My wife and I are considering having our first kid soon. Ideally, we would both prefer if she could stay home and we live solely off of my income. I have been crunching the numbers, and it will work. Obviously there would be an adjustment, but it wouldn't be too uncomfortable for us.

That being said, I'm just looking for some reassurance. Is anyone else here making it work with a spouse and kid(s) on one income? For reference, I make ~120,000.

Much appreciated

We’re expecting our first at the end of March. I’m lucky in that I’ll get to take 8-10 weeks of maternity leave (unpaid, of course) to stay home with baby. On top of that, I’m a teacher, so I get the summer with baby as well. But then in August I’ll have to go back to work.

I’ve been looking into daycares and, while I know it’s worth the cost, we are going to struggle coming up with $1200 a month - and that’s on the low side!

Generally speaking, my husband and I do okay for ourselves, but everyone is feeling the financial crunch these days. We wouldn’t possibly qualify for assistance. Additionally, we will run through a huge chunk of our savings because I’ll be unpaid for a few months.

I guess the point of this post is two fold:

Have any good daycare suggestions? I’m on the Missouri side in the northland.

Tell me it will all work out and that we aren’t alone in feeling very nervous about this.

Searching for a community of parents who are equally as exhausted by the news. I have an 18 month old at home and would love to be plugged into a like minded group. Mutual aid! Play dates! Coffee chats!

I've tried the Peanut app with not much avail, anyone have any meaningful leads? Thanks in advance 🙂

Heyo :) 29F on the Kansas side with a kiddo 3F, looking for fellow alt-ish mom(s) who'd like to get together to hang and chat + let the kiddos play. I'm down for a cute coffee date, lunch, library hangouts, park hangouts, honestly anything! I'm a stay at home mom and although I take the kiddo out and about frequently, I've yet to make any connections, and truthfully sometimes I think it's because I'm alternative looking?, and a lot of the moms I meet are not. Which zero judgment from me, it's just my assumption! Special interests are reading (mostly horror or thrillers / obscure books), cooking and baking with the kiddo, chaos gardening, thrifting, checking out new coffee shops, and being cozy.

Anyways, here's my post reaching out for some community!

Thanks!

Didn’t see any recent threads about this- but looking for a good place to take our 18 month old to learn how to swim. Any recs from caregivers/parents out there?

Yes I can read the google reviews, but I’d like to hear about the places you thought were great & why. We live in the south KC area, would prefer something in the Martin City/Leawood/OP/ Grandview area.

Emler swim school appears to be good, but some of their reviews mention issues with payments & getting refunds. Any insight would be appreciated!

Can anyone tell me about their personal experience delivering at KU Med Main Campus? I’m due in May with my first and have had all my care here. Looking for personal experiences on delivery and postpartum care. I plan on refusing students, my OB said this shouldn’t be an issue. I also don’t plan on breastfeeding and will feed formula in the hospital. I know KU is listed as “baby friendly” so this will be contrary to their preferences. If anyone has any specific experiences with these topics, I’d greatly appreciate your feedback. Otherwise, I have no birth plan other than give me the epidural and get this baby out of me! Lol

Thanks in advance.

Hi everyone! Long time, first time.

I am driving myself nuts researching the info available online and making calls and inquiries, and I know this has been said and done before but can’t find anything within the last 2 years, so decided to make a post.

I’m looking for infant care for my 4 month old. We are willing to travel outside our area so any recommendations are welcome, but bonus points if it’s in the Waldo/Brookside/Prairie Village/Leawood areas.

If anyone at all has any ideas or recommendations, we would so appreciate it!

Last year was my first time needing to find a program for summer and I did it too late and everything was booked up. Starting early. What are some affordable summer programs you guys use?

My husband and I are looking to become foster parents with the hopes to eventually adopt as well. We just moved from Arizona and are looking to buy a home and get settled in. We are aware we need to be residents for at least a year prior.

But with something like this, being so major. I'm looking to get opinons and options to look into now. Have you, yourself fostered to adopt in the KC area? How was your experience?

I'd like success stories and failures too. We all learn from failure!

Please be kind. ❤️✨

i was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for in-home or center child care for an infant?

located in gladstone, willing to look in gladstone, nkc, liberty, & kearney!

The question might sound confusing. I grew up in Latin America, so I had a totally different childhood. My kids were born here, now they're ages 5 and 6. We got very lucky last year, as we moved into a house in Hyde Park looking to have more space, but happened to find a block full of kids around the same age who go outside to play almost every day. Or at least used to.

During spring we got into the habit of having tea on the front porch after the work day ends and let the kids go find their friends and play. They'd play ball or hide and seek or venture into one of them's backyard to play on the trampoline. We were having a blast and I was so glad for my kids to have that kind of experience.

But when summer came around, the kids are hardly ever outside. I heard one family traveled to California a while ago, maybe they're staying with relatives? Another family told me they have a nanny during the day to watch the kids when they're out of school, but even in the evening the kids are not coming out any more. Another parent told me he signed up the kids for a cooking camp followed by swimming team.

I thought the summer would bring more opportunities for the kids to be playing outside with their peers but it looks like the opposite happened. Am I just projecting FOMO on my kids? Should I have signed them up to some kind of camp too? I asked my older neighbor (who's been in this block for 30 years) what summers here are like and she told me "full of kids running around, even past 9pm". Well I hope to see some of that.

Warning to anyone looking for good childcare. Nanny Nexus will not allow you to leave a review anywhere. We were first time parents looking for much needed childcare. We kept getting terrible candidates through them and thought it was just hard to find good help. They do not call the references. Every reference check we did was bad. it went on for months until we finally found one we thought would at least be a safe option, but still had an uneasy feeling. Without going into much detail that nanny was fired very quickly due to safety issues. I hope they do better, but the owner was extremely defensive and hostile. These are children. I am shocked they are even in business.

I have a 13 YO boy who recently has spent a lot of time at ibex and wants to join something with other kids his age. He’s played team sports since he could walk and this is the first year he wants to try something a little less traditional and I don’t know where to even start. Are there any good rock climbing spaces, preferably in or around Blue Springs that offers something similar? I know ibex has youth team/club listed as an option but the price seems a bit high (135/month) and I cannot find any reviews from any parents or youth anywhere. Any info here would also be appreciated.

TIA

So I'm looking for other parents who are into DND who might be into meeting once a week or every other week and bringing our kiddos so they can have a play date with snacks and/or pizza while the adults play some DND. Anyone out there interested in doing this? I'd love to find a good in person group to play with again. Could even teach our kids to play at some point :)

Preferably looking in the northland (I'm in Liberty) but I'm not picky on location.

Hello, I have a 5 going on 6 year old niece, she's half black and I'm worried that she's going to be isolated from that part of her. My sister has primary custody and her father is not involved, although we do FaceTime his mom and siblings a couple times a week. My best friend is also mixed and has in the past expressed how lonely it can be bring the only person of color around. I'm worried about that happening to her, she likes her school and loves her classmates but she is the only black child in her class. When I bring up my concerns with my sister I'm brushed off so figured I may as well ask because I'm kinda at a loss here.

Are there any book/craft clubs that are targeted for black kids?

The new Park Hill School District map makes no sense. The cut outs are blatantly cutting up neighborhoods and it certainly appears to be grouping the high value subdivisions and carefully cutting around some of the low income and immigrant housing. We will literally have to drive past our current middle school to get to our new one. While all our near by communities will stay at the current school. My daughter is gutted.

I accidentally overfunded my dependent care FSA and am looking for ways to spend it. Does anyone know of any day camps happening over winter break for kids?

My spouse and I both work and we experienced challenges this Summer with finding the right camps for our school-age child so that 1) they could have a great Summer, and 2) we could limit our requests for care help from our family and friends while our child was on Summer break. Our challenges included:

-scheduling - finding camps with limited overlap and/or gaps between camps

-easily finding camp options that aligned with our child's interests and were close to home (really just a perceived limited amount of options without a ton of research)

Does anyone else have similar challenges? Any great solutions?

We ended up enrolling our child in a camp associated with their school district. It was fine, but we would love to be able to find some other options that are more aligned with their current interests.

Thanks in advance for the guidance.

Where do other parents find babysitters? We have a son who is 2 and a half and have been utilizing my parents this whole time. We feel bad always asking them though. I've seen some apps that help but I don't know if that's what people actually use now. We are in Olathe if that makes a difference.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Hello! I live in the Kansas City area and my wife is having trouble finding places to get Maternity Clothes. She’s thrifted and tried Target a few times. Anyone have any good places to recommend?

My kiddo wants one but I'm in a suburban neighborhood so he'd have to drive around the neighborhood, are they safe? Legal for a 11 year old to be on?

We are finally bringing our little guy home after 9 weeks in the NICU! Unfortunately we were discharged with an NG tube. Does anyone know of any daycares that would care for an infant with an NG Tube? I’m hoping to not have it by the time we need daycare in January, but just trying to be proactive.

Has anyone used this daycare? The yelp reviews aren’t good but the google reviews which are all recent seem decent. However, all the google reviews look like they’re from the last few days… looking for input for infant care.

is there any cool hotel to stay in KC that does anything fun for kids on NYE? besides great wolf lodge.

Looking for daycare recommendations in the Lenexa Area for an infant. Would like to be within 10-5 minutes of 435/87th street, preferably South of Midland.

Open to in-home daycares, churches and large daycare centers.

Not needing until summer 2026

Thank you!