After 6 years with the under 5 crowd, my rule moving forward is: starting ages of 1-3 only. 4 year olds are too hard to deal with unless I've had them since they were little and they won't be staying long anyway. Under 1 are a lot of work, there's the risk of SIDS and it messes up my nice afternoon break while the big kids are napping. My only exception will be former or current daycare families that have a baby that I want to work with again.

I took on a 9 month old sibling of a former DCK who moved on to school. My own baby was also 9 months and I thought for sure it wouldn't be a big deal to have 2 so close to a year. Wrong!! They keep me on my toes and it's so hard to keep 2 away from the older kids while they're playing blocks or something.

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