You Know You're A Home Daycare Provider When ...

1. You speak in third person between the hours of 7am and 5pm, Monday to Friday.

2. You narrate everything you do between the hours of 7am and 5pm, Monday to Friday.

3. It takes you until 5:30 pm to realize you’ve got two chocolate pudding handprints on your torso — but nobody else knows that they’re just chocolate pudding.

4. You find it odd when parents undress their child, just to change a diaper.

5. You can pee faster than a man.

6. You can carry on a conversation with your spouse while simultaneously reading “Barnyard Dance” during a performance of “Daily Tantrum #5” and while diapering a doll for a toddler.

7. You repeat everything you say at least 3 times, during the hours of 7am to 5pm, Monday to Friday.

7. You repeat everything you say at least 3 times, during the hours of 7am to 5pm, Monday to Friday.

7. You repeat everything you say at least 3 times, during the hours of 7am to 5pm, Monday to Friday.

8. You can dress a toddler in full winter gear in exactly 3 minutes.

9. You can sunscreeen 5 toddlers in exactly 4 minutes 30 seconds.

10. You find it generally unnecessary to lay a child down to change their diaper.

11. You consider five dirty diapers in a day to be a light day.

12. You go through 504 Huggies Diaper Wipes over the course of 10 business days.

13. When your spouse suggests cutting your 2-week vacation time a little short, you say “Not on your life, buster!”

14. When your spouse comes home to only 3 kids, he comments on how quiet it is.

15. You think it’s funny when it takes a parent 5 straight minutes to get their child’s shoes on.

16. While you may practice it occasionally, you know just how thoroughly the art of negotiation is lost on a toddler.

17. You wake up at 5:30 am on a Saturday just to savour the quiet before the “Mommy, Mommy!” starts.

18. You consider sitting down during the entire duration of a meal to be a luxury.

19. You’re okay with wearing puke until closing.

20. You get more hugs and kisses during the day than a honeymooning couple in the Tropics.

21. You understand just how quickly Littles grow into Bigs.

22. You share in the excitement and fascination of watching a grasshopper jump from a fence slat to the grass, and back again.

23. Your table has bite-marks on it.

24. You can tell which child needs a change by the aroma in the air.

25. You KNOW that nap-time is a special gift from God, and you consider it a sacred event to be recognized religiously.  Every.  Single.  Day.

26. You find a great deal of satisfaction in knowing that if a child can’t spend his or her days at home with mom or dad, that at least they aren’t spending it plunked in front of a screen or left to their own devices all day.

27. Your cupboards contain 50 colour-coded plastic plates, 30 colour-coded plastic cups and bowls, 8 sets of colour-coded plastic cutlery, 16 colour-coded sippy cups (8 with handles, 8 without),  8 colour-coded bottles, and 6 colour-coded water bottles.

28. Watching the babies watch the two-year-olds sing at the top of their lungs makes your day.

29. Your house has no living room.  Just a playroom.

30. You believe that pants with snaps along the inside of the legs might possibly be the World’s Worst Invention Ever.

31. You know that a perfectly quiet child is either unconscious or getting into something.

32. You see yourself as extremely blessed to be able to make your own schedule, set your own income, spend your days with (mostly) happy little people, and most of all, to be the one to put your own kids on the bus in the morning, meet them in the afternoon, to be able to have fresh chocolate chip cookies waiting for them, to not have to find someone to care for them in the summer and on school breaks, and to be able to contribute to your family’s finances while doing it!