anyway, leading up to the shower, i kept saying things like "if i can just execute this shower, everything will be perfect and wonderful and life will suddenly be completely without stress". ha.
to back up for a minute...we decided a few weeks ago to put emme in a montessori school when she turns a year old. we had heard from several people that this school was awesome, and it is 1.2 miles away from our new house - amazing! it is the only full-day, year-round montessori program in austin, so that was additionally appealing since we didn't want ek to be with different providers over the course of the day (i.e. school and after school care or whatever). we also felt strongly that she needs to be in an environment with some structure and opportunities to learn, because she is SO busy and it's obvious that she wants more than what she's been getting at home. so, we toured the school and met the director and watched the kids playing and engaging and we loved it.
on the day of the tour, i had gone in to work and jb stayed home until i came to pick him up for the tour. the nanny was there with the kids, as usual, and she asked justin what we were doing that day. of course, he and i are both TERRIBLE liars and we didn't really have a plan of what/when to tell her, so he just said, oh, we're going to tour a day care this morning. when i got back that afternoon, she asked me when we were planning to put emme in a daycare, and again with me and the inability to lie, i said probably around 1 year.
this was a problem for a few reasons. 1. the school doesn't have an opening until nov. 1, so we really needed to keep the nanny until then; 2. we hadn't had a chance to discuss with vincent's family and figure out a plan; and 3. once you know your employment is on its way out, where is your incentive to work super hard? and when it comes to your child, how do you enforce quality care in this scenario?
so, we were stuck. the day after we had the joint-family conversation with the nanny about moving on to a new arrangement in november, she asked if she could leave early the following day for some citizenship stuff. we were skeptical, to say the least, but we accommodated her. on that day, she put the babies down for naps almost 2 hours before when they should have gone down and just let them cry it out until they fell asleep. she also spent that time primping for her interview and left the house in a mess. needless to say, this was not a great start. vincent's mom and i both had talks with the nanny the following day telling her we weren't ok with the super short notice, even though we knew we would have to be somewhat flexible as she looked for other jobs, and we most definitely were NOT ok with her trying to force the babies to align to her primping schedule.
anyway...on friday of last week (the day after the conversations), when jb and i got home, we noticed that a chunk had been bitten out of our coffee table - literally, the wood is splintered. it is obvious that it was emme that did it because of the shape of the bite and the fact that she's a wildebeest and tries to chew on the table all the time. the level of chew indicates that she had to have been working on it for at least 10 minutes. that means the nanny either watched her do that and didn't care (scary) or left emme alone in the living room on tile floor, unsupervised, for that long (scarier). i also checked her browser history on our computer (which is in a room that the babies should never be in) and she had hit 386 web pages. yowza. we were obviously frustrated, but hoping to just make it through the next two months and then move on. i was also hoping to preserve the relationship, as it would have been nice to have her babysit occasionally (if she ever got a car and didn't have to take the bus over 2 hours to be at our house).
but, that wasn't to be. on sunday morning, she texted us asking if she could have 9-1 off on monday, clearly ignoring the request for more advance notice. vincent's family decided they were just done, and, after discussing it, jb and i decided we were over it as well. beyond the recent frustrations, the logistical issues were becoming too much, so we just had to call and let her go.
i have mixed feelings about the whole thing. on the one hand, i do think that she loved emme (although, as her mother, i can say that i don't think it's hard to love my baby - ha). she is enamored by babies in general, and i think she enjoyed her time with them and thought we were nice enough as well. on the other hand, though, she definitely pulled a few stunts that i didn't like, and she was generally rather lazy. there was no "light housekeeping" done - really, we had to ask her/remind her to pick up after herself and the kids. she had the tv on most days, despite us making it clear that we weren't crazy about that. lots of little things adding up to make me feel just sort of....meh about her. i think she was a bit manipulative and took advantage (maybe not consciously, but advantage nonetheless) of it being our first time hiring someone in this capacity, and of the fact that we are relatively laid back etc etc.
anyway. the bottom line is that she is done, which is good and bad. good because i think she had begun to detach from us and the kids in a major way, and i know how quickly emme can get hurt, so it makes me feel safer this way...but bad because we're without a nanny and both in new jobs. i worked from home yesterday and our friend alison is watching emme with her daughter cameron at our house today. tomorrow is emergency care through dell, and then thursday we're trialing a girl i found through a neighborhood group.
we shall see. but this situation is not the first time i've thought about the particular trials of working moms. how do you just blindly allow a stranger to care for your most precious person? ugh.
here is a pic of ek helping me "work" yesterday...
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