Amy Kloppenburg:
It's really important to me. Without being able to send my kids to daycare, I wouldn't be able to work. I think it would be very chaotic trying to arrange where our kids would go, and I think, you know, both my husband and I have jobs that require a lot, you know, sitting at a desk and serving clients, and that's really important to be able to know that my kids are cared for, and I'm not worried about where will they be on Monday and Friday or you know, if we're relying on family, for example, to take care of 'em. So it's very important.

Aditi Debnath:
And before you found Art House, did you struggle to find a child care center that had available spots for your kids?

Amy Kloppenburg:
We did, it was a big challenge. So we relocated from New York, and before we moved back to Wisconsin, I contacted, and I'm not exaggerating, I contacted 35 daycares both on Madison's east and west side, and then I finally started reaching out farther than Madison, just going by distance, and I was very lucky to have reached out to Art House. Heather responded right away, and she was able to get both of our children in, and what I was finding most often was a child care center could take one child, usually the older one, 'cause we had an infant and a preschooler at the time, and they would only be able to take one child part-time, and that just didn't work for us.

...

It's a give and take, so some days I'm really great at work and you know, could probably do better at home and vice versa. I don't know if there's ever a perfect work/life balance, right? And you just have to figure out what you have going on for that week or that day and prioritize. Sometimes there are things that you can't miss, like, you know, preschool graduation next week. I'm never going to miss that, right? And sometimes I'll have an important meeting for work, and I need to make extra arrangements or make sure that I'm communicating with my husband about who needs to be where and when. But it's a challenge and I think that it's a challenge for most parents that work and it just changes over the years.