I could cry…

Just got an e-mail from the woman I thought was “the one”, the ideal but expensive child care provider.

She changed her mind. She doesn’t want to reduce her rates from $40/day per boy. I simply can’t afford that kind of increase. Not only is it $120 to $150 more PER WEEK than I’m currently paying, but it’s $60 to $75 more per week than it would cost for a licensed home care or institutional daycare spot. That’s a hell of a lot of money.

I can’t stand that it’s become about the money, but I just don’t think I can swing it. If she had been okay with $70/day, we could have barely made it, but an extra $50/week out of my price range is a lot.

Isn’t it?

Crap, I just don’t know anymore.

Oh no, not another post about daycare!

We seem to have a few running themes around here these days.

Healthy eating / weight loss? Covered that yesterday.

Dead iPod? Replacement for the DOA replacement iPod should arrive today.

And what was that other one? Oh right. Daycare.

Thanks, a little after the fact, for your feedback on my post last week. I’ve spoken to a LOT of caregivers, and people who use caregivers, this week, and have come to realize a few things. First, rates average $35/day for full-time care around here. Second, almost all caregivers now have contracts that stipulate things like paid statutory holidays and paid vacations. Third, you get what you pay for.

I looked into a lot of options this past week. I applied to three home daycare agencies and registered with the City of Ottawa’s centralized waiting list for licensed child care. I applied to two daycare centres. I posted an ad and spoke to a woman about nanny sharing. I spoke to a woman recently owned a pizza shop and when that went bankrupt decided to open a home daycare. I got an e-mail from a woman who offered daycare in my home or hers, whose name appears in Cyrillic characters on her e-mail address and whose e-mail address domain is .ru (I don’t actually have a problem with that; it was just interesting.) And, I brought the boys to meet two potential caregivers and their families.

I think (she said tentatively) I found a keeper. I connected with her on a personal level right away, but most importantly, I loved how she interacted with the boys. I also agree with her philosophy on child care, which she included in her 12 page parent handbook. (!) Her conditions are quite reasonable, now that I’ve realized what the norms are around here. She asks for two weeks paid vacation, plus five sick days to use at her discretion. Her sickness policy is similar to what I posted last week, but less stringent.

She’s open to the idea of trying to find someone to take the boys’ space for the summer, if it works out, and to take a ‘wait and see’ approach to see if her finances permit us dropping down to a day or two a week instead. The thing that I liked most about her, after her interactions with the boys, is her openness to negotiate while still protecting her own interests.

The boys have also approved of her. Simon didn’t want to leave last night after our visit (although I’m sure the new golden doodle puppy had a lot to do with that!) and when I asked Tristan if he’d like to go to her house for daycare, he responded with an enthusiastic yes.

There were only two small problems, and I think we can work through them.

First, her rates are the highest of any caregiver I’ve talked to. I told her my current rates, and we negotiated a little bit to arrive at $35/day per boy, for a total of $70/day (as compared to the $50/day I’m paying now.) It’s a little steep, and finding an extra $80 to 100 in the budget each week won’t be easy, but I am pretty sure she will be worth it. I guess I’ll just have to keep cleaning my own toilets, instead of hiring that cleaning lady I’ve been considering.

(I can’t help myself, I have to point out that the Harper “beer and popcorn” money will only cover half of the increase to our monthly daycare expenses. And you wonder why I say it’s ridiculously inadequate. And that’s pre-tax. In fact, it will probably net out to be less than a quarter of the increase in fees. “Provides choice, support and spaces” my ass.)

Second problem is that she is only moving to my neighbourhood in May. Not a huge problem, as I’m not in a pinch for day care and we can wait, but if we are making the commitment to change, I’d prefer to just get on with it, especially after the disappointment we went through the last time I thought we had found the perfect caregiver and she changed her mind.

So, the news is trending toward good. I still have to check her references, and do the police check thing, and sign a contract, and wait 12 weeks until she actually starts taking care of the boys. I’m not breathing any sighs of relief just yet. And I still have to go through the hell of talking to our current care provider and telling her that we’re leaving. But it’s looking hopeful. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

A near miss, and keeping track of 200 calories

Hmmm… this was supposed to be a lament, a rant, a bonafide panic post about how the security IT guys cut off our access to Blogger. I came in to work yesterday and fired up the browser as usual, flipped open my favourites to the Blogger dashboard and got the Web filter screen telling me access was denied. I’m sure if the vast majority of you weren’t being buffeted by gale force winds and the snowstorm of the year, you’d have heard my wail of dismay. Not only could I not access any Blogger dashboard tools, but any Blogspot comment boxes were blocked as well. I was, to put it mildly, not impressed yesterday.

But hey, look! Here I am. *looks furtively over her shoulder for lurking IT security guys and knocks on wood*

So instead of the tirade against free access to the Web, here’s something I’ve been thinking of sharing with you for a while.

For those of you keeping track, the 5 lbs that I lost did in fact find their way home to me the next week. Well, not all of them. I’m down 2 or 3 lbs net, which is still not bad. I knew the 5 lbs was too good to be true. I’m still a little disillusioned, as 3 lbs of weight loss over six weeks of concerted effort doesn’t seem like enough of a reward to sustain my enthusiasm. (And yes, I know it’s less about the pounds and more about how I look and feel, but that doesn’t seem to be changing much either.)

But for now, I’m still committed to healthy eating and good choices and all that crap. On that subject, I’ve found a couple of bits worth sharing recently. Have you seen this illustration of what 200 calories looks like? All the pictures display the portion sizes relative to each other, so you can see how much or how little 200 calories gets you. Compare, for example, kiwis to Hershey’s Kisses. Very cool.

For those of you who have really been around for a while, you’ll remember that I joined weight watchers online summer before last, and our relationship ended on less than amicable terms. But I always did like their online tools, like the food diary, and the database with the calorie and fat counts of various foods. This calorie counter database seems to have all the same tools, but it’s free. And you know how I feel about free. Seems pretty comprehensive and very easy to use (although I admit, I’ve only been playing with it for a couple of days.)

And now, just as I’m ready to hit publish and be grateful to the kind souls in IT security who must have realized the error of their ways and re-granted our access to Blogger, I see by the error message across the bottom of my editing window that my connection to Blogger.com has died yet again.

Universe, are you seriously trying to tell me to move to private domain and blog hosting or what???

Love Meme Tender

A friend sent me this via e-mail, and I thought it would make a nice Valentine’s Day post.

10 people I love:
Beloved, Tristan, Simon, my mom, my dad, Sean, Natalie, Noah, Brooke and Katie. (Okay, so Katie is a dog, but I’m not sure she knows that.)

9 movies I love:
Star Wars, The Princess Bride, Moulin Rouge, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, Fight Club, Casablanca, A Christmas Story, Monty Python and the Holy Grail

8 words I love:
Serendipity, Mommy, Free, Obtuse, Seriously, Peccadillo, Scribble, eh

7 books I love:
Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw, An Acre of Time, On Writing, Generation X, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, The Time Traveler’s Wife, the dictionary

6 songs I love:
Good Mother, Jann Arden
Clumsy, Our Lady Peace
Danny’s Song, Kenny Loggins
Blow at High Dough, The Tragically Hip
What a Good Boy, Barenaked Ladies
It’s Not Easy, Five for Fighting

5 TV shows I love:
Survivor, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, My Name is Earl, Corner Gas, The Rick Mercer Report

4 foods I love
Guacamole, barbequed steak, take-out, delivery

3 places I love
The Pont Neuf in Paris, my bed, Britannia Beach

2 quotes I love
“I used to be a 34D, now I’m a 34 long.” (I’m sure this is Carol Burnett, but I can’t find the reference anywhere!)
“I love deadlines. I like the wooshing sound they make as they go by.” Douglas Adams

1 thing to love about me
My decisiveness. No wait! My dimples, cuz I’m pretty sure they get me laid. No wait, I can’t say that, my mother read this blog. Okay, how about my sense of humour?

And now! I’m not going to tag anyone with this, but if you do decide to snag this meme, leave a note in the comments and I’ll amend the post after the fact to link to you.

Edited to add: Hooray! Bex played along!
And Sharon did, too! So did Shan and Mrs Gryphon!

Donder op!

My brother and his family were in town last weekend for Simon’s birthday. We were having dinner at my parents’ place, the adults lingering over dinner while the children played noisily nearby, and it was a moment of perfect contentment.

My brother was telling us about one day a few weeks ago, he was sitting in his car when a man with a very thick Dutch accent approached him and asked my brother if he knew what the word on his car licence plate meant (he has our family surname, Donders, on his personalized plate.) Caught off guard by the gentleman’s agitation, my brother replied that to his knowledge it means “thunder” in Dutch. The man said that in fact, it was a very offensive word to someone from South Africa, and walked off in a huff.

In my family mythology, we know that donder means thunder (my dad was a professional percussionist when I was growing up. Isn’t Lou Thunder a great stage name for a drummer?), and of course I have subjected you more than once to the Donder / Donner reindeer debate.

But “donder” as offensive? I had to do more research. My first stop was an e-mail to the witty and clever Tertia, who writes the blog So Close and happens to be the only person I “know” who lives in South Africa. . (Tertia and I are both haunted the message boards at IVF Connections, back in the day.) She passed me to her husband Marko, who wrote:

Donder in dutch means thunder as you have said, this is the literal meaning of the word. But it is also used loosely as a slang word for beating someone up. It is not really a very harsh swear word and should not be offensive to others unless they are very sensitive.

Curious, I kept searching the Internet, and found a few more interesting tidbits. From my general reading, to ‘donder’ someone means to rough them up, and the expresion ‘donder op’ is a general expletive that can range in meaning from ‘get out of here’ to ‘fuck off’.

From The Afrikaans Challenge – translating to English:

‘Donder’ is another very useful word, used as an all-purpose swearword, which again has no good English translation. Used as a verb, it can express any degree of roughing up. As a noun, it is a pejorative, as they politely say in dictionaries, to mean whatever you want it to mean.

Cool! All this time, I thought I was benignly named after a force of nature, or even one of Santa’s reindeer, but in fact, each time I say my name it’s a pejorative. If only I had known that in high school, I may have been less marginalized. (Stop snickering. I’m sure the popular kids would have been fascinated to be cornered at a school dance or party or other social event while I lectured to them about the origins and alternate meanings of my family name. They wouldn’t have thought me even more strange than they already did, I’m sure of it.)

And finally, when I came across this entry, I knew it was time to stop searching. I had found the One True Meaning of my name.

From Allwords.com:

donder (slang)
Etymology: Afrikaans, from Dutch
‘donderen’: to swear or bully
verb
dondered, dondering 1. To beat up or thrash someone.
noun
1. A scoundrel; a rogue.

Being a scoundrel and a rogue is so very much cooler than being named after one of Santa’s reindeer, don’t you think? And to think, for 37 years I’ve been blissfully oblivious to this secret and titillating meaning of my name. Some day, my boys are going to thank me for burdening them with those hyphenated surnames!

An ode to naps

Isn’t it ironic that for Simon, the number one way to ruin an otherwise lovely afternoon is the intrusion of a two hour nap, and yet for me, the number one way to make an otherwise lovely afternoon absolute perfection is the indulgence of a two hour nap.

(Did you hear that the French government is even considering making a short nap official government policy? Somebody ought to feed this to Harper as a way to appease all those alienated public servants.)

It’s to the point that I have to actively deceive Simon into taking his afternoon nap. Embarrassing though it is to admit, he’s three years old and I’m having a harder and harder time outwitting him. First, he figured out the bed was a danger zone, and if he let me entice him in for a ‘cuddle’, he was doomed. Once he caught on, he started resisting going in to the bedroom after lunch, then resisting any motion toward the second floor of the house.

I’ve had to work hard to keep ahead of him. Today, I resorted to tempting him with old photographs, one of his weaknesses, to lure him into the bedroom. Once I got him into the room, I tried to convince him to join me in the bed, “because I’m so tired after working hard all morning, and I’d really like you to come and help me have a little rest.” Clever little monkey would have none of that. Eventually, through a combination of persistance, insistence and obstinance, I finally coerced him onto the bed, with Simon protesting the whole time.

I knew I’d won a battle once I got a soother in his mouth, and victory was mine after a few short minutes of lying together in the darked room, my arms wrapped tightly around him to discourage fidgeting. I think less than five minutes passed before his breathing was deep and regular, and his body was calm after the wave of tiny twitches that are always a harbringer of his deepest sleep. The hardest part was deciding to extricate myself from his warmth and get on with my afternoon, rather than giving in to a nap myself.

He awoke two hours later in a foul mood, entirely too aware of my duplicitousness. “Mommy,” he whined, yawning and indignant, “I didn’t want to take a nap.” I couldn’t help but laugh. Sadly, I may be the first, but I certainly won’t be the last woman to use my wicked ways to trick the poor boy into doing my will.

***

Bonus conversation!

Tristan has suddenly discovered the Disney movie Toy Story and runs around the house shouting things like, “To infinity and beyond!” and “I’m Buzz Lightyear. I come in peace.”

Today, while I was pulling on my boots and coat to come to work, the boys were bouncing about nearby.

Me, enveloping Tristan in a bear hug: “I love you, Tristan. Have a great day!”
Tristan: “I’m not Tristan, I’m Buzz Lightyear!”
Me: “Right. Okay, Buzz, have a great day.”

Me, turning to Simon: “And you, Woody! You have a great day, too.”
Simon, indignantly: “I’m not Woody! I’m Mr Potato Head!”

More daycare angst

So. Daycare.

Last you heard from our intrepid heroine, she had committed to finding new care for her boys. Down but not out, she put up ads, sent out feelers and tried to connect with potential new caregivers.

And promptly skittered back into her shell, yelping like a kicked poodle.

I need a perspective check. I think maybe that despite the way-too-many-kids thing, we might have been spoiled with the flexibility of our current caregiver. Can I please ask what you think of these kinds of ‘rules’ in a daycare contract for a home daycare?

  • 3 weeks paid holidays for her, PLUS regular pay when we’re on holidays or any time kids aren’t in care as regularly scheduled.
  • paid stat holidays (daycare is closed on those days) PLUS paid lieu day if the stat falls on a weekend.
  • if we want to continue our current routine of dropping down to one day a week care in the summer, we still have to pay for 2.5 days, her weekly minimum. Or, we have to quit in June and find a new provider in September.
  • If your child has a runny nose, please keep your child home. If your child has vomited within 48 hours, keep your child home. A medical certificate required to re-enter care after pink-eye.
  • If your child becomes sick, pick-up is expected within one hour.
  • Full time is 5 hours a day or more, and costs $35/day. Part time costs $30/day. After school care for full-time students is $20/day.

I keep waffling. I get that a daycare provider is running a business and has to protect herself, but I also feel like I’m being gouged when I read some of this stuff. The idea of paying for the whole summer just to keep continuity for the boys when they’ll be home with Beloved most of the time (who, incidentally, is not getting paid, therefore we’re paying for care we aren’t using with reduced income) is painful. The idea of paying for her vacation PLUS paying someone else to cover off the time is also painful.

And you wonder why I ranted when Stephen Harper dismantled the Liberals’ plans for daycare reform.

What do you think? Was I just spoiled before? Can you tell me if this is the norm, or will I find more flexibility if I keep looking?

My dirty little reality TV habit

Sometimes, I file away little bits and pieces of information to blog about, and then I have no idea what to do with them. For example, there’s this bit via one of my new favourite blogs, Inside the CBC: a new reality television series in preproduction for the CBC called (wait for it) A Week Without Women.

A Week Without Women is an ambitious new series which explores what happens when all the women in a ordinary Canadian town leave for seven days… What happens to a workplace without women? What happens in a community? What happens at home when the men and children are forced to cope without girlfriends, wives or mothers?!

I have been noodling this little bit of information for days, and I just can’t come up with enough snark to do it justice. On the CBC, of all places! I would love to think that this could be a thoughtful exploration of gender roles, of the extra weight that women carry when they do a full-time day job and then pull another couple of hours on domestic chores, or even highlight how much more capable men really are at domestic and relationship issues than they are ever given credit for. But you know it’s not going to play out that way. Dollars to doughnuts, it will be contrived, sensationalistic, and divisive.

Of course, I’m hardly the one to be criticizing reality TV as a genre. Beloved and I tuned in as usual for the first episode in the new Survivor season – I wouldn’t miss it. The debut I’m really looking forward to, though, is the new Amazing Race all-star season. I wrote about Uchenna and Joyce when they won season seven of the Amazing Race, and nearly two years after the fact, I consistently get google traffic looking for news on whether they ever adopted or were successful with IVF. I even wrote to CBS a year or so ago asking for an update I could post on the blog, since I get so much traffic asking the question, but (amazingly) they failed to respond to me. I’m looking forward to next Sunday night (Feb 18) to tune in and cheer them on again. It would be especially satisfying to see them trounce Rob and Amber!

What’s your guilty TV pleasure?

On helping a friend through a miscarriage

I was blissfully engrossed in the task of finally getting around to framing some old photos, while also making dinner and tidying the living room, when the phone rang late one Saturday afternoon. I was so engaged in what I was doing that even though I had picked up the phone and said “hello”, my mind was still on everything but the telephone.

The voice on the other end, breathless with surpressed excitement and without preamble, announced “I’m pregnant!!”

I knew instantly who it was, and struggled against a flood of conflicting emotions to make any sort of response. After a moment of silence that stretched on half beat too long, I gushed with excitement and asked the obligatory questions, but I could hear the strain in my own voice.

It’s still hard. This is one of my best friends in the world: the woman who had the courage to tell me that my ex-husband was being unfaithful when none of my other friends could; the woman who held me when I cried over our infertility diagnosis; the woman who asked me to be the godparent of her two boys; the woman I asked to be in the delivery room when Tristan arrived. She’s suffered through at least four miscarriages (how horrible is it that past a certain point, I’ve lost count) and I couldn’t be happier that she’s pregnant. And yet, in that first shocked moment, I froze.

I froze because what I thought was deeply buried was actually just below the surface. While I am overjoyed at my friend’s wonderful news, I guess I’m still not quite ‘over’ the miscarriage, despite my best efforts to leave it behind. And it took me that long and breathless heartbeat to slam closed Pandora’s box and recompartmentalize my own latent grief so I could properly celebrate her joy.

I mention all of this because twice in the past week or so, I’ve been approached by sweet, caring women who have asked me for advice on how to help a friend deal with a miscarriage. And I thought that maybe by reflecting on it here, I could both share my own insight and solicit yours. After all, I wouldn’t dare assume that even after three loses I could understand what another person is going through, but maybe collectively we can offer some varied perspectives.

My first thought was that you have to keep reaching out to someone who just experienced a loss. She might not be able to reach back just yet, and she might not be ready, but I think it’s important that you keep sending her notes, or giving her a call, just to let her know that you are there and that you care. Do what you can to make a ‘safe’ place for her to tell you about her feelings, no matter how dark. On the flip side, it’s also okay to try to make the world normal again, it’s okay to laugh if she’s ready (laughter being one of my main coping mechanisms), and it’s okay if she wants to ignore the grief and pretend all is well – for a while, at least. In other words, take your cues from her, but keep reaching out to make sure she knows she can come to you if she needs to.

One of the most important things is to simply acknowledge the miscarriage, even with a casual acquaintance. In the days and weeks after the miscarriage, I found it awkward talking to people if I wasn’t sure if they knew about the miscarriage or not. A simple “I’m so sorry” at least lets her know you know, and you care. I used to think that by saying something, you might be reminding someone of their grief in a time when they weren’t thinking about it, but I’ve realized that for much longer than I would have thought, you are always thinking about it, even in the back of your mind. So don’t be shy about approaching her. It was hard, so hard, accepting people’s sympathy those first few weeks, but I think it would have been worse if nobody acknowledged my grief.

When I lost the first baby, back in 2001, a friend of Beloved’s called to say hello and share his sympathy, and he told me about losing his mother when he was very young. I still remember that conversation, and how much it meant to me. He wasn’t equating the two losses, just saying in his own way that he had grieved, too, and I was more comforted by the attempt than the substance of his call.

So what do you say? That’s the hardest part. Say that you are sorry, tell your friend you love her and that she can talk to you if she needs to. Say what’s in your heart. Tell her how sad you are and share your feelings. Mostly, though, listen to her. Make sure she isn’t feeling guilty, that she doesn’t feel like the miscarriage is a failure on her part. Make sure she knows she can come to you. And don’t forget to acknowledge her partner’s grief, too.

I can share a couple of thoughts on what not to do, too. Don’t avoid her because you don’t know what to say. Don’t minimize her loss by saying things like, “You can always get pregnant again” or “It wasn’t meant to be” or by thinking that because she was just a few weeks pregnant that the loss is any less traumatic. Don’t judge her behaviour or her coping mechanisms, because everybody reacts to grief differently and moves through the stages of grief in different ways. And, in my humble opinion, don’t send flowers. A well-meaning friend sent a huge bouquet when we lost our first baby, and I hated the sight of them. I had to throw them away after a couple of days.

Finally, keep reaching out to her. She’ll probably get a lot of support in the first couple of days, but after that first period of grieving, people tend to stop talking about the baby and the loss. While it’s true that an insensitive comment can be hurtful, silence is worse. And keep talking to her about it. When you’re going through it, you need to talk it out to make it real. After a while, you need to talk to remember and heal. It takes a long time, much longer than I would have imagined. I truly appreciated the effots of a few friends who asked me, weeks later, how I was feeling and making sure I was okay.

After I wrote this, I did I little surfing and found this link to a fact sheet on American Pregnancy .org on supporting someone after a miscarriage, and it might have been more expedient for me to just link to them in the first place – it’s a good resource.

Anybody else care to share some thoughts?

Apparently the sickly iPod was contagious

In yesterday’s comments, Madeleine assured me that the dead iPod, the dead cordless phone and the sketchy Blogger connection were my technological ‘three’, and that my week should improve from there. You know, bad things happen in threes?

I wish.

I got home from work and ran the dishwasher while I was making dinner. By the time dinner was ready, the dishwasher had run, but for the second day in a row, there was water in the bottom of it. This time, the water filled the entire bottom of the dishwasher to a depth of 10 to 15 cm.

Crap.

So I hauled out our trusty home repair book, and even found the owner’s manual for the dishwasher, neither of which were helpful. I called for a service appointment, because despite my pretentions otherwise, what do I know from appliance repair? To their credit, they are able to come by tomorrow, the only day of the week Beloved is home with the boys.

But the real indignity is that I still had a dinner’s worth of dishes to wash. By hand. Oh, the humanity.

I haven’t washed dishes by hand for a good four years. Washing dishes was one of my jobs from the time I was about eight years old, and man how I hated washing dishes. Washing dishes by hand is for chumps.

And to make matters worse, I made bake-permanent-sticky-sauce-to-the-dish chicken and burn-the-bottom-of-the-pot risotto for dinner. I even used a collander, for the love of god. A collander! Had I known I would be washing the dishes by hand, we would have ordered pizza and eaten it from the cardboard box.

I even had (brace yourself) an apron on. Me, the domestic anti-goddess, in an apron washing dishes by hand. Surely it’s one of the eight signs of the apocalypse.

Civilized homes should not be without functioning dishwashers. I would give up the oven and the clothes dryer before I gave up the dishwasher – and maybe the microwave, seeing as how Tristan doesn’t eat food any warmer than room temperature anyway. But for the love of all things holy, don’t mess with my dishwasher.