Nov
6
We’ve been having some problems at Riley’s daycare lately. Nothing overly traumatic, just some ongoing things neither of us are happy about. Like the fact that he never seems to consistently be in the same classroom, the classes always seem chaotic and bursting with kids while only one or two teachers are present to try and manage everyone, and the last two days in a row he’s had a massively neglected poop-filled diaper at pickup time.
I’ve been told that the center is short staffed at the moment, and I guess I can cut them some slack for that. But our experiences over the last couple weeks are adding up to an uneasy feeling. Sometimes when I drop him off in the morning, I feel like I’m just tossing him into this completely disorganized environment where he’s left to fend for himself all day. On the one hand, I like that the kids are usually enmeshed in some sort of activity—drawing, doing crafts, being read to—but on the other, I don’t know if I can trust that he’s getting the attention he should. I settle Riley at a table with what seems like fifty other children, kiss him goodbye, and walk away. Who is left in that room to care for my child? I know those teachers are all good people, but oh, there are just so many kids now. It was different in the infant room, and the early toddler room—now it’s like he’s at a kindergarten, only he’s just two years old.
We are going to talk with the center manager and I’m hopeful I’ll get a better understanding of what’s going on: are they really understaffed and hence unusually distracted, and if so what’s the timeline for improving that situation? Are all the teachers suffering from olfactory disorders and unable to detect when a diaper has been filled with shit for hours on end? OR WHAT.
As part of the whole worrying-about-daycare thing, we’ve talked a bit about hiring a nanny. I see a LOT of upsides to going that route, downsides being the trust issue, the fact that you have to rely on one person, and the potential lack of social interaction for the kids (although I think that could be addressed). Nannies are expensive, though. But hell, so is daycare.
Even if I wanted to be a full time stay-at-home mom, I couldn’t in our current situation. Our mortgage, car payments, insurance, savings, and basic bills are too much for one salary. For the most part we have chosen a lifestyle that requires a certain income level, and my salary—reduced as it is by my part time schedule—is a necessity. Even when I subtract the costs of childcare for two kids.
It’s not just about the budget, though, there are lots of reasons I like having an office job. I don’t think I’d be happy staying at home full time. Unless I could hire a nanny to watch the kids for part of the day while I do freelance work, but I don’t have enough freelance work to make up for that lost salary. JB thinks I should try and work for Workplace from home, but at the moment there’s no way I could make that happen in a manner that’s beneficial to my office or me. Oh, and there’s the issue of Workplace moving in a couple months, potentially transforming my commute into something utterly unmanageable.
We’re experiencing some glitches in our previously-smooth system right now, and I don’t know what the long term effects are going to be. I want to do the right thing for my boy. I want to do the right thing for me. I want to do the right thing for our family as a whole. I’m just not sure what the right thing is. Or if there ever is an answer that feels completely, 100% right.
Nov
4
I have to tell you, sometimes when Sunday evening rolls around, I realize just how incredibly ready I am for the weekend to be over, and how much I’m looking forward to heading into work the next day, where I will get an 8-hour break from the midgety little person I love most in this entire world. Ahhhhh.
Riley was sort of brutally exhausting all weekend, and the extra hour Daylight Saving gifted us with this evening nearly killed me dead. I know there’s all kinds of uproar over cold medications for children and so I’m guessing that animal tranquilizers aren’t condoned either, but a teeny, tiny well-aimed dart . . . would that really be so bad? My god, I can picture it so clearly: the jolly sssst! of the needle flying through the air, the confused batting as the boy realizes something has embedded itself in his flesh, the blissful, blissful silence that would follow . . .
When we weren’t chasing our go-go-gadget kid around, JB and I managed to get a lot of boring domestic crap done over the last couple days. We cleaned out closets, built bookshelves (that involved a family trip to IKEA, which is something I plan to do again approximately never) (although I will say IKEA meatballs with IKEA lingonberry goo is a fine way to recover from such a traumatic event), hauled stuff to Goodwill, and JB manfully took on the dogshit-shoveling task, which was both Significant and Truly Awful.
We also got rid of our old refrigerator via Craigslist, thank you jebus. That thing had been sitting in our living room so long it nearly had squatter’s rights, and I was thrilled to finally see it go. For the sake of truthfulness, I did have to amend JB’s original posting, which read something like: “FREE FRIDGE, WORKS GREAT, COULD USE A BIT OF CLEANING ON THE INSIDE.” Saying it needed “a bit” of cleaning was sort of like saying the Titanic had a bit of a leak, you know? I did clean the terrifying crisper drawer, because my soul is not completely black (unlike the crisper drawer), but I left the rest of it, because in my opinion when a person lives through eighty jillion months of a home remodel, they get a bye on scrubbing out their ooky old fridge.
Instead, I wrote “COULD USE SOME CLEANING ON THE INSIDE.” See the difference? JB sounds like a shit salesman with a mouthful of samples, while I stand for virtue and journalistic integrity.
In picture-related news:
We finally have shelves in our new office, hooray! Also, JB seems to have located something with his stud finder, heh heh heh heh.
JB felt that Dog shouldn’t miss out on the home improvement efforts, so we got her a new dog bed (with extra-cushy insert, because she’s a senior citizen). I actually tried to color-coordinate it with our new living room, which I think means I have officially gone batshit crazy.
Here is a touching moment: a father and son reading together. Awww. Although Riley seems to be wondering where the hell Brown Bear Brown Bear is, and what’s with this Sea Technology crap?
Also, note JB’s bald-ass head. He didn’t keep the hawk, but not only did he personally raise $2500 for his charity (with his company matching dollar for dollar), but his workplace as a whole has raised—through employee donations/fundraising/volunteering and company matches—over $72 million in 2007 as of November 2. $72 MILLION, is that not insane? I mean, in a good way? It’s the company everyone loves to hate (in my industry, anyway) but holy shit, color me impressed and then some.
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