I actually have 3 kids - age 6, age 5, and age 2, so that further complicates things!!

This is bizarre...I was thinking that I would simply do only school-aged, so could have 9, minus my 3, so 6, which would be ok, money-wise. Then I'd get the day to hang out with my 2-year-old while my oldest 2 are in school. We have been debating another baby - I thought, hey, that would work, because I'd have 6 hours a day of school time with only the baby (if we waited until my 2-year-old was in school)

So this means that because my own child is under school-age, I have a "mixed age group," meaning I can only have 3 daycare children - because I have 3 of my own! That's ridiculous! I have been checking out kijiji and not a lot of providers post their rates, understandably, but the couple that I have seen have all said $25/day, which is cheap, even for where I live now, a small working-class city in Southern Ontario.

That's only $75/day, minus food costs. Damn!

Off to consider options...thanks so much Rachael for looking into this for me!

So to confirm...I can't have the 9 school-age (counting my own 3 of course) because ONE of my three is not yet school-age, correct?