Adventure with a student nanny

I want to talk about life with a student nanny. For the past few months we have had a student nanny. Now mind you she was supposed to start in December and come once a week, every week, for 17 weeks. It is now March, and she has come 7 times. Do the math. Ah. Anyway, it started out with bad weather, snow storms, stomach flues ect.

Anyway, today was the day that our nanny was supposed to cook us dinner. It started by her calling to say that she would be 30 minutes late because her teacher had not given her back the meal plans. Now, she wasn't at school when she called, and it was a Monday, so she should have known ALL weekend that she didn't have her plans, but somehow she didn't notice till right before 11am on Monday.

Today we were going grocery shopping and she was supposed to do all of the meal prep and clean-up, while watching the kids. This is what happened. I had her get the kids ready to go grocery shopping all on her own. She did decently, but needed to be reminded that:

1. You should turn out the lights before leaving the house.
2. One should bring the diaper bag for an outing.
3. We normally put down the blinds.
4. You should take Mateo to the bathroom and make sure Natalia has on a clean diaper before leaving the house.
5. The buckles should not be twisted in the car seat.
6. You should always check to see if the seat and buckles are actually buckled in (thank god I checked - ahhh.)

Grocery shopping went quite well. During the shopping she said she was hungry. The "I am sooo hungry" look and stare at me type of look. So, I bought her a power bar. Whatever.

We got home a bit before 5, and the meal prep then started. I encouraged her to get going while Natalia was taking a nap, and it took her about 20 minutes to whip up the brownie mix. I am not honestly sure what took so long (add two eggs and butter and mix), but whatever.

The dinner was challenging. Things I taught or coached:

1. You do need to wash your hands after touching raw chicken.
2. If the spatula touched raw chicken, it should not touch the cooked pasta before it is washed again.
3. What does the word dice mean and how to cut, handle, cook and test for being cooked with chicken.
4. Use the kitchen timer. Did you put on the timer for the brownies - no. Did you put on the timer for the pasta - no. How long has it been going for - I don't know. How long is it supposed to cook for - I don't know. (3 minutes . . . opps)
5. When you should put the pasta in the water - ie after it boils
   
6. How to drain the pasta.
7. That you should not ignore Mateo if he is behaving well, but give him some positive feedback.
8. You can not spread refrigerated butter on cold bread - it must be warmed gently in the microwave.

And the list goes on, and on, and one. I actually feel like I could use a drink. . . and you know what, I have almost never said that, even with two kids.

What have I taken from all of this? Beyond being horrified at this poor girl's lack of life skills. We will be teaching our children how to cook! How to fold the laundry! How to help out around the house. Will we have another student nanny - well I just don't know.

The fam

My mom took this. We love it! Thanks, Mom!

Stuff

We just had one of those busy days like we used to have before having kids, and like we were starting to have with Mateo around the time Natalia was born, but this time we did it with two little ones in tow. And, we are actually feeling okay now, at the end of the day. We feel like we're starting to get back into our groove.

We woke up and got everyone out the door by 9 this morning. We headed to a park, where we met my brother, who is in town for the weekend, and each of us ran for 15 minutes while the other one hung out with the kids and their uncle. It was a cold and somewhat wet morning, but we had fun anyway. Mateo discovered that going down a wet slide while wearing rain pants can allow you to catch serious air at the bottom. Sacha said he flew about three feet before he finally landed on the bark chips! And, there were ducks and much running around ensued due to that.

Then, we went home and made a late breakfast while Uncle Galen entertained the bigger kid. Mateo wanted nothing to do with us, except for occasionally informing us that Uncle Galen had come to play with him! Immediately after the uncle left, Apa came by to consult with us about house design. As in: how do we get our lovely daughter to sleep somewhere other than our room. We actually may have a solution, but it will take some rearranging, a big boy bed, Mateo moving into the playroom, which would become his big boy bedroom, Natalia moving into Mateo's current room, a white noise machine, and some time. Whew. It seems impossible that it will work, but we'll just go as slowly as we need to.

Anyway, after Apa left, Sacha made us lunch and then everyone went down for a nap. Yay, weekend!

We all got going again around 3 pm. Sacha sent Natalia and I out to buy fancy drinking chocolate for us all at Cacao downtown. Yummmm. We drank it while eating microwave popcorn. Classy, eh? Then, spurred on by the surge of chocolate and caffeine in our systems, we tackled our basement, which had devolved into chaos. With the help of the ocean of toys down there and the computer, which has this mesmerizing visual thing that you can put on while you're playing music, we managed to spend a couple of hours down there. We sorted all our baby and toddler clothes, organized other stuff, and actually managed to clear some wall space, so that we are no longer surrounded by our possessions on all sides when we go down there.

Then, once Mateo and Natalia finally couldn't stand it down there for one more second, we went outside to take a walk. It was in the low 40s, so a bit chilly. We started wandering around the neighborhood and ended up dropping in on some neighbors with two kids slightly older than ours. They took us in and let Mateo play with their toys while we checked out their basement project. Then, we headed home for dinner. Sacha had made a delicious stew in the slow cooker. Yum.

Then, we reset the clocks, got the kids ready for bed, and put them down. And now, miraculously, we actually have some energy left over. We were going to watch a movie, but it's a bit late with daylight savings coming tomorrow. So we're probably going to head to bed soon. It was just a lovely day filled with just the right amounts of everything. Now, I'm off to scour craigslist for big boy beds before turning in. Good night!

Fridays are for MAXing

Sacha and the kids took the MAX out to visit me at work this evening. It's quite the trip from our house: a longish walk to the MAX station and over an hour on the train. Luckily, my office is right by a station. As always, the kids were quite a hit at the shelter. Every time they come in, I notice an upswing in receptiveness of the clients to me in the next week or so. I'll walk in the next day to a chorus of adolescents squealing "your kids are soooo cute!" and seeming more interested in talking to me than before. So that is fun and good. Especially after a work week that has been a little bit of everything and pretty stressful.

We then went out to dinner and drove home. We listened to the all-classical station that puts Natalia to sleep and Mateo on instrument alert. Until he finally fell asleep, we heard his little voice from the back seat asking for "The cello again! Is that a violin? I want to hear the trumpet again, Mommy!" and so on and so forth. He is really fascinated by instruments and music right now.

What I intended to post about was that each kid has hit a new milestone this week. Natalia has officially learned how to pull herself up to standing and has even done some cruising! I think it's been a little over a week that she could pull herself up. Then, when we went to Jungle Playland, the indoor play park that Mateo can't stop talking about, she pulled up on some big foam blocks and cruised all the way from one end to the other. She will also walk if you hold her hands and encourage her forward. She is growing up to be a big girl so fast!

Mateo's big new thing is that he's learned how to change the inflection of his voice when asking a question. Up until about a week ago, his questions sounded more like statements. Now, his voice rises at the end of a question. As in, "you want to play the guitar, Mama?" How could one say no to that?

Things are really good right now. I've been getting kind of stressed out by work stuff, but then I have to stop and remember that work stuff is temporary and that everything I need is sitting on the couch next to me and slumbering peacefully in two rooms on opposite sides of our house. And, of course, all the family and friends in different places that we're so lucky to have. Sacha said that Natalia was so out of it when we got home from dinner that she finished nursing, flopped over on her belly (which she hardly ever does) and started snoring. Baby snores. Could it get any better than that?

First sentences in Spanish

Mateo has been taking leaps and bounds with his Spanish. Yesterday Alayna and I went running at the park. (Yes, we went running and we each ran for 15 minutes. While one of us was running the other was playing with the kids at the play structure.) Anyway, after running, it was time to go home and Mateo didn't want to get in his car seat. Alayna, being quite creative, found an old paper cup, and pinched the top together so it was a puppet. The puppet asked Mateo to get in his seat, and Mateo did right away.

Then, he wanted me to sing a new song that we learned yesterday at our Spanish playgroup. (Spanish play group had 10 people this week, and is slowly growing!) The song goes "hola, ____ (nombre) como estas, muy bien muy bien, gracias." After I sang one of two times I stopped, and Mateo said, "El vaso quiere cantar otra vez." (The cup wants to sing again.) Wow. He said his own original sentence in Spanish.

This morning he said, "El cerdo toca la guitarra, la gallina toca la trompeta y la vaca toca la violin." The pig plays the guitar, the chicken plays the trumpet and the cow plays the violin. This is from a book that we read, and frequently I say that sentence, but still I was excited to hear him saying so much.

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In other news, both Natalia and Mateo slept through the night last night! Yah! I can take more nights like that. Also, Alayna and I were in bed by 9:30 and for the first time in over a week I feel slightly rested.

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Another note of news. From when I went into the hospital (to give birth) to today, I have lost 50 lbs. Sure some of that was the baby, but it has been quite the journey. I am just 5 lbs. away from my goal weight. In January I started by making three changes: no eating sugar after dinner, eating dinner by 6pm most nights, and exercising 6 times a week. This week I started doing Weight Watchers points again, and that has helped me take another drop. I have been following the Beck plan, which goes along with any eating plan to help me the emotional and mental side of loosing weight.

Supplementing with formula

For the last eight months I have been breastfeeding Natalia. After a rough start, it has been such a nice thing to do. A lot of the times, though, I have felt stressed about if I was pumping enough milk for her. I think that up til the last month we used my milk or Alayna's milk 95% of the time. She then stopped nursing Natalia during the mornings, because someone was getting really distracted and impatient while nursing.

This month I am probably not making that much less month, but need to make more to compensate for the shift. It does seem that I've been getting less of a let down when I pump at school. As it is I normally pump two different times to get 3-4 ounces for Natalia. I get to school, check in, and pump for 15 min. Then, after I teach my last class, I pump for 10 minutes and leave. Some days, though, I have to do something else for part of that time, and will get a bit less. Anyway, she is starting to get supplemented with some formula a few days a week. For a while I was feeling bad about the supplementation, but I am coming to peace with it. Some formula really isn't going to hurt her in any way.

I have also started giving her a few ounces of formula after I feed her for the night. She continues to wake up once a night to eat (many more times for the binky), and Alayna and I are wondering if she might sleep better if she was a little fuller. On that note, we are also focusing on giving her something with a good amount of fat for dinner, like whole yogurt. Tonight, after I nursed her fully, she gulped down two more ounces. I just hope this means she will sleep a bit more.

After thinking for such a long time that I didn't want to give her formula at night, I am now all for it. If a few ounces of formula, after she nurses completely, means she sleeps for a few more hours and that we are all happier, saner and more with-it during the day, I am all for it. She still gets plenty of nursing during the day, and this will hopefully make for more rested moms!

Things are looking up

After a tough, tough week, Mateo seems to be feeling better. He spent most of the week feeling pretty awful, which in turn made us all feel pretty awful. His throat seemed to really bother him, even with lots of pain medicine in his system. He didn't want to eat or drink, didn't want to go to the bathroom, didn't want to do anything but have one of us holding him at all times.

Each night both of us were up for around an hour, because he couldn't seem to go back to sleep once he woke up, which didn't help the daytime for anyone. We both spent hours "sleeping" with him on the couch. We were laughing because normally you'd think of sleeping on the couch and think, those people must be having marital problems. Not so in our case - just a sick kid! We didn't have many sleep reserves to start out with and this set us all back. Plus, it was just so sad to see him feeling so awful. Poor baby.

We were so grateful to our parents and friends for checking in with us, for dinner being brought to our door, and for one fabulous friend who braved the germs to come over yesterday morning and spring us for a couple of hours. Thank you!!

Anyway, thank goodness he's feeling better and Natalia seems to have avoided getting the horrible virus. He is feeling so much better that we even went up to Vancouver to our favorite indoor play park this afternoon. We actually had a really nice day together with very few toddler meltdowns, which leads us to think he really must be doing better. And, we had a nice dinner and evening with Apa tonight, which we always enjoy!

Here are some photos of our last few days.

It got a little crowded in our bed last week. We tried bringing Mateo to bed with us to sleep and that lasted about 10 minutes. He snuggled for a brief time and then said, in a chipper voice, "Hi guys! I'm snugglin' with you!" Then, the thrashing commenced. And the sister-waking followed soon after. Soon, they were both crying. It was great. Morning was somewhat better...



Hanging out with Mama...



Thank you, Katie!


Playing with Apa...




Littler kid feeling smiley...



Bigger kid on the mend!