Reply to Truthfully, can you both have careers and have 3+ kids?

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[quote=Anonymous]At this stage, you might want to consider what big changes you could make to make having three kids and two careers work for you.

For example, you might consider moving somewhere with a lower COL, making it possible to hire more babysitters, etc.

Do both of your jobs have to be done in the DC area?  One thing that really helped our family in terms of making it work was to move away from DC.  I now work 8 miles from my children's school, and I can reach their school in less than ten minutes with minimal traffic and no highways.

In the DC area, we could never find a high school student to babysit because high school students in DC are crazy competitive about extracurriculars, etc.  Strangely enough, we never had this problem at our new location.  
In addition, everything in Fairfax county was always oversubscribed so it was, for example, impossible to find three slots of swim lessons at the same pool at a similar time.  Instead, I ended up driving each of the kids to a different pool at a different time.  Moving out of DC made it possible to more easily find summer camp slots, swimming lesson slots, etc.

In addition, all of the kids made the swim team at school etc. because there were fewer kids getting outside lessons, etc.

I would strongly urge moving somewhere less competitive, particularly if you happen to have family nearby.

We cut down on the commute, the costs and the general insanity and craziness.  This gave us so much more flexibility -- no more signing a kid up for a camp in January that by the time it rolls around in June they have decided that they hate basketball, etc.  Instead, you sign the kids up a month in advance. We still did things like SAT tutoring and still had a math tutor come to the house, etc.  but somehow it all felt a bit more manageable. [/quote]

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