Daycare dilemmas

My, oh, my, it's been one of those weeks, my friends. One of those weeks...

We've struggled with daycare since the day we discovered that we were pregnant with Rhys. I enjoy the challenge and mental stimulation of a job, but we've always maintained that even if and when I'm working, we would keep the amount of time the kids spend in daycare to a bare minimum. And thus we set the rather lofty goal of attempting to achieve the perfect work-life balance.

With Rhys, we managed to work things out nicely. We found a highly-qualified woman who ran a daycare out of her fully-finished, very child-friendly basement. We adjusted our work schedules so that she was only in daycare for maybe 15 hours per week. It worked out nicely while it lasted. After a year or so, our daycare provider booted Rhys because (as she not-so-gently put it in a poorly-written letter about "business decisions") making more money was more important to her than the relationship she'd established with Rhys. By that point, I had worked long enough at my job to have a lot of independence and flexibility, so Eric and I were able to rearrange our schedules, and Rhys didn't have to go back to daycare. It was fantastic being able to spend so much time at home, and we loved that we didn't have to find daycare for Rhys.

Ben and Desi arrived just before our move, so I took as much paid maternity leave as I was allowed, used up the rest of my vacation time, and then quit my job. I didn't get a new job here in England until June, so I was home with the kids for a solid six months after Ben and Desi came home. We regularly left the messy evidence that we'd had loads of fun, i.e. toys everywhere, hair askew, grown-up things quickly discarded on shelves rather than put away properly:

It was lovely, and I thoroughly enjoyed the time I got to spend with the kids, but I eventually found that I also wanted to do something a little more mentally stimulating than changing diapers. So I applied to do some part-time freelance editing for Harcourt, a major educational publisher. I assumed that, if I got the job, I'd be able do the vast majority of the work from home during whatever hours worked best for me. I thought it would be the perfect way to keep my fingers in the professional world while still being able to spend lots of time with the kids.

But Harcourt wanted me to be more than a part-time freelancer. They wanted me to be a full-time Managing Editor for twelve months. I was torn. I knew that being able to write "Managing Editor" on my resume would make it easier to get freelance work later, but I was reluctant to give up so many of my mommy hours. It was a tough decision, but eventually I opted to take the job. I figured that if working full-time was really dreadful, I'd only have to put up with it for twelve months.

And thus began the hunt for daycare.

Because of the kids' ages, home-based daycare providers and nurseries would have cost us a small fortune. We did a detailed cost analysis and decided that a nanny would actually be the cheapest option. Not only that, but having a nanny would allow the kids to stay in their own space all day. They'd be able to take naps in their own beds, play with their own toys, eat the food that I buy for them, and play with Ella, Sofia, and Lara from next-door.

It seemed like the perfect solution.

Seemed.

We searched through many venues, and eventually we hired Donna. She's lovely, she's energetic, she's had all of the proper training (first aid, early childhood development, etc.), and she gets along fantastically with the kids.

Rhys pulling on Donna to show her something spectacular (probably a potty full of pee, but who's to judge what can and cannot be considered spectacular?)

But, but, BUT -- where, oh where do I start describing the but's?

Of course there are the little things that would probably annoy me about any nanny. Whoever we choose is never going to do it exactly the way I would, and that's always going to get under my skin a bit. But if we're going to have a nanny, then that's just something I'll have to deal with.

So what are the real issues with Donna that are driving me mad?

Well, there's the garbage that she feeds them. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a really picky eater. I'm not really picky in the "I only like three things and refuse to try new and different foods" way. I am really picky in the "I won't eat meat, and I insist upon maintaining a certain standard of healthy eating" way. Given the heart health (or lack thereof) in my family and all the studies about the relationship between diet and disease, I've decided that healthy eating, including vegetarianism, is something that I really want to establish for the kids. It wasn't difficult to get the kids to eat healthily -- until we hired a nanny. I wrote into her contract that she wasn't allowed to buy them food. Apparently she didn't read that paragraph. I had a chat with her about it after she took them to McDonald's. Twice. In the same week. So she's stopped taking them to McDonald's. Now she takes them to the supermarket. You'd think she'd be able to do okay in the supermarket. After all, the packaging for food here in England is very health-conscious and vegetarian-friendly. But Donna doesn't seem to realize that the "suitable for vegetarians" label doesn't mean "Jenni-approved as a healthy snack for the kids."

An orange is a healthy snack, happily gobbled down by Rhys.

But cheese puffs...Suitable for vegetarians? Yes. A good snack every single day for a week? Not in a million years. But healthy eating habits aren't something that happen overnight, so I'm trying to be patient. And I'm only asking for her to maintain my standards for the kids. I can't expect Donna to change her eating habits just for her job.

Or can I?

Donna called in sick yesterday. When Donna calls in sick, things get messy because there's no automatic back-up to make sure the kids are taken care of. Usually a sick-day for Donna means that Eric or I spend at least part of the day working from home. And needless to say, working from home with a pre-schooler and two toddlers means that an eight-hour day's worth of work almost certainly does not get done. And that makes both Eric and I feel like terrible employees, although both of our employers have been very understanding that our jobs as parents are our top priority.

Now, I'm not totally unreasonable. Everyone gets sick occasionally. It happens. But this is the fourth time Donna has called in sick. She's only been working for us since the middle of June, and we were on holiday in the U.S. for two weeks. So she's really only worked a total of six weeks or so, roughly 30 days. And all of her sick days have been since we've been back from holiday. So she's been sick four times in roughly 20 days. That's like being sick 25% of the time. That averages out to more than once a week. And each time she's sick, she claims it's stomach-related. Could it be because she eats like crap? Possibly. But I'm not a doctor. Perhaps I should suggest that she see a doctor, because this level of unreliability and the stress it causes isn't making me feel any better about the fact that my decision to go back to work has made us dependent on the aforementioned unreliable nanny.

Deep down inside, the Employee and the Mommy are in a perpetual battle to the death. The Employee may feel highly annoyed when Donna rings to say that she's ill, but the Mommy makes significant headway on Donna's sick days. Because when Donna's sick, I have to work in this "office":

Much better then the cubicle in which I normally sit.

And instead of coffee breaks and meetings, I get:

A very happy and very cute Desi

A very silly Desi

My own personal hairdresser

And a Ben who thinks that anything and everything makes a good hat

Much better than several cups of bad joe and long hours of dull discussions.

I thought I was ready to go back to work in June, but now...

The grass is always greener...

And thus the maternal and professional sides of me tug against each other, and the battle to achieve a suitable work-life balance perseveres. Do I keep my job and seek out a new nanny, knowing that there will probably be things about her that are just as annoying as the annoying bits of Donna? Or do I stick it out in the status quo and hope that the next ten months don't drive me to the madhouse? Or do I ditch the job, feel guilty about letting down my co-workers, abandon the idea of being able to put "Managing Editor" on my resume, and throw myself headlong back into full-time mommyhood? Ah, the completely unresolvable questions of a working mom...

If there's anything that I've learned amid all this nanny nonsense, it's that I will probably not be looking for another full-time job until after all the kids are in school. In the meantime, maybe I'll look into that grad program at Oxford that I've been eyeballing for the past few months...

Hope all is well in your respective necks of the woods!

PS - I know I started writing this blog in third person, but let's face it, I'm the only one who's ever going to write on it, so why pretend that some other omniscient being is doing it?