Daycare or No?

After repeated little breakdowns about stress over finishing school in a more timely manner, we are now considering daycare again. I just don't feel like I'm getting enough done, and at this pace think the pain of stretching things out over the next 6-12 months far outweighs the pain of being away from my kids for a few hours more each week. We've got some decisions to make about this daycare plan though.

Right now, Ava goes to Grandma & Grandpa's house 2.5 days a week. Prior to last week, Alder was home with me all week. This meant I squeezed my work in while he was napping, or while he was nursing with my boppy pulled up to the computer desk. It works, but only marginally. It is not a very effective or efficient way to make progress. As of last week, Keith and I have started splitting care 2 days a week. I go to school for 4 hours in the morning, and then we switch and he goes for the afternoons. He's able to do this with his job by working 10 hours the other 3 days of the week, and taking 5 hours of vacation. But that still only give me a total of 8 hours per week of dedicated work time (and that assumes I woke up on time and got to school by 9). We've also discussed me going in for 4 hours on Sundays, but so far it hasn' t happened due to yard projects that have Keith out breaking a sweat. So we are faced with requiring extra help to get me done with school.

Ava used to go to a daycare we are quite fond of. It happens to be a 5 minute walk from my building, so if we put Alder in there, I could walk down and nurse him during lunch. We're thinking about putting him there on the same days that Ava is at Grandma & Grandpa's. We'd start with shortish days of maybe 5 hours and work up as we all got comfortable with the situation. Another option, that would save us $450 a month, is Grandma & Grandpa taking both kids for 5 hours 3 days a week. So between those 15 hours (really 13 after the driving time is sucked out) and the additional 8 I could get from Keith, plus the Sundays, that gets me up to 25 hours/week. That isn't too bad. If I was SUPER DUPER efficient, it just might work. I'm on a bit of a time clock here and am REALLY hoping to finish in December. But that will require a large dose of luck and lots of cooperation from people who don't necessarily need to cooperate.

Anyway, we've got some thinking to do.