It happened

Here we are,  a week away from our one-year anniversary with our nanny, and it happened.  She quit.

And here’s the kicker, I had a whole lecture planned out. She’s missed so much work over the past month because her kid was sick and other things came up, and her cleaning has been sub-par at best, so I had this whole lecture about how things need to change, and what needs to happen, and the weaknesses in the cleaning. All of these difficult things to say that no one likes to say, let alone, what a miserable way to start a Monday morning.

And she let me go on and on.

And when I was finished, she explained that she had to quit because her kids are sick too much and she needs to be home with them.

Why she didn’t stop me from my lecture and end it – I’ll never know.

But at that point, I didn’t have it in me to say anything more, so I told my husband that our nanny is leaving us, put our daughter down for a nap and left for work.

My husband got to then play good cop. I heard him downstairs, telling our nanny how wonderful she’s been and how much we appreciate her and how sad we are to see her go, all the things that my normal self would have said if I hadn’t just finished a stupid lecture on improving things.

I tell you, nannies can be more emotionally draining than children.

Anyway, I am surprisingly calm right now – keeping a zen state – and found myself becoming THAT mother. I called our backup sitter, who, as irony would have it, just agreed on Thursday to watch someone else’s kids full time. I laid it on THICK.

I am pushing her to go back on her word and instead come watch my darling daughter. It was like I was having an out of body experience. I could almost see and hear myself more than I knew these words were coming out of my own mouth. I became that parent stealing someone else’s nanny – and doing it shamelessly.

The thing is, I know it will all work out in the end. We will find a replacement, the person will be good, there will be peace in the land.

But crises with nannies and daycare – they really rock your world. Because the baby is the center of your world and the well being of your child, is the most important thing. So a crisis with the nanny, once again, raises the issue that gnaws and chips away at me every single day – why am I working? Is it really worth it?

And also, my husband is fantastic and helpful and shares watching our daughter with me on days our nanny doesn’t come to work, but we all know who will go through the motions of finding a new nanny and interviewing. Doesn’t it seem that this falls onto the shoulders of the wife and the husband just gets to show up, no matter how helpful and supportive they are? Why is that?

I will keep you posted on how things work out, dear fans. I just don’t have it in me to be funny today.