Category: Mothering without a licence

Back to work thoughts

Hard to believe it, but three weeks from this coming Monday, I’ll be back at work. If it weren’t for the fact that I’m fixated on the new plan to work a four-day week, there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth going on right about now, but I’m actually feeling okay about the whole thing. Given my druthers, as my mother would say, I’d’ruther be independently wealthy and able to stay home with the boys full time. Since that isn’t going to happen, the four-day thing gives me at least a semblance of balance and allows me to enjoy the idea of going out and playing with the grownups again.

I know I haven’t updated at all about our nanny search, but that’s looking quite positive right now, too. Back in November, after some truly horrendous interviews (including my favourite, the young woman who looked at Lucas sitting quietly on the floor and asked, “So, what exactly does he *do* all day?” not once but twice!) we actually found ourselves with three good candidates from which to choose. We ended up selecting someone who has a little less nannying experience but a lot of daycamp and bible camp and daycare experience simply because I got a really good vibe from her personally. She’s sweet and easy to get along with, and seems quite taken with the boys. Yesterday, she came over for a test run with Lucas while I hustled off to the gym for a half-hour, and I came home to her sitting rather stiffly on the couch and looking quite uncomfortable trying to hold her posture while Lucas snored sprawled across her. Way too cute and a very reassuring start!

Since the work-life balance thing looks like it might work out just fine, and the nanny thing looks like it might just work out fine, you’d think I’d be golden. Ha! Not so much. The fly in my ointment is the six-week old transit strike that’s bedevilling the city. Back when the bus drivers walked off the job in early December, I spent many days thanking my lucky stars that the strike happened while I was on maternity leave and not beholden to OC Transpo. February seemed miles away at that point, and I couldn’t conceive of a strike that would leave the city without buses for eight weeks or more.

Those of you who live here know the story and those of you who don’t likely don’t care for the details, but the gist of it is that yesterday the drivers resoundingly rejected the city’s last offer, and they’re now saying that the strike could carry on for weeks if not (gasp) months. Not only do I rely on transit to get from my suburban home to the heart of downtown every day, but our lovely new nanny also relies on transit to get to work. Without buses, I’ll either have to carpool or drive myself, and we’ll have to pick her up and drop her off every day. With me starting as early as I do, we’re likely looking at Beloved having to load all three kids in the car, pick her up, drop everyone off at home, and then drive his usual almost one-hour commute to work while she walks the big boys over to school. What a nightmare!

On the bright side, aside from the ridiculous transit strike, things seem to be falling into place for a rather pleasant transition back to work. *touch wood* I happened to get to see a lot of my colleagues yesterday for a work-social function, and it really was nice to be able to see everyone again. I’m lucky enough to work with some truly great people, and I’ve missed them over the last year. And, right on cue, my 35 minutes of nap time are done and the world’s cutest baby is cooing himself awake upstairs…

Poor baby

Be thankful you aren’t Lucas this week. Poor guy, not even eleven months old, is having a hell of a week. One week ago, last Tuesday, I brought him into a walk-in clinic because he had a fever and had been sleeping poorly. Diagnosed with an ear infection, and his first dose of amoxicillin.

Saturday night, he got the stomach flu I’d been dealing with since the day before. In one twenty minute span I had to change him into three separate sleepers, and change my own pyjamas twice. Good times.

This morning, the rash that had been on the back of his hips for a couple of days had spread to his entire body, looking alarmingly like measles. I figured it for a reaction to the amoxicillin, but we’d finished the full course of that on Sunday, so I called the ped to be sure. He called us in for an appointment, and said it’s possible that it’s a late reaction to the antibiotics (Beloved is deathly allergic to penicillin) but looked more like a viral rash to him. He also said Lucas has a lot of redness in his throat and some serious mucus building up, further supporting the viral theory. Here comes the head cold.

Sheesh, no wonder we haven’t been getting any sleep lately!

The good news is, the stomach flu made it to the fourth member of the family around midnight last night, so we’re four down with one to go on that count. And I feel like myself for the first time in five days. Here’s hoping for more restful nights ahead!

I promise, blogging of topics other than bodily fluids will resume shortly…

Hypocrite, thy name is mother

From downstairs, the sound of bickering, then howls of indignation. I stomp down the stairs and into the fray. “What?” I demand, giving them both my best stink-eye.

“He hit me!” wails the assaulted.

“He was teasing me!” counters the other.

“In this household, we do not hit,” I lecture. They’ve heard it before. “It is never okay to hit. Never. If you are frustrated, use your words. If using your words doesn’t work, what should you do?”

“Come and tell you,” they say in pouty unison.

“That’s right. If your words don’t work, you come and tell me or Daddy, and we will help you.”

**Fast forward two hours.**

I can hear the commotion escalating from downstairs. Right on cue, I hear the inevitable: “I’m telling!!”

One boy comes up, his brother right behind him. “Mom!” he begins.

I cut him off. “I don’t want to hear it. Go settle it yourselves. Now go away. GO!”

How long d’you think I can keep playing both sides against the middle? One of these days, this will surely come back to bite me in the ass…

He’s a goer

Uh oh. Cue REM’s “It’s the end of the world as we know it.”

The baby? He’s mobile. We are so farked.

He’s not quite crawling yet, but he knows how to lean over from a sitting position and stretch himself prone. It’s only a matter of days before he pops up on his hands and knees and scoots away. In the interim, though, he’s turned the barrel roll and the 96-point turn into an art form. He also scooches over to the furniture and manages a little baby chin-up, hauling himself up on his knees.

Did I mention we’re farked?

And he’s in that intense stage of baby development where one not only acquires a new skill, but one must practice that new skill at every available opportunity, and during each and every waking moment. I can’t turn my back on him without him making a break for it.

So very farked.

Because there was less than two years between Tristan and Simon, we never really moved out of a state of general baby-proofedness between them. In the intervening four years, our house has become home to every possible choking hazard known to the modern world, most of which are lurking under furniture and tucked in hidden cubbies and corners just waiting for a curious human with an eye-level of approximately eight inches off the ground to happen by.

And hardy-har-har, I thought the Christmas tree would be safe this year…

In which I trade my mother’s loyalty for a few inches of ink

Huh. Hard to figure out how to play this one.

It’s not every day you get quoted in the Globe and Mail, after all. For an attention junkie like me, it doesn’t get much sweeter than that. When Fiona sent me an e-mail to ask if I’d mind being interviewed for a piece she was working on about baby-led weaning, I knew if nothing else it would make great blog fodder.

Ah, but as many other A-list celebrities like myself have learned, the media is a fickle mistress indeed. I’m quite sure I never would have said that my mother was “nagging” me to start feeding Lucas solids. “Haranguing” maybe, or “cajoling.” “Hectoring” would have been a good word, now that I think of it. But I would never in a million years told Canada’s national newspaper that my mother was “nagging” me. Never.

I’m *so* getting a lump of coal for Christmas, aren’t I, Mom? (We won’t even get into the fact that we skipped over six weeks’ worth of milestones, from first cereal to first Cheerios, in a single en-dash!)

Now that I’ve alienated the one person whose vote I knew was in the bag for the Canadian Blog Awards, I need your vote more than ever. Take pity on me, and throw me a vote, willya?

Entitlement, failure and self-esteen

In my search for a new nanny, I’ve had a lot of exposure to the 20 to 25 year old age group and I have to agree with the prevailing opinion that this particular generation seems to have a highly over-developed sense of entitlement.

A week or so ago, I read about a study by Ellen Greenberger, a psych prof in California, who examined that sense of entitlement and found that students today expected high grades for modest efforts and were extremely demanding of their professors: they expected same-day e-mail responses, special consideration for effort over achievement, and believed that professors had no right to ban cell phones during lectures. I’m not that far removed from my own academic career (only a decade or so) but I can’t imagine making the kinds of demands on a prof that I see students making of Beloved where he teaches.

Hot on the heels of that article, last week there was another report, this one about a high school in Saskatchewan that is thinking of doing away with those self-esteem crushing Fs when a student scores below 50% on a course. Instead, students would receive “incomplete” or “no mark” on their report cards and transcripts. (I’m barely able to type this for the rolling of my eyeballs.)

“Failing marks do not encourage student engagement with school,” [the principal] said yesterday, pointing to the permanent scar on a student’s transcript, as well as negative effects on motivation and self-esteem. Teachers are also demoralized when they hand out failing grades, because many see it as indicative of their own efforts, Ms. Figley said. “Just like doctors don’t want patients to die, teachers don’t want their students to fail.”

So the message to students is, “we know failing sucks and we don’t want your feelings to be hurt, so if you don’t pass we’ll just pretend you never took this course.” Yeah, that’s a healthy approach.

In the past month, I’ve been appalled by the lack of respect shown by the young nannies applying to take care of the boys. This is a job where trust and personality are two of the keys to success, and I’ve received replies that are barely literate, let alone borderline impolite with their immediate familiarity. That, and we’ve scheduled four interviews so far with only one candidate even bothering to show up. One at least had the decency to call a couple of hours before an interview set up three days ago and ask for a reschedule due to that old standby, a “family emergency.”

I don’t want to seem like an old biddy shaking my cane and tsk-tsking an entire generation, but what the heck is going on? And, more importantly, what do you think we as parents can do about it to avoid the same fate for our kids? Is this sense of entitlement a product of being raised in an environment of leniency and lack of discipline, or is it a question of having always gotten everything they asked for? Is it that in waiting longer to have kids, we’re too tired to mount a decent offense in the discipline department, so the kids are running roughshod and getting away with stuff we never would? Or are they posh because they were constantly escorted and chaperoned from playdates to skating lessons to sushi dinner?

Hey Dani, how is the search for child care going?

It sucks. Thanks for asking.

Since the end of August I’ve posted at least a dozen ads in various online and IRL places. I’ve talked to or e-mailed probably 20 people. I’ve invited three people to come to our house for an interview, and two of them didn’t even bother to show up. No call, no e-mail no apology, just me sitting there explaining to the kids that I don’t know where the babysitter is or why she didn’t come, and yes as a matter of fact it IS extremely rude to just not show up when you’ve been invited somewhere, interview or not. And the one person who did actually show up called us the next day to say sorry, she’s decided to go back to school in January, but she’d be happy to sit occasionally on weekends for us.

Two and a half months down, and no leads whatsoever.

Am thinking of moving beyond the free online classifieds that have worked for me thus far and beyond the notice pasted on the community board at the supermarket. Would you pay $70 to have access to an online database of nannies? Any other thoughts on how I can broaden my search?

Anybody got Mary Poppins’ number?

My deal with the devil – er, with Batman and Darth Vader

I’m trying out a new experiment this year. I’ve made a deal with the big boys: they can go trick-or-treating as usual, but they’ll trade all of their Halloween candy, save for a very tiny bit, for a new Webkinz each.

I have no idea if this is going to work. Beloved and my mom both gave me a look that was a cross between ‘Are you kidding?’ and ‘Hey, good luck with that!’ But the boys are enthusiastic about the deal. Heck, I think they would have traded in their baby brother if I’d thrown in a Bakugon or Pokemon into the deal!

There may be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth (on the part of the kids, perhaps, but most likely on the part of Beloved!) come Saturday morning when there is no candy to be had. I have reiterated the deal several times, so they understand they will get to keep only two or three bites of candy each and give up the rest, and they didn’t even hesitate to agree. We’ll see!

I must admit that a small part of me is rolling my own eyes at me, thinking ‘Oh great, she’s become one of those mothers. Next stop, hemp underwear and no TV.’ But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we simply don’t need to have several pounds of candy in the house. Part of it is my new family healthy eating kick, but part of it is purely selfish. I’m within five pounds of my goal weight on Plan B, and there will be enough room for sabotage come Christmas — might as well eliminate as much temptation as I can.

What do you think? Would your kids go for it and would you subject them to it? What would be a sweet enough deal to entice them to give up their candy?

And, most importantly, any thoughts on what to do with an extra two sackfuls of candy? I’m thinking the last kid to show up trick-or-treating at our door is in for a delightful surprise!

Searching for a nanny. Again.

Sigh. I should have known it was too good to be true. When I first started looking for a new nanny for the boys back in September, the first two people to reply were so awesome that I danced for two days. One was an ECE grad, one had a little daughter but tonnes of nanny experience. I was delighted that I’d have to choose between two fantastic candidates.

The ECE grad bailed the day of our first interview, saying she was sick. No problem. Then she missed the second one, claiming she thought it was the following week. Then she stood me up last night. The second one disappeared, too. One e-mail she was very interested, and I haven’t heard from her since.

(insert colourful curse words here)

So now I’m back to scouring the ads, placing ads of my own, sifting through the reams of applicants who I wouldn’t trust to take care of my garden let alone my kids, and hoping against hope that we get lucky again. It’s the most helpless, frustrating feeling.

You know, I really think this goddamn childcare search is the hardest, most painful part of parenting. I’d happily endure another 24 hours of labour if it meant I could be guaranteed a decent, caring, reliable person to care for my boys. So much for looking forward to going back to work.

I’d’ve loved to have our old nanny back, but she’s eight months pregnant with baby #2 for her, and I just can’t see her taking on my three boys plus her own two year old plus a newborn. You couldn’t pay me enough to do it, anyway!

Oh, and to add insult to injury… remember the woman who took care of the boys for two days and quit with no notice by dropping a judgmental letter in my mailbox in the middle of the night? Guess whose daughter is in Simon’s JK class? I get to see her twice a day, every day. I tell ya, the fun never stops around here.