career change and all sorts of good stuff.
So, I went to look when I last wrote and had to take a double take at the date. I thought it said May! How have I not written since March?!
As seems to be the norm lately, a TON has happened since I last wrote.
The home Henry, the kids, & I moved into is still amazing. It’s huge! The main level is bigger than the previous house I lived in entirely. The kids have so much more room. Things aren’t so cluttered. We’re close to SO much, yet tucked away into a nice little neighborhood. Henry and I have been spending a lot of time landscaping, and we take walks around the neighborhood every evening. We’ve been getting to know our neighbors and they are all super nice!
Henry is nothing short of amazing. When I was working crazy hours at Chrysler, he was watching the kids on my night shifts so I could afford a sitter during the day so I could sleep. Prior to that, I went 8 months working Monday – Wednesday on 3 hour of sleep, total. He was cooking and doing a lot of cleaning and is amazing with the kids. One evening, we had some mutual friends over who mentioned that our front room (which had yet to be furnished) would make a great play room. A light bulb went off in my head and I realized that I didn’t have to work those crazy hours at Chrysler any longer.
I intended to leave Chrysler around July and start a home daycare. It has always been something I’ve been interested in doing, but never had the setup. Now I do! In true Taylor fashion, I started placing an ad here and there to see what type of interest I would get for my area. I was at capacity with daycare children within 3 weeks and opened my in-home daycare May 27th. I am currently going through my education hours and training for obtain a state license for childcare, in which case I could add another 3 full-time children, but as it stands, I’ve already replaced my income plus some with the children I have now. And I work Monday-Friday, day shift hours – all evenings and weekends are spent with the most important people in the world to me. I could not ask for more.
The daycare is running smooth. I already keep my kids on a pretty good schedule, so adding a few more wasn’t difficult. I’ve only had behavioral issues with two of the kids. The first one figured out the rules pretty quick and is no longer an issue. The second one started last week and she’s just a defiant child. She’s not overly terrible, she just needs lots of guidance. She started doing well towards the end of last week, but then spent the weekend with her bio-dad apparently and she’s been having issues at home since then as well as here. I am working on scheduling more activities for us to do during the day, especially now that it’s consistently nice out. My empty front room is now chalked full of toys thanks to a resale group I’m an admin for on Facebook, as well as garage sales. I am also picking up a huge playset next weekend.
Have I mentioned how AMAZING the hours are? I can’t get over that. I worked two over night shifts and two day shifts a week at Chrysler. I never saw my family and I was always exhausted. Now I have more energy, and am able to keep the home as clean as I like, and keep up with laundry, and cook good home cooked meals each night, and spend the evenings taking walks with my love, and the weekends doing things together as a family.
I am not going to dampen this positive entry with negative crap, but I’ll slip in that I had to hire a lawyer because of Josh. He will be home son and there’s been lots of reasons for me to feel like he wasn’t going to be civil and that I should hire a lawyer. I actually did it on Monday. I go and finish some paperwork this afternoon, and the beginning of whatever is about to come will be filed tomorrow. I will have to dive into all of that at another time.
The kids are doing amazing. I have seen LOTS of positive changes in them since moving into this home. Gabe and Xavier both finished off the school year with excellent grades. Mason is completely potty trained, his overall behavior has greatly improved, and his speech is great. Evelyn is hitting the terrible two’s, and she’s a girl. ‘Nuff said.
I only have one daycare kiddo today, but we have lots of storms rolling in so we can’t really go do anything. Right now the little ones are playing outside before it starts raining. I am trying to find some fun stuff to do with the younger kids and to keep the older ones stimulated this summer. I need to take the time to sit down and do that this week.
Well, my terrible two year old is being just that – and I need to work on lunch for these kids. As always, I’d like to say I’ll be back soon – and hopefully this time it’s true since I’m a lot less busy!