Weekend & Family Friday: Cashmere Turtleneck Sweater

We pay our nanny on the books, and pay into the state unemployment insurance program as required in our state. My husband is laid off and I’m working from home, so we don’t really need the nanny. If we let her go, can she file for unemployment? We’ll need her back when my husband’s job comes back in July, so we were going to try to hang on to her, maybe with a reduced hours scenario, but I’m wondering if just laying her off and letting her file for unemployment would be a better move. I don’t know much about how that works, and my state’s website is less than helpful.

a related question. My oldest is in extended day. They haven’t charged us since the schools closed in mid-march. My youngest is in daycare, part time. They charged for the 2 weeks in March (we’d already paid). They are asking for 50% of April’s tuition, which will be applied as a credit when they are allowed to re-open (hopefully May) and used to float the business in the meantime.

My middle goes to preschool part time. Her tuition is $600/month. They have charged for March, and just notified us that they want 50% of April as well, even though they will not be opening any earlier than May. This is not going to be applied as a credit of any kind.

Part of me says, it’s only $300. My family isn’t under the kind of financial strain (yet) where this matters in the grand scheme of things. But I know that’s not the case across the school.

The other half of me is irate that they are just expecting families to keep paying given all the federal and state level help being thrown at unemployment. The teachers are all part time (no benefits to be had/ not had). It’s nondenominational but run out of a church (so they have overhead, but it’s all shared with the church). They aren’t doing any kind of online learning at all. We’ve heard next to nothing from them until now, in an email saying “we’re all in this together now please pay us.” No mention of “if you are experiencing a hardship please let us know.”

Thoughts? If I only had one kid and no comparison data points I may not be as mad.

My 3 1/2 month old baby is refusing to nurse. He will take a bottle of breastmilk but he fusses about that too. I can get him to nurse during the middle of night but during the day its a struggle. He seems to have chest congestion but his nasal passage looks clear. I’m at a loss as to what to do. I really don’t want to exclusively pump if I don’t have to. Any ideas? I’ve tried nursing in quiet dark places, bouncing, etc. It works sometimes but not always.

what would you do? Our small co-op daycare is having us keep paying tuition so the teachers still get paid, which I am ok with because they are clearly trying hard to figure out ways to reduce costs, while still make sure we can be up and running right away when possible. But I realized today (through a FaceTime with one of the teachers) that at least one teacher is nannying right now for another family in the class. So, the teacher is either getting paid double from both daycare employment and the family to nanny, or the family is one of the few still paying tuition and getting care. Should I tell the director? But what could they even do about it? It just feels really unfair, although I don’t begrudge either the teacher or the nanny but- I want care that I am paying for too! But obviously the teachers can’t nanny for anyone, nor do we have the set-up for that.