.

Jake at 5 months

Today is Jake's five month birthday which seems absolutely incredible. It seems hard to remember what life was like before him, and almost impossible to think about what we possibly did with all our spare time in the days before Kelsey got pregnant. He changes on an almost daily basis so it's hard to try and make a list of all the things that has changed, especially since my last post on here.

However, we thought that a list of his current likes and dislikes would make for fun reading. It's amazing to think that within 5 months of being born Jake is able to express pleasure and disgust with different things and that he has opinions that he likes to make known. An non-exclusive list includes:

Likes:
Being outside
Looking outside
Thinking about being outside
Women with blonde hair
Belly raspberries
Standing up
Pretending to walk
The Jumparoo
Food shopping with daddy
Being tickled on his feet
Britney Spears
Mummy saying "mama" over and over again
Being thrown in the air and getting caught again
Interesting light fixtures
Gnawing on apple cores/his feet/his fingers/other people's fingers/menus
Sunny, Elsa and Beatrice (his favourite toys)
Stretching out after a long nap
Grandpa blowing gently in his face
Row row row your boat

Dislikes:
Any sort of pureed food
Sitting down
The first 5 seconds of being in the car seat
Having a wet nappy
Being offered food when he doesn't want it
Loud laughs
R.E.M. (in particular, daddy playing REM on the guitar)
Tummy time
Anyone talking about tummy time
Anyone thinking about tummy time
Cold milk

It gives you a quick snap shot into Jake's day to day life at the moment. I would say that he spends a lot more time smiling, giggling and chatting nonsense than he does crying which makes life a lot easier all round. The older he becomes, the more fun he is to be around and there is still nothing to beat the big gummy smile that greets me as I step through the door after work each day.