Premium diapers. Turn that baby into an entitled baby that expects only the best. Huggies Plus or Pampers Pure

Thank you for all the suggestions and factors to consider. I now can understand the frustration with xmas gifting for kids lol

RE the grab ball: I see this item recommended a lot but will hold off given how many of you guys got one passed down.

RE premium diapers: I know they have a lot of unused diapers handed down from friends. I also want to stay away from gifting consumable items like diapers despite how practical it is.

My parents also bought a ton of clothes for the baby (more than what I have in my closet) so she's well-stocked on that front. The baby already has a car seat, stroller, crib etc. so she's covered on that end as well.

I technically already gifted her a xmas outfit from a recent trip, but I don't want to show up empty-handed when we meet up. I ended up getting the Fisher Price Glow & Grow Kick & Play Piano Activity Gym as a last resort with a gift receipt. It plays music and may be a nuisance for the parents, but Reddit parents seem to enjoy it as well so it feels like a safe choice.

It'll be interesting to see how the baby develops. There's already a bit of tension between my sister/BIL and my parents, and I find myself being the middle person smoothing things out.

You never know until you know, I was one of the first out of my friends to have kids so I had the pleasure of handing down stuff and sharing the lessons learned from my experience. One of the things I always stressed is don't waste your money on all these toys and if somebody is offering it to you for free just take it if you like it. No matter how awesome the toy seems every kid will react differently. Some will hate it some will love it some in between and it's far too common for first childs to be spoiled and bought everything only to see so much of it going to a complete waste because the kid doesn't care for it. It's one thing to be buying cheapo $10 toys and they don't like it but a lot of these bigger items are trending close to $100 and you buy enough of those that get little to no use it adds up damn quick.

Ours was like $15 or $20 for two. We don't need professional grade stuff. Anything that can transmit sound to hear the breathing is enough for us

$20 of crab! Sound quality is a thing.

How regularly does Hand Foot Mouth disease go around at daycare?

We were touring a daycare where they advised my wife to delay going back to work until after September, so that when the younger kid starts (he'd be ~10 months old at that point), he wouldn't be hit with the double whammy of flu + HFM.

We're trying to figure out if they're just giving general advice, or if it's a potential red flag.

AFAIK, HFMD is supposed to be seasonal, with it most commonly occuring in the summer and fall. However, given how easily transmissible it is, I wouldn't be surprised to see it happening outside of the high seasons.

But I am not really understanding your situation, or why the daycare recommended your wife to delay going back to work. Is there an outbreak occuring at the daycare you visited? Is your wife having HFMD right now?

You delay it to Oct, then you run smack dab into the middle of flu season and dealing with RSV, covid, etc. You can't win. From our experience the ideally the best time to start daycare is actually April/May.

Covid has become a regular high impact sickness to me, just like how RSV or human meta pnuemovirus is.

When were you thinking of starting daycare anyways? If it's a few months from now, you can't really tell what would be going around.

In the 4 years my kid was in daycare we didn't have a single case of HFMD (that I'm aware of). We did have a flu go around once that knocked out a good number of kids for a couple weeks and seemed to have COVID go around a little bit.

In my memory, I've rarely heard of HFMD going around at daycare. It definitely happens but it was definitely less common than the flu or any other sickness.

There's no current outbreak, the daycare director just said that we should be prepared for it to happen. And nope none of us have it (or have ever had it, to my knowledge).

They're just recommending not to risk stacking HFMD with flu/COVID because they said it would be terrible to subject our younger kid to these things all simultaneously, at 10 months old.

Oof. You ain't kidding about flu / COVID season. I think this plot is saying it takes off around mid October, peaks end of year, and doesn't taper off til June lol wth.

Seasonality of coronaviruses and other respiratory viruses in Canada: Implications for COVID-19
https://i.imgur.com/AL0gntg.png

Our toddler will be starting basically next week or the week after. We wound up holding off on putting him into daycare all the way til now at 21 months, by having me on parental leave through til end of February so that my wife and I could together tackle both kids at home.

Whereas our younger one is only about 3 months old right now, and my wife was planning to stay home with him while I go back to work at the end of February. She was then planning to go back to work in September when the younger one would then at least be 10 months old.

Ok, that's good to know. Was this a relatively small centre btw? The one we're looking at has 11 classrooms spanning infant to preschool so maybe that makes it harder to contain stuff.

The other thing triggering my paranoia for this place, is that it's not in a great neighborhood. And 100% of the Google Maps and Yelp reviews are written by parents who can barely string a sentence together. Broken grammar, random punctuation, extra spaces lol. And the review content is trashy and superficial. Comparing that to the baseline for a couple of other known-good daycares, which are full of parents talking like normal people, making constructive comments about logistics, academics, mental health and long term wellbeing for the kids, that kind of thing.

Is it a stretch to think there will be some correlation between the quality of parents, and the kids in the classroom? Or likely not much influence when they're at this age?

Of course you wouldn't want to expose any kid simultaneously to multiple illnesses at the same time, but it isn't like we have direct control over when a person can get sick with one virus or another. So what the director is saying sounds kind of odd to me.

If your spidey sense is giving you weird vibes about this place, I'd tend to go with your gut and try looking for another place. I know it is not easy to look for childcare places, but that's what I'd try to do.

Ours was a big one - a bit over a hundred kids I think. (4 grades, 2 classes per grade, up to 16 kids per class). It was over two floors and the lower 2 grades were downstairs and the older kids were upstairs but there was usually some mixing of students and teachers on a regular basis.

Ok there's a lot to unpack here.

So your 21 month is the one starting daycare.

In a vacuum - how big is the center, as in how many kids and how many teachers in one room? The more kids there are the higher chance that they'll get sick.

ATM, end of Jan beginning of Feb you are still in "flu season". It's a bit of a misnomer as it basically is high respiratory infection season. The chart you posted basically correlates to what I said about April/May is when it really drops off.

If you are concerned about the 21m getting sick, delay it another month to March.

For your second one who'll be 10months at Oct. Unless you can somehow delay that one, you are basically going to be in flu season for the next 6 months. Keeping the younger one home may be less helpful though as your older one will be bringing the viruses home. The hope though is you can keep him healthy until you guys can get the flu and covid vaccine in Oct. The vaccines won't keep them from getting sick, but it'll dull the impacts significantly. A week or 2 weeks after getting the vaccines would be good to go.


So now regarding quality of the daycare. I would say YES it does matter who they are hanging out with, and also the activities and quality of care the center provides. If your gut feeling is it's not great, I'd keep looking, and transfer whenever you find something you like better.

Thanks for the super helpful feedback.

We took a 2nd tour today, this time when daycare was in session (the previous tour was on the weekend), and realized most of the educators spoke really poor English. I could barely understand what they were saying. The daycare director boasted that "these people were doctors in their country" ??? lol.

We opted to just bite the bullet and register with a new daycare that opened a couple blocks away from us. We were avoiding this one because they don't qualify yet for the provincial subsidy program, which would've brought tuition down from ~$2500 to ~$600. But at least the upside is that for now as they build their enrollment, it's a hilarious 1:3 ECE to child ratio. They also speak perfectly good English lol.

Hopefully we'll get into another daycare at least in the Fall, when our toddler would start preschool.

---

More on the weird-vibes daycare: just after we parked in the lot for the tour, one of the parents wandered up and said "hi, can I see your car? I want to buy a Highlander."

I go "uhhh we're sort of in a hurry, how about next time?" And he flashed me this goofy smile. And said "okay, but can I see just really quick?", and promptly fucking opened the door to my toddler staring back at him. My wife in the 3rd row holding our 3 month old, was like "WTH, who is this man?!" as this guy proceeds to then place his hand on my kid's car seat, and ask me "hey, so can this thing go to the back row?"

Mind you it's also -10C over here, and my kid very visibly didn't have his coat on yet. I was friggin livid at this guy.

Yeah nope the fuck out.

We toured a daycare that we had bad vibes from as well. The owner spoke poor English, the daycare was filthy, and she was pushy wanting us to put a deposit down. We noped out of there. I'm gonna suck up driving 30mins more total to drop off my kid than to send my kid with you

Anyone aware of a place that offers 2 seater go-karts that are reasonably quick around here? My 5.5y has discovered that she loves stuff like roller coasters or similar types of thrill rides and I'd like to introduce her to stuff like go-karts. She's not big enough (41" tall/35lbs) to go on her own yet so it's gotta be in a 2 seater for now.

Open to other suggestions of things that might be suitable for a kid that age/size (like say a kid friendly zip line adventure?)

I think the only 2 seaters are the go carts at Castle fun Park.

I think you can go tubing with her at Cypress.

Or you know, nab a shopping cart and push her up and down the street :fullofwin:

No need for cypress today!

My friends actually started taking their kid skiing at this age, and he did pretty good. Looks like Cypress even has a ski and snowboard program for 3-6 year olds.
https://shop.cypressmountain.com/l/l...ooter-sessions

Lol I also looked up whether you could take your kid to autocross or the track, and while the answers are all over the place (apparently dictated by the organizers' insurance), it seems it's typically at least 12 ish. Darn it.

I don't think throwing them around in the back with a helmet on is a great idea. That's a lot of strain on their little necks

Thanks, looks like the height requirement is 42" so maybe next winter when my kid grows a bit more but this looks like the kind of fun she likes. I spent the morning launching her from my snow sled onto piles of snow and she loved it.

F me, now that i'm old and have a baby girl coming. guess I gotta start looking here.

20 weeks, and waiting for 2nd ultra sound... let this journey or no more toys for daddy begins..

Fun times~! Congrats!