Category: Mothering without a licence

Another twist of the knife

I just spent 30 minutes transcribing the infamous letter, delivered surreptitiously under cover of night, to share with you. (No, I haven’t posted it yet. I’m still pondering how wise a decision it is to publish it.) The whole time, I could hear the boys above in their beds, playing and talking and generally avoiding going to sleep.

Tristan finally called down the stairs to me. “Mommy,” he said in his serious voice. “We changed our minds. We want to go back to Bobbie’s house.” The former caregiver, the one who no doubt loved the boys, but with whom I had enough niggling concerns that I launched myself down the road of finding a new caregiver lo these many months ago.

Now I’m really torn. There were valid reasons I wanted to change caregivers. But I’m wondering if maybe my expectations were too high. Should I take the easy road and go back to her? We saw her in the schoolyard today at JK pick-up and she came straight up to me and gave me a hug before talking to the boys. She’s been a part of our lives so long, and just seeing her at the school leaves a lump in my throat… especially now as I dread the inevitable question of how it’s going with the new caregiver. It’s a very small community, and no doubt if I start sending out word that I’m looking for a new caregiver it will really hurt her that we didn’t at least try to approach her to see if she would take us back. Bad enough we rejected her once, but potentially devastating that we didn’t go back to her when it didn’t work out in the very first week… the last thing in the world I want to do is hurt her feelings.

I talked to both boys for a while just now, promising that at the least we would go back to Bobbie’s house for a playdate soon. Simon, who every single day said, “I don’t want to go to Bobbie’s house” said to me tonight, “I miss my buddies. I want to go back, please.”

And I didn’t think my heart could break any more over this wretched, wretched situation.

I spoke to one agency and left a message with another, and the first agency had absolutely no caregivers in our school zone. I posted half a dozen responses to bulletin boards, and have had a brief e-mail conversation with someone who might be interested in sharing her nanny. It seems half the city of Ottawa is now looking out to help us find a caregiver. Could the answer be as simple as what I had just a week ago? Were my expectations too high? Am I considering settling because I’m still reeling from this whole experience? Does a good heart and unadulterated love count for more than lax discipline, too much TV and rowdy kids?

Twice I asked Tristan how he felt about going back, and twice he said he would like a new caregiver. Is he saying he wants to go back to Bobbie because he thinks thats what I want him to say? Or has he really changed his mind?

Could someone please tell me what the right answer is? I’m getting mighty tired of flailing around in the dark on this one.

She quit

I lay in bed for quite a while this morning, trying to force myself to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t quiet the voices that have been harranguing me all weekend, so I gave in and got up.

I opened the front door to get the morning newspaper and saw an envelope sticking out of the mailbox. The caregiver had snuck by in the night and left a letter informing us she “felt it necessary to terminate our contract effective immediately.” And a cheque refunding our deposit.

I am furious. I’m annoyed as hell about the actual quitting, but I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. But I am shaking with hurt fury at the cowardly way she went about this without even talking to me. She says her reasons are “Tristan and Simon need much more care than I can give them without jeopardizing the other children, the lack of communication from both you and [Beloved], and the safety issues that have arisen.”

And by lack of communication I wonder if she meant the one phone call on Tuesday and two on Thursday I made, checking to see if everything was okay? Ugh. “Children do not learn respect and rules overnight, rather it is a continuous process.” She says I was not up front with her because I didn’t tell her that Tristan had finished 10 days of antibiotics the night before her first day with them and it was a safety issue and I should have told her. WTF?

There is, of course, absolutely nothing I can do. I’m certainly not going to force her to take my kids for two weeks to honour our ‘contract’ when she’s behaving like this. I’m torn – I feel like there should be some sort of consequence, that I should at the very least give her an earful; but, there is nothing to be gained there.

So off I go to find a new caregiver. Again. I’ll at least have to take Tuesday, probably Thursday as well, off work because Beloved is in exam season. Thank small mercies that this happened now instead of in January, and that in a week or two at least he’ll be able to stay home with them full time until we find someone.

I told Tristan that Joanne couldn’t take care of kids anymore, and asked him if he’d rather go to a new caregiver or back to his old caregiver. At least I know his old caregiver loved both boys, even if I had some concerns about the other stuff and I was willing to eat whatever crow I had to and approach her again. But Tristan said he would like a new caregiver, bless his heart. How can I argue with that?

Oh, and remember the nursery school, the one I was so excited about? Yah, the chances of me actually being able to find someone who will shuttle Tristan to and from school and Simon to and from nursery school? What do you figure my odds are on that one?

Excuse me, I have to go start searching the daycare listings. Staring from scratch. Again.

Dangerous Book for Boys redux, now with more free books!

Did you think I forgot about the draw for the Dangerous Book for Boys, the one to compensate for the fact that Canadians couldn’t enter the Harper Collins contest? Of course I didn’t!

There were 22 comments on the thread as of Wednesday morning, one of which was me and one of which was a duplicate. I assigned everyone a number for the order in which their comment appeared and got totally sucked in playing with the Random Number Generator. Why I find random numbers so compulsively interesting is beyond me, but then, I also get lost playing in the thesaurus.

Anyway, twenty minutes later I remembered that I was there for a reason I was playing with the random numbers and got down to business. Since I couldn’t get hold of anyone from PriceWaterhouse to validate the contest results, you’ll have to rely on this screen capture and my word that the results are valid.

Congratulations to the 10th commenter and winner of the free book, Batman!

But wait! There’s more! I’m pleased to tell you that there is yet another chance to win your own free (and autographed!) copy of the Dangerous Book for Boys, courtesy of the MotherTalk Blog Bonanza. For today only, you can write a post and join the MotherTalk Blog Bonanza in support of the Dangerous Book for Boys, and everyone who submits their link to MotherTalk before midnight tonight (May 18) will be eligible for entry in the draw for the free book. Plus, you get to play along with a fun bunch of literate bloggers AND get some traffic to your blog AND maybe find some excellent new blogs to read. There’s nothing to lose! Full details are on the MotherTalk blog.

I was all ready to write a post today about raising ‘dangerous’ boys and how raising boys has changed my perspective on gender roles. After yesterday, though, I’m still feeling a little raw, and second-guessing whether my “boys will be boys” attitude is maybe a little too laissez-faire.

So instead, in this post that lacks any sort of structure whatsoever, I’ll turn over the microphone to you. Tell me what ‘dangerous’ means to you. Is it important for boys to be dangerous? Is it something you encourage, or something you repress? Does being a ‘dangerous’ boy somehow affect the sort of man he will become? Do girls need to be dangerous, too? Should we tolerate dangerous behaviour more from boys than from girls?

Speak, bloggy peeps! (And, if you decide to post about this as part of the MotherTalk Blog Bonanza, make sure you tell Miriam at MotherTalk so she can link back to you.)

Just when you thought the daycare thing was resolved…

Remember that new caregiver? The one that took me four months to find, the one I waited more than two months for the boys to start, the one who was ‘ideal’ and was going to help us send Simon to nursery school?

She wants to quit. Well, she has ‘serious reservations’ after spending two whole days with my boys. I could cry.

I knew Tuesday had been a rough day. Simon was upset (he cried for the best part of an hour after Beloved left) and he was a real handful after I brought him home. He simply didn’t handle the transition nearly as well as I had hoped and expected.

But this morning, Beloved and I were floored when the new caregiver said if she didn’t see some improvement by the end of the day today (only the second day she’s seen them), she might have to ‘reconsider.’ When I called her this morning, she had a laundry list of concerns, most of them boiling down to the boys being, well, boys. She felt they were not listening to her, were being too rambunctious, kept asking for TV and video games. She kept talking about how important it was to get a good ‘fit’.

I called again this afternoon, and while she had another laundry list of concerns, she’s given us a reprieve of sorts, saying she never makes a decision without thinking about it and that she would ‘see how it goes after the weekend.’ Not sure exactly what this means, except that I get to keep this gnawing lump of anxiety near to my heart for the duration of the long weekend now.

I’m trying not to be bitter, I really am. I get that she’s concerned because the boys aren’t listening to her as well as she’d like, but to me it’s her job to command that respect. They’re coming from a day care environment where they had too much freedom, in my opinion, which is why we changed in the first place. And while I’m the first to admit that my boys are not angels, I have a hard time swallowing the fact that they are the bad influence that she seems to be insinuating.

I could refute her criticisms and concerns on a point-by-point basis, but to me it basically boils down to the fact that they need to respect her authority and get used to her style – two things that it will take more than two days to resolve. I’m just flabbergasted that she’s being so quick to consider bailing out on me. While of course I would rather she be open with me from the start, I can’t help but think this is a huge overreaction on her part. I’m willing to listen to her concerns and to work on the behaviours that are most troubling to her (which seem to revolve around listening and helping to clean up), but it will still take me more than four days to get things turned around.

It’s hard not to take this whole thing personally. Aside from the nauseating idea of potentially losing the nursery school connection and having to start the whole day care search over again from scratch, I don’t take criticism well on the best of days – but I am especially thin-skinned when it comes to my boys, and my parenting skills.

I can’t help but compare this to when we got called in by Tristan’s teacher after only eight days last September. She too had concerns about Tristan’s behaviour that she wanted to bring to our attention – and we worked with her to improve the situation. The irony is that I wouldn’t be surprised to hear he’s now one of her favourite students; she’s always very favourable to him now and she hasn’t expressed a single concern since then.

Bad enough this is undermining my confidence in my choice of a caregiver, but now I’m beginning to wonder if I’m one of those parents who are oblivious to the hellions they are raising. I just want to crawl under my desk and cry…

A new chapter in the caregiver saga

Today is the boys’ first day with their new caregiver. I think I can finally let go of this deep, anxious breath I’ve been holding for the past three months or so.

It’s been a melancholy couple of weeks, saying good-bye to our other care provider. She has been so gracious about the whole thing that I’ve been second-guessing myself for the last month since we told her that we would be switching. On the boys’ last day with her last week, she bought them each a little gift, and a little something for us, too, and she gave us a thank-you card thanking us for trusting her with our precious treasure. She’s a class act, that one.

I was in the middle of composing this post and about to note how well the boys are taking the transition when Beloved called and said Simon is now expressing anxiety about facing the new daycare by himself (Tristan will be in school this morning and joining Simon at lunch time.) My kids are generally pretty good with transition – much more so than me! – and I’m sure he’ll be fine once he gets there. I feel for him, though. Bobbie is the only caregiver he’s ever known, and even though we’ve spent a while with Joanne and her kids in the last little while getting to know them, change is always at least a little bit scary.

Tempering my guilty regret of the last few days has been exciting news from the new caregiver. When we first spoke, she had mentioned the fact that her three-year-old daughter would be attending nursery school in the fall, and if I wanted, she could bring Simon at the same time. I have always wanted to have the boys in some sort of preschool program, but up to now it has just been too logistically daunting. Last week, Joanne called and said that there was one space available in the afternoon class, if we wanted to register Simon.

I am absurdly excited about this, and jumped at the chance. If I could have, I would have registered Simon for JK this fall; I think he’s more than ready. He was nearly beside himself with excitement when I told him that in September, Tristan will be going to afternoon kindergarten and he’ll be going to his own big-boy school. Joanne said it’s an excellent program with arts and crafts, beginner science, music and – be still my heart – pageants. (I’ve been just a little bit disappointed by the lack of pageants during Tristan’s first year of school. Bring on the pageants!)

Now I’m all choked up at the idea of both of my boys being in school. What happened to my babies? Can we slow this whole thing down just a little bit? From soothers to school registration in the same week – I’m not ready!

To DVD or not to DVD

Two of my favourite bloggy peeps are going head to head on CBC radio next week. Andrea from a peek inside the fishbowl and Chantal from Breadcrumbs in the Butter are going to duke it out over whether portable DVD players are mother’s little helper or the devil’s spawn.

Myself, I’ve got no problem with them. I think they’re a fabulous way to keep the kids entertained on an otherwise long and boring drive. For some reason, almost every drive we take is in the neighbourhood of five hours, and even watching two kid-sized movies in a five hour trip leaves lots of time for colouring, word games (we’re working our way up to twenty questions), scenery-gazing and poking your brother. My only complaint is that the DVD player hogs the cigarette lighter and I have to get a splitter so I can use my iPod transmitter while the kids are watching a movie.

What do you think? Better yet, give your pro-DVD arguments to Chantal, or your anti-DVD arguments to Andrea, and tell ’em Dani sent you!

Book review: The Sneaky Chef

I recently received a review copy of Missy Chase Lapine’s The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids Favorite Meals. When the publicist first offered it to me, I’ll admit to being a little bit skeptical.

The blurb in the introductory e-mail said, “Learn how to make the meals your children already love — but with secret sneaky ingredients that pack a healthy punch. Your kids will never suspect that there’s blueberries pureed into their brownies, cauliflower in their mac ‘n’ cheese, or sweet potatoes in their lasagna — but they’ll love every bite! Here are simple, practical recipes and techniques that will help every busy parent create healthy meals for the whole family.”

I was skeptical, but I was also curious. Curious, and rather exasperated at trying to get Tristan, my fussiest eater, to consume even a few bites from each food group every day, let alone hitting the recommended daily targets.

I was formulating a post in my head before I even received the book. I had doubts about the premise of the book, about the concept of hiding healthy food inside foods my kids might deign to eat. Spinach in brownies? How the hell would that work out? And it would probably be a lot of extra work, and I’m not so fond of cooking in the first place, let alone anything that makes cooking even MORE work. And anyway, isn’t the point to teach kids to make healthy choices, not to trick them into eating good stuff they wouldn’t even know was there?

Okay, so I was a little biased. And you know what? I ended up really liking this book. Mind you, I haven’t actually tried any of the recipes so far. I’ll blog a few of them over the next little while. But once I got over my initial skepticism, the recipes intrigued me enuogh that I’ve bought into the concept in principal.

My only criticism of the book itself is that it takes WAY too long for the author to expound upon her food philosphies. She spends three long chapters giving background and justifications and rationalizations, discussing why kids are fussy eaters and why we need to improve their diets. Can’t say I learned anything from the first 55 pages, but I really liked the section titled The Lists, which includes a list of the 12 most important and 12 least important foods to buy organic. (#1 most contaminated food = peaches; #1 least contaminated food = sweet corn.) I was also greatly reassured that maybe this was a good cookbook for me, the world’s laziest chef, by the fact that not only did I recognize all of the items on the shopping list of staples, but I already had most of them at hand.

The recipes weren’t what I was expecting either. I was expecting tips like add shredded carrots to meatloaf and spaghetti sauce, and using apple sauce instead of oil in your baking; the kind of tips that are in my favourite-of-all-time cookbooks, the Podleski sisters’ trio of LooneySpoons, Crazy Platesand Eat Shrink and Be Merry.

I admit, I cringed when I first read The Sneaky Chef’s premise. And yet, the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. She suggests 13 make-ahead purees of concentrated, nutrient dense foods. For example, the “purple puree” contains baby spinach and blueberries with lemon juice; the “orange puree” contains carrots and sweet potatoes; and the “better breading” contains whole wheat bread crumbs, almonds, wheat germ and salt. The idea is that the purees and blends are rich in nutrients but deviod of unpleasant textures and easy to hide in foods kids will eat.

The thing I liked best about this cookbook is that it has a whole whack of recipes for foods my kids (and by kids, I mean Tristan and Simon and Beloved, the latter being perhaps almost as if not more fussy than the first) will actually eat.

Some of the recipes are simple in a “why didn’t I think of that?” kind of way, like adding wheat germ to oatmeal (my kids, they love oatmeal from a box), or adding “orange puree” to quesadillas. I was won over completely by the idea of adding “orange puree” to canned pasta, as my boys adore that unnaturally neon-orange pasta in a can and I feel a twinge of empty-calorie and maxed-out preservative guilt every time I serve it.

There are more complex and interesting recipes, too. I’ll be trying the Magic Meatballs soon. They contain the usual lean ground beef or turkey, a bit of tomato paste, an egg and some salt, but also 6 to 8 tablespoons of “green puree” (baby spinach, broccoli, sweet peas and lemon juice) and 1/4 cup of wheat germ. And both the Unbelievable Chocolate Chip Cookies (with hidden special Flour Blend, rolled oats ground to a powder, ground almonds and “white bean puree”) and the Brainy Brownie (with “purple puree” – the one with spinach and blueberries!) sound intriguing enough to try at least once.

And for the truly lazy (you’re looking at me, aren’t you?), the author even suggests that if you are averse to food processors and blenders, you can replace the home-made purees with store-bought baby food.

Am I really thinking about putting a blend of spinach and blueberry baby food in my brownies? Hey, if I have learned one thing in this whole parenting adventure it’s that my motto ought to be “whatever works.”

What do you think? Crazy idea, or just crazy enough to work?

(Editorial aside: In my continuing capitulation to commercialization, I’ve finally signed on as an Amazon Associate. My book review links now contain a referral code that give me, in theory, a small commission if you happen to choose to buy one via my link. No pressure, though. The boys can always panhandle their way through college.)

Tristan on two wheels

This post was inspired by MotherTalk’s Blog Bonanza called “Fearless Friday”, to support the paperback launch of Arianna Huffington’s book On Becoming Fearless.

In thinking about what to write about, I chewed over lots of times when I’ve been fearless: travelling for a month by myself through Europe when I was 25 comes to mind (except, I wasn’t so much fearless as terrified and too far from home to to anything about it except keep going), as does when I left my ex-husband. Even choosing to undergo the IVF treatment that lead to Tristan begged a leap of faith, and more than a bit of fearlessness.

That’s not where I want to go with this, though.

Last Saturday, I took the training wheels off Tristan’s beloved bicycle. We had been talking it up for a while. Since the middle of last summer, I’d been asking him if he was ready for me to take off the training wheels, and he’d answer unequivocally, “Not until I’m five.”

He turned five this March, and I think we both knew it was time. It’s been a funny season here, and we’ve had snow on and off enough that he’s only managed to ride his bike a few times – although I’m sure he asked for it every single day. Finally, last Saturday was one of those gorgeous days that vault over spring entirely and instead more closely resemble early summer. Tristan and I decided early that morning that it would be the big day, the day the training wheels came off, and he pestered me with endless enthusiasm as I tried to get a few quick things done before we set off for the school yard with its wide expanses of flat, untrafficked pavement to try it out. In the end, it was just easier to drop what I was doing and indulge him than to keep putting him off. He practically flew into the house when I told him to go find not only his helmet, but a set of knee and elbow pads, too. (He is my son, after all. We’re not graceful people by nature.)

Somehow, I thought it would be difficult to take off the training wheels – I’m always thrilled for an opportunity to haul out my toolbox – but the bolt holding the wheels in place twisted off in my fingertips. Just a few twists, and suddenly my oldest son was the proud but nervous owner of a wobbly, unpredictable two-wheeler.

Used to a bike that didn’t fight back, he was having trouble controlling it even in the driveway. We only made it as far as the stop sign at the corner, him not sure how to maintain his balance and me not sure how to impart my knowledge on to him, before he started losing his patience.

“I can’t do it!” he whined. “It’s too hard.”

“Yes you can,” I said through gritted teeth, hot and frustrated and more than a little impatient myself. We stumbled on for a few more meters, but both of us were rapidly losing interest.

“I think maybe I have to be six,” said Tristan, now pushing his bike and walking beside it.

“You know,” I replied, getting my breath and composure back incrementally, “nobody can ride a bike without training wheels perfectly the first time. It’s a little bit of work, and you have to learn to balance yourself. But if we practise a little bit each day, I’m sure you’ll be able to do it.”

He remained unconvinced, and politely declined when I suggested we try again. Later that afternoon, I suggested we have another go at it, but he again declined. We’ve had the most gorgeous, mild weather this week – perfect for bike-riding – and yet Tristan’s bike has languished, abandoned in the garage on its kickstand.

He’s so much like me, Tristan is. He doesn’t like to fail, doesn’t like to do it wrong. He doesn’t like to be anything less than perfect. This, I think, is at the root of – among other things – my endless troubles with acquiring the professional level of French I’ll need for my job if I want to get a promotion some day. I don’t like looking foolish, don’t like taking the risk, don’t like facing the possibility that I won’t be perfect the first time I try.

I found myself thinking about it over the last few days, this fear of failure. It’s a strong fear in me, perhaps even more so than my near-legendary fear of change. If I can’t do it perfectly, I’m often too embarrassed to try it at all. In thinking of all the things in my life that would not have happened if I hadn’t been afraid to screw things up royally, I’ve realized that the best things have come from throwing that fear to the wind. One can only ride with training wheels for so long.

Wednesday night after dinner, I suggested to Tristan that we try again with the bicycle. He’d had it in the driveway a couple of times to practice his balance and scoot about by himself, but we hadn’t really tried any long distances since that first day. To our mutual surprise, half way around the block some synaptic/physical connection was forged and Tristan was suddenly pedalling madly with me running beside him but no longer holding the bike seat. If I lagged behind, he would falter, but as long as I kept up with him, panting heavily at his shoulder but not touching him, he was able to maintain his balance.

We were both delighted. “I did it!” he cried, pride and surprise mingling in his voice. “I can’t wait to tell Daddy. I did it!” Just before the final stretch to the house, he hopped off his bike and started to walk it the rest of the way home. “I can do it if I want to,” he assured me. “I just need a little rest.” He knows his limits. I don’t know many adults who have acquired that skill yet.

It never fails to amaze me how much our kids teach us about being parents, and about being people. Sometimes, you just have to suck up that fear of gravity, that nauseous uncertainty, that reluctance to risk an ungainly crash. Sailing down the street with the breeze in your face for that first liberating ride is a lot more fun than sitting on the porch, watching the other kids whizzing by on their bikes while you wish you were brave enough to try.

Post script – the conversation

I wanted to tell you that I finally managed to find enough courage to call our daycare provider and talk to her on the weekend, but I feel sad and melancholy about it now. It’s surprisingly hard to talk about it.

I had called her Sunday morning with the intention of meeting up with her later in the day, but she was getting ready to go out for the day and before I knew it I was spewing everything into the phone. While I managed to hit on all my salient points – she’s a great person and we were priviledged to have her caring for the boys for four years; it’s not about her so much as the circumstances of too many kids, one troublesome kid in particular and the fact that she’s geographically just a little bit too far away for easy convenience now that Beloved will be taking on more and more courses and working later more frequently – while I know I managed to say all of this eventually, it was with a complete lack of grace or eloquence.

She listened rather quietly while I rambled for a while, and said she wished we had brought up more of this earlier (which twisted a little knife of guilt in my heart – she’s right, of course, but I didn’t feel like I had a lot of right to be dictating her business to her and I am in the end a conflict-averse coward). She also said the key personality with whom I was having the trouble would be leaving at the end of June, and that made me feel really bad, too.

In the end, though, she was very graceful and told me that she would only consent to any of this if she could maintain contact with the boys and see them regularly – which is of course the point at which my chest and throat seized up and my eyes started to leak. Barely able to squeeze out any more words, I told her that I was near tears and had to go but that I was sorry, and grateful, and sorry again. I barely hung up the phone before bursting – surprise – into noisy, messy sobs.

My knee-jerk reaction was fear -again – that I was making a huge mistake. The fear of the unknown is a terrible, crippling monster. It took a long, hot shower and close to an hour before I could again remember all the things that brought me to this point in the first place. But I’m still a little numb with fear that we’ve made the wrong choice, that we’re being greedy and unrealistic in our expectations, that we’ve underestimated how good we have had it and that we’re in for a rude awakening. Time and only time will answer that question.

When Beloved dropped off the boys yesterday morning, she and he pretended blissful ignorace of my inelegant call the day before. When I picked them up, it seemed we too were going to follow that pattern. At the last minute, with both boys outside and one foot out the door myself, I turned briefly back to her and said, “I’m really sorry about yesterday, about all of this. I really meant it when I said we’ve been lucky to have you.” She replied by insisting that we stay in contact, because she’ll miss the boys. After a brief hug and more inane mutterings on my part about how much we like her, I managed to get out onto the porch before I started crying again.

They never tell you when you are glowing and blissfully round of belly, busy gestating your first baby, how many times your heart will be broken by this mothering thing. In the most unexpected of ways.