Can you hear that?  No?  Perfect.  It’s called silence.

I’m in my house and I’m the only one home.  I don’t think that’s happened since Button was born.  J took her to church while I stayed behind to catch up on some sleep. 

I’m in my own home and I have no parenting responsibilities.  That never seems to be the case.  I just took a shower and there weren’t any little hands on the shower door, blocking my exit.  I didn’t even have to be on the lookout for little feet disappearing in a hobble-crawl around the corner.

The only times I escape from parenting are when I’m at work (not my definition of escape) or when my parents take her and J & I go out and about. 

But this…this is quite a novelty.  Right now it’s just me and the (napping) pets and a very. quiet. house.

Ahh…

So here’s the deal.  Tomorrow is our 5-year anniversary.  We would like to go out to dinner someplace nice (i.e. not kid-friendly) BUT so far, we have been completely unable to secure a babysitter for two hours in the evening.

People are constantly offering to babysit for us.  Constantly.  And somehow, every time we actually NEED a babysitter, it’s always on the one night that everybody we know is out of town, in class, has previous committments, or is just unreachable.  HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN???

I remember when we got married and I thought “Five year Anniversary…that is SO FAR AWAY.  We’ll have to do something really special like go to Europe or something.”

But here we are…five years down the road…and we can’t even go to DINNER.  Much less Europe.

(pout, pout)

UPDATE:  It looks as though my parents (who were previously going to be out of town) will not be leaving until the next day, so they have volunteered to relieve us of our little bundle for a few hours tomorrow.  Yay!

Looking over the past several posts, I realize that I must have sounded a bit like a PMS-ing Eore on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  Every recent post was in the “Feelings” category - like an artist’s first attempt at a depressed-chick album, sitting on the pier clutching her guitar and singing about her last breakup. 

While I totally believe in a blog for the purposes of venting, I hope I didn’t serve as a depressant for you all over the past week.

Last night, for the first night in a week, I got a decent night’s sleep.  I was only awake for about an hour in the middle of the night, and Button slept straight through until almost 6am this morning.

The world, she begins to make sense again.

Over the past several days, I have been having “secret” conversations with my bosses regarding the possibility of working mostly from home.  They were not entirely thrilled about the idea, but yesterday told me that they would be willing to work it out on a part-time basis for half my salary.

On the one hand, this was music to my ears.  See, we’re currently in a financial position where we don’t necessarily need all of my income, but were I to quit completely, we would be in rough shape as far as making the monthly ends meet.

But half-time…that is something that can be done.  And it allows me to stay home with my child three days a week.  My mom and J can pretty easily cover the other two days. 

In addition, it provides me with an easy way out of the rather uncomfortable situation I was trying to handle.  “I’ve decided to stay home so we don’t need a nanny” sounds much better and is less likely to destroy a relationship than “You’re fired because we trust you with our kid.”  Don’t you think?

Yes, I am fully aware that the above paragraph suggests a lot about my cowardice when it comes to confrontation.  I admit that freely, I have come to terms with it, and I’m totally over it.

If you notice, I used the phrase “On the one hand” earlier.  Naturally, that implies that there are two hands and the second hand will not be nearly as manicured as the first.

Basically, I’m sort of having a hard time with the idea of going part time.  Not the being home with Button part, I’m really looking forward to that.  The not being at work part.  I haven’t nailed it down exactly, but something just feels a little weird about it.  I’m not sure if it’s just the change of routine, or the fear of disconnect, or what.

J says I’m just uncomfortable with it because I feel like I’m being demoted.  He’s probably right.  Isn’t it annoying when your spouse seems to know you better than you know yourself?  Yeah.  It is.

Hopefully it’s all in my mind.  It’s just odd because when I make plans for my future and choices, etc. I generally know what “feels” right, and that’s the direction I should go.  Kind of an intuition thing.  That would surprise a lot of people that know me, because in general I’m a very logical person, and don’t put that much stock in the intangible “feeling.”

And it’s confusing me because in this particular situation, NONE of the options feel completely right.  This is the option that “felt” right a few days ago when I was trying to work out a way to make it possible.  But now I just don’t know.

I probably just need to catch up on some more sleep.

Ok, here’s the thing:  I have to fire my nanny this week.  This is why I’ve been rather stressed lately.

1. I don’t feel that my daughter is safe and/or getting the care she needs with the nanny.  Every day I go to work wondering if my child is going to have some completely preventable accident that she won’t be able to recover from.
2. I have never had to fire anyone before.  This is going to suck.
3. The nanny is our friend and we will be seeing her and her husband regularly at church.  In addition to the stress of trying to maintain a friendship after telling someone “we don’t trust you with our child,” we feel obligated to keep it under wraps in the circle of friends we share …which is usually our first stop in the search to find a nanny.
4. We have to find a new nanny.
5. This would be our fourth nanny since February.  Our options get slimmer each time.
6. If we can’t find someone, it means I will have to quit my job.
7. I love my job and hate the thought of giving up my future opportunity here.
8. My job brings in over half our income.  Making due without it will be more than difficult.

There are several circumstances surrounding the need to discontinue the nannying relationship.  Several of these - were they isolated incidents - would be easy to ignore, but together they present a situation that I have to act on.  Not doing so would be a severe act of negligence and bad parenting on my part.

1. The fall last Monday.  At first I had made the optimistic conclusion that this could have happened to any of us because we all put the bouncer on the counter.  But when Jens and I tried to reproduce the incident (no, not with Button in the bouncer) in order to make the bouncer capable of falling off the counter, it had to be grossly overhanging from the counter.  This brought us to the conclusion that our nanny must have a) Not checked to be sure that all four corners of the base were on the counter, and b) Either not noticed the overhang, or noticed it and did nothing to correct it.  Either way, that kind of negligence is dangerous.
2. Wednesday, we received a call from our housekeeper, concerned about the nanny’s ability to care properly for our child.  She had expressed her concerns prior to the fall to my brother and SIL, but sworn them to secrecy about it because she didn’t want to interfere.  For some reason, they thought keeping a secret was more important than my child’s well-being and DIDN’T TELL US.  Thanks, guys.
3. The nanny seems incapable of keeping track of her own son and my daughter at the same time.  It may be partially due to his age, but the fact remains that her son is destructive.  I never know what’s going to be broken when I come home.  DVD cases inserted into the VCR, broken candles, broken trash can, cat food thrown all over the floor, etc.
4. Along those lines, our trash can was broken the other day because her son threw it down the stairs while she was changing Button’s diaper and couldn’t get to him.  What if that had been her son falling down the stairs?  Button will be crawling and moving about soon.  If she can’t keep up with ONE mobile child, how could she ever keep up with TWO?
5. There is a degree of preventative common sense that seems to be lacking.  Mostly, it affects her own son, but - like the fall off the counter - if she’s caring for another child, it will inevitably come into play.  For instance,
   • Her son was helping unload the dishwasher because he likes to do the silverware (he’s 18 months old).  Suddenly she realizes he’s not there and goes around the corner to find him sticking a fork in a light socket.  So the new rule is if they’re unloading the dishwasher, he either has to be in the kitchen with her, or out of the kitchen completely.  Why is that a NEW rule?
   • They had to go to the hospital the other day because she allowed her son to eat Wheat Thins while jumping up and down in the Jumperoo and he inhaled part of the chip, which lodged itself into the lung.  So the new rule is no chips while jumping up and down.
   • Yesterday, her son showed up with a gash in his forehead from falling head-first into a table at their house.  This is just my own conjecture, but I cannot imagine how that size of a wound would be possible unless he was running full force in the house.

Look, I know accidents happen.  But there are a lot of them that can be prevented with somewhat reasonable measures.  Button could have been seriously injured by falling on her head from that height.  You can’t just wait until something happens before you take precautions and “make new rules.”

And so, here I stand.  At the end of the day, I’m responsible for her health and well-being and if having a job is jeopardizing that, then I can’t take the risk.  But at the same time, the thought of giving up my job is heartbreaking.  I’m trying to suggest a work-from-home solution to my bosses, because virtually everything I do can be done off-site.  But they’re not too thrilled about the idea.

So it may come down to my child or my job.  If that’s the case, then the decision is already made, but it will be a very painful one.

Not much of an update, just a lame teaser.

I didn’t post yesterday because it was a rather stressful day.  I’m not a Type A personality, so I generally don’t get stressed out about things too much…unless they concern my daughter.

Yesterday we got some … disturbing … news which could force us to make some difficult decisions in the very near future.  At the very least, it puts us in an uncomfortable limbo right now. 

Unfortunately, I don’t think it would be prudent for me to say much more than that at this time.

PS:  No, the “news” didn’t come from a doctor.