To the parents out there re: care.com

Thanks!  We did end up creating an account and doing a one month membership.  Actually found a coupon code online that worked!! 

We already have 7 applicants for a full time nanny position and will start the interview process soon. 

Pretty cool website.

I'm not familiar with care.com so I can't comment on that, but any tool that can assist you in vetting a potential candidate is a good thing in my opinion.  Your gut is your number one vetting tool though, so don't forget to listen to it during the interview process.  

Good luck

I will give you our situation and you can compile that with any other situations to form a plan.  My wife and I both work full time.  We ahve a 10, 9, and 5 year old boys.  The 5 year old starts school next August and obviously the other two are in school now.  We do a before and after school program for the older 2 so that we can still work our normal hours and our 5 year old attends a child care center that is both a Preschool and a Day Care.  About 2/3 of the day he is in "preschool" and the rest of the day is "day care" a/k/a playing around. 

When school is out then we have to decide what to do with the older 2 and that is where the nanny comes in.  We have done some other summer programs that according to my older boys are:  Lame, stupid, boring, no fun, the same thing, blah blah blah.  So this year we caved in and are looking for a summer nanny. 

We had about 3 options to consider other than the nanny for summer care for the older boys and when it came down to cost, they were about the same.  The benefit for us having a nanny is that she can show up in the morning and stay until we get home.  The boys can sleep in a little bit.  They can do some of the summer actiivites that we couldn't get them to like golf lessons at 9:30 AM (seriously, who can to that if you work full time?). 

We have had several applicants for our summer nanny position and most have been college aged girls looking for some summer employment.  Most have some education major and all of them have babysitting experience.  It's been actually very hard choosing which one to go with. 

Regarding your situation, it's a hard choice figuring out what you want to do with your baby.  Basically there are four options:  Stay at home parent (you already ruled that one out), In home Nanny.   Take your child to an in home day care.  Take your child to a Child Care center.  We chose the Center for all three of our kids before they were old enough to go to school.  Centers have pros and cons.  Some of the cons are they are more expensive in our area, your kids are exposed to more children who may be sick, and they can pick up some bad habits from other naughty children.  The initial list of pros are:  the center is always open (if your teacher is sick, you still bring them to the center and the center figures out who will be in the room), I think kids become more socialized to other kids rather than being by themselves at home or even a smaller in home day care.  Center's can be registered with the state and have to pass educational and health standards.  Alot of times the centers are located in an area of town that alos feeds into kindergarten so your kid will already have a group of friends when he/she shows up to school.  That was a really big advantage for my oldest. 

By no means do I think that our choices were perfect.  The Stay at home parent option is something I wish we could have swung financially.  When we get the kids from school and only have a few hours to bang out supper, play time, homeworks, baths, stories, laundry, tv, games, etc, etc, etc, it would have been nice for my wife to have stayed home.  But that was our direction and we don't regret it either. 

Wow.  wordy answer. 

can you afford to live on just hers?  dads are allowed to stay at home too.

dmbfan - when I was a young Officer and we had young kids I tradeed away all of my weekends off so that I would be off suring the week.  We worked a 5 on 3 off schedule at that time so we only needed babysitting 2 days per week....and when I swithced to nights we didn't need a sitter at all.  It will take some creative thinking, and you won't see your wife as much.....but I bet you can come up with something that's better than most people are faced with.

When my twins were born I gave up a Specialized unit gig to go back to shift work so we wouldn't need as much day care.  Now, my kids are teenagers and I'm back to a Unit where I can pretty much make my own hours.  I don't miss anything the kids have going.  Pretty sweet deal for our line of work.  Be creative when your kids come along and you can really make it work well.