Coda September 5, 2011

We spent two days trapped in our house by downed trees wrapped in power lines and six days without power or water this week, courtesy of Irene and an inefficient, unorganized power company. (Still no phone line or cable, which we use for Internet.) Then this happened:

To: Cat and A
From: Pow

Hey,
I’m sorry guys I’m communicating with you both by email, but this is the way I feel comfortable with since I’m disappointed and upset.
I didn’t feel appreciate these 2 weeks I was helping you guys with the kids; it really makes me feel uncomfortable how you guys were counting pennies on what you paid me. [NB: We paid the days she worked, not the one she took her son to Great Adventure.] And is not just the money, it is also the attitude, I’m not used to this.
I was helping you guys. My job with you was done since the moment you rushed to get a nanny in 2 weeks when I was fair enough to gave u 4 weeks notice [NB: Erm, she quit, right, and insulted my daughter in the process.] that’s the way I am…but when I don’t feel appreciate I don’t feel like helping either.. I won’t be coming this week.
I feel used..and I am very sorry this is the way it ends.
Pow

To: my mom and dad
From: Cat
So… What are you guys doing this week?

From: My dad
To: Cat
I will be in Canada this week and Mom in Mexico. But if you buy us a new car, we might change our minds. 

From: Cat
To: My dad
Done!

What happened August 22, 2011

Okay, so as of my last post, I was kind of hoping this was just a bad start and things would work out. By the time I read your comments and heard the opinions of, well, anyone who would listen to my experience, I realized it was unlikely. I started to put out the word that I was looking again. I figured in the meantime I could see if things would improve with Nanny.

A and Gatito went out of town Wednesday night-Sunday, so I kind of knew that I was unlikely to hear if anything went wrong in the last two days of last week. But I had my parents come by on Thursday at 5:00, unannounced. (They brought me dinner, too!) They found Nanny in the kitchen on the phone and were told that Ella was upstairs taking her second nap. (She only naps once, typically.) My mom went up to see and found Ella playing in her room (in the dark). In my experience, Ella has never snuck out of bed to play when put down for a nap. If she doesn’t want to nap, she will scream until you get her. I could “make up a story,” as with all these other things about whether she did something different with Nanny than she did with me, but I didn’t like that Nanny was not aware that she was even out of bed.

This morning, I texted Pow and told her things were going poorly and she volunteered to come back for another 2-3 weeks. A and I agreed that we would let Nanny go at the end of the day. I was still, honestly, a little worried that perhaps we were not doing the right thing, that we wouldn’t be able to find anyone better over the next few weeks, that maybe she’d just gotten off to a bad start and all those things were as innocent as they might have been if they’d happened independently, rather than all in a lump.

The crazy thing is that A got to work this morning and realized he left his computer at home. He went to a meeting, then headed back home. He arrived at 11:00 to find Nanny asleep on the couch. Gatito was playing in his room with a friend and Nanny declared Ella down for a nap, though she popped out the moment she heard A come home. He let her go on the spot. She told him she hadn’t been feeling well– had meant to tell us that. Then, she says that she’d had diarrhea and had soiled her pants and they were now in our dryer. She went over to the dryer, pulled out an entire load of her own laundry, and left.

The end.

Not really the end, of course, because there’s a lot to say about what A and I think of our judgment and our parenting abilities, but I don’t have the emotional energy for that at the moment, so I’ll leave it at this for now.

The First Three Days August 17, 2011

I hesitate to write all this because I don’t know what you’re going to say and I’m all torn up. People always say stupid stuff about not wanting strangers raising their kids and the thing is, most of the time they’re not strangers. But in the beginning, they are, and it is so fucking hard, in the beginning, to walk away from your children, to leave them with strangers, to not know how it’s all going to go. Worse, you never really know how it is going. So I look for signs, clues, anything to reassure me, red flags to alarm me. And, well, there have been a lot of, I don’t know, not red flags exactly. I mean, none of this stuff would matter much if they had happened in isolation. It’s just that there were so many things.

Our new nanny (can I just call her Nanny for now?) came over on Saturday morning for a bit of an orientation. Her 11-year-old daughter came with and again got along very well with Ella. On Monday morning, Gatito woke up and declared it a very exciting day because Nanny was starting. She and her daughter arrived on time and, when I left, Ella was cheerfully engaged with the daughter and Gatito with Nanny. That’s where the happy part ends.

On Monday, she set off the alarm, missed the phone call from the security company, and the police were dispatched. Okay, fine, new alarm system and, since we don’t really use it, I forgot to point out where our home phone was. Although she had the secret password, she probably never even heard the phone ring and forgot. But what she also forgot was to mention it to us. We found out because of a message on A’s cell from the security company and because Gatito told us. When A asked her about it, she said she forgot.

Gatito also reported that the daughter was hitting him all over and that he hadn’t liked it. And that she had hidden his shoe behind her back and kept pretending she didn’t have it. Where was Nanny, we asked? Not there, he said. When A talked to her about that, she said that the previous five-year-old boy she’d taken care of liked to play rough and he and the daughter used to wrestle. She said she’d tell her to go easier on Gatito, but she didn’t actually bring her with for the next two days. I can sort of imagine a kind of play slapping that might be normal for some 5yo boys but not for Gatito. And I know he will face more physical kids when he starts school, real school with a class of 20 kids, but this is a girl 2x his age and in his house. But, she seemed to get it and said she talked to her, so okay, I guess.

Yesterday, everything went fine. Ella was wailing when A left (I left earlier) but the report was she calmed down pretty quickly. I think the second day was harder because this time she realized she was being left all day. They stayed home all day, which is Gatito’s idea of a good day.

Today, I worked from home in the morning before a dentist appointment. Ella was very clingy in the morning, as is her usual m.o. when the nanny arrives. She was often like that with Pow, too. I left her downstairs and went up to try to work and she was hysterical. I know it was worse because I was in the house. I even asked Gatito if she cried this hard and this long the day before and he said she had not. But man, did she cry long and hard. First it was, “I want mommy!” Then “I wanna go in crib!” I thought she was going to make herself sick. I finally went down to calm her down and sent them out to get donuts and go to the library before Gatito’s swim lesson. She was calm when I put her in the car. I know this has nothing to do with Nanny, but it left me on edge.

At 11:20, I received a call from G’s swim teacher that he had not shown up for his 11:00 lesson. I called Nanny to figure out what happened and got no answer. By this time, I was outside the doctor’s office and I worked myself up into such a frenzy, worrying that they’d been in an accident or something. I just checked my phone logs and discovered it was only 13 minutes between when I called her and when she texted me back. Not sure how I got so crazy in such a short period of time, other than that she also hadn’t responded to my check-in text at 10:30. Apparently she hadn’t been able to find a parking spot plus they had closed halls and locker rooms for painting and by that time G was already in the pool. It sounds reasonable enough, right? I could say that she should have left more time, but it does seem like extraordinary circumstances.

(My poor dentist. I totally cried from the stress in his chair. My teeth have been hurting for a week and I was sure he was going to tell me it was stress, but it turned out I’d apparently injured a tooth biting into something very hard but perhaps the size of a grain of sand. Who knew? It will all heal itself over a few weeks.)

As I arrived at work, I got a text from Nanny: “What’s the password? I set off the alarm and am waiting for them to call and left the password at home.” Seconds later, the security company calls my cell to inform me the police have been dispatched. Again. She… swears she went to the phone right away and they didn’t call. I got an answering machine message left about 4 minutes before her text. I’m guessing maybe it took her a while to turn off the alarm and she didn’t hear the phone? I really don’t know.

And finally… last week, I emailed her a schedule of all of the activities of the week. At 3:30, I get a call saying she thought viola was at 4:30 and has just realized it’s at 3:30 and they haven’t left the house. She said she got mixed up, since karate is at 4:30. I said, no, karate is at 4:00. She said, well, that special karate program on Monday was at 4:30? Sorry, that was at 5:00. A was the one to see her tonight and she told him that… my email was too far back in her inbox to find.

I think these things are fixable in isolation, you know? A had her practice turning the alarm on and off this evening. I can find some other way to provide a schedule, and it will get a lot more consistent when school starts anyway. The daughter has been talked to and, for the most part, won’t be here anyway.

But you know, one thing I thought I was getting when I hired someone with 18 years of experience as a nanny, is someone who could take care of things. I would rather not have to ask if she has sunblock for the kids or tell her not to use half an inch of butter in the pan when cooking a couple of eggs (both things happened today also– argh!) or find some way of helping her remember the schedule. (A piece of paper? She could leave it at home. A board in the house? She won’t be able to refer to it when she’s not home. A google calendar? Neither of us are regular google users. I’d have thought an email, which she always has on her phone, would be good but apparently she entered all the times wrong into her calendar.)

I also can’t help wonder, does all of this mean that she’s not that bright? A little scattered? Lacks good judgment? Is it just a run of bad luck? Just getting used to a new job? Am I making too much of it? Will it all settle down and turn out fine?

Onwards and upwards August 8, 2011

Lately I’ve realized something new about myself. When someone tells me something critical, I literally cannot even hear anything else that is said. I once had a review at work that included some critical stuff along with some unbelievably great stuff. It was a written review, but I couldn’t even see the positive stuff mixed in, despite the overall result being positive, because I was so distressed by the critical stuff. It wasn’t until a week later at least that a second (maybe third) read helped me see the good things.

The same was true when A told me Pow quit. Yes, she did start by saying that my daughter was more difficult than any other two-year-old she’d taken care of, and she did move on to the length of the commute and the time away from her son (totally valid), but the part I completely missed for, like, ten days, is that she’s not planning to be a nanny anymore. She’s going back to school and she wants to get a job with shorter hours in an office, maybe as a receptionist. I don’t know why she had to lead with the shit about my baby, but the fact is she is making a major life change and, okay, she might be relieved to get away from my little complainer, but don’t we all feel that way sometimes? I think we do.

I suppose one never truly knows what goes on when one leaves their child with someone else, but I am pretty darn sure she took excellent care of both kids. I’ve had strangers and friends alike stop to tell me that. And Ella loved seeing her every morning and asks about her at night. And so it is what I will believe, and I will wish Pow well, and I will offer her a reference, and we will all move on.

It’s easier to feel that way because we found a new nanny. She starts Monday (Pow’s last day is Friday) and I think she’s going to be terrific. Now that we have it resolved, I can view the search as the high comedy that it really was.

There was the candidate who, when asked what she was looking for in her new job said, “Parents who don’t work from home.”

Then there was the one who said she was looking for a new job so she could be closer to her dog and followed with, “My current contract says I’m supposed to give a month’s notice but ha! That’s not going to happen!” Pause, then, “So, do you guys do contracts? Because having a contract is really important to me.”

There was one who I could literally hear punching rates and hours into a calculator as we spoke. And this was at the beginning of the conversation. She agreed that our salary was enough because Gatito is five and would therefore take direction. Then followed up with an email that she’d done further math and discovered it was not, in fact, enough.

We were almost taken in by one woman who asked for so much money, but realized afterwords that, while was more appealing to us as adults with her promise of cooking and keeping the house neat, she didn’t interact with the kids at all. Oh come on, like you wouldn’t get momentarily distracted by the idea of someone making your life easier, kids be damned!

The woman we hired (pseudonym forthcoming) is a career nanny. She started taking care of other kids, in addition to her own, when her son was born 18 years ago. She was a cub scout and girl scout leader for years. She has a bachelor’s degree in studio art and loves doing crafts with the kids. She grew up in the area and knows it well. She brought her 11-year-old daughter with her to the interview and the daughter and Ella totally bonded. Ella cuddled up to her on the couch, then brought her book after book after book to read. I told the nanny she could bring her daughter on school vacations and encouraged her to bring her the first two weeks in particular. She and I agreed that having her daughter around to play with Ella will give her and Gatito a chance to bond in the remaining two weeks before school starts.

As for the dojo, she is willing to take him there, which means I do not have to rush, but it will still be my intention to move him up here by the end of the year. I want to give him a chance to settle in to his new school before yanking the last remaining familiar thing out from under him, but ultimately I’d rather he spend the hour round trip playing, reading, or doing homework than sitting in the car. I talked to the owner of the dojo and he was going to do a bit of research into options up here for us. He trained way back when with the owner of the dojo that is closest to our house and said that, at least a decade ago, they had similar philosophies. So I am hopeful.

In other news, you guys would be so proud of me. Class lists came out (1o boys, 10 girls), and I thought about picking a couple at random and trying to set up introductory play dates, but you know what assholes people can be about scheduling stuff, especially if you’re not available during the week. I came up with the brilliant plan of inviting all the boys in the class to a backyard playdate the weekend before school started. I figured I’d just pick a time and people could be there or not, yo know? It was way less scary to me than making phone calls. A thought it would be too much work but I figured 90 minutes, balls, ice pops, and watermelon, what could go wrong? So far I have two yesses, one no (traveling) and one probably not (tonsillectomy 4 days before), with five outstanding. Even if just those two come it is enough for him to have a couple of familiar faces on the first day. And I feel like it will make a difference in terms of future play dates if people can meet me, especially since I won’t be available for mid-morning PTA meetings or whatever (and our new nanny, who has agreed to come), at the beginning of the year. I shall let you know how it goes!

The Return of the Nanny Diaries July 27, 2011

Well, it’s a good thing I got you all up to speed because now I need to talk.

I came home slightly later than usual last night and A said, “Pow [nanny pseudonym] quit.”

I guess I’m not completely surprised. I’d even been wondering if it was time for us to move on. Since the move, it seems like we’ve been accommodating her various needs more than the other way around, one of the results of which is that the kids spend a lot of time in the car. But, you know, the unknown. I couldn’t imagine firing her over these relatively small things in exchange for a total stranger.

Apparently, she started the conversation by criticizing Ella. She’s the most difficult two-year-old she’s taken care of. (There were three others, plus her own son, before Ella.) We spoil her. (by picking her up too much!) Not sure what else but I  love A super duper extra much for coming up with the exact right response: I will not sit here and listen to you criticize my daughter.

She backed down a bit at that and said she’d asked Gatito whether Ella cries all the time with us and he’d said no. Good lord, people, my daughter has been crying all the time with her nanny? I feel awful to think about that. But I tell myself it can’t be all true. I know how it feels when she is crying/complaining a lot. It’s like I cannot remember a time when she wasn’t. It feels like it’s all the time sometimes, but Gatito says it’s not! And Ella is happy to see Pow in the mornings. Bouncing in her seat with joy, in fact, so can somebody please tell me this means she wasn’t being too badly damaged?

[Maybe this deserves another post but, while sometimes difficult and frustrating, I can assure you that Ella is well within the realm of normal for an almost two-year-old. As one example, Pow said she knows Ella knows how to share but just won't do it. Um, no. She may get the concept on some level but 2yo's do not share willingly. Sorry. Also, can you please pick up my child-- most of the time-- when she wants to be picked up, for god's sake?]

Pow moved on to her other reasons, which basically come down to the distance from the move– the miles on her car, the time away from her 11-year-old son. I wish she’d just stuck with those totally valid reasons and left her feelings about poor baby Ella out of it. We could have ended on a much friendlier note. I could have given her a reference. I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life wondering about the quality of Ella’s care over the past 14 months. Gah.

She gave us until September, which is a decent length of time to find someone, but now I feel like I want her out of here as soon as possible. It was hard to be civil when we exchanged Ella in the parking lot of the dojo this evening.

And we have a problem, because our new house is a lot less geographically desirable for nannies. The last time I posted a job on the nanny matching site where my company has an account, I had 15 applications within 24 hours. This time, four. A couple of them seem worth a phone interview (and a Facebook/high school friend may have someone for me when the nanny gets back to the country next week) but we may have to give up on the Spanish-speaking thing. Gatito has not spoken Spanish since the nanny switch/he started Kindergarten last year, but he still understands it. He does the typical immigrant kid thing where Pow talks in Spanish and he answers in English. Ella is fairly equal in Spanish and English, as far as I can tell, and it will be a bummer to lose that, but I guess it’s not the most important thing.

The other problem that is so minor but is making me ill is Gatito’s karate dojo. It’s in our old town, about a half hour from our new house. But it is in between our offices and home and was on the way home for Pow, as well. So she was still taking him there and we would pick both kids up there 2x/week on our way home and it was no big deal. Karate is the one activity Gatito never complains about going to. He loves it and he is always practicing at home. He’s been there for over two years and has his purple belt. There are at least four dojos than I know of in my new town, but the current dojo is a very special place. They love and understand him there. He is so comfortable and at home there. And I wanted so much for him to have that one consistent thing, at least for a little while, at least until he got settled in to his new school. But the nannies that have applied so far live North of here and the dojo is South and it seems unreasonable to send whoever it is so far in so completely the wrong direction at the end of the day. And so I may need to take this special place from Gatito and I feel sick about it.

I am well aware that all this is small in the grand scheme. And I’m firm on my reasons for working but this stuff is hard, hard, hard. I didn’t sleep all night and I can barely eat. (This, apparently, is what it takes for me to make a weight loss break-through. Sigh.) I know (I hope?) it will all work out in the end, but I don’t handle change well, even on behalf of my kids.

Updates July 25, 2011

Oh hello again! I’ll just dispense with the usual apologies about how darn long its been. So, how are things with you?

Lots of changes here. We moved in early April to a really lovely house that’s just slightly too far away. But then again the distance is what enabled us to afford such a lovely house. We’ve been commuting Gatito down to school and then camp ever since then– really only a few minutes out of the way on our way to work–, meeting our nanny to pass off Ella in the school parking lot. In a way it’s been nice, though, that one of us brings him to school every morning, but it’s also been somewhat trying, and A and I will certainly be glad when that phase is over after next week.

Ella is 23 months old and very sharp. She’s extremely verbal– has been talking in full sentences for months. I was away for a couple of days last week and she and I had lengthy phone conversations. In fact, I am pretty sure we would still be on the phone right now if I hadn’t hung up. She climbed out of her crib a few weeks ago, so we removed a side and declared it a toddler bed. She is incredibly willful. She needs to do everything herself, from getting dressed (something her brother didn’t do to til he was, like, five) to climbing into the car seat and snapping the top part of the harness. She gets so frustrated when she can’t do stuff, and she wants whatever anyone else has. My cousin asked, “Isn’t it great when they start to talk and you get to know what’s going on in their minds?” I considered and said, “Mostly what seems to be going on in Ella’s mind is that she neeeeeeeeds stuff.” She’s damn cute, though, if exhausting.

Gatito is getting so grown up. He’ll start first grade at the end of August. He’s still long and lean and incredibly fit. Last week, A read him a chapter of Dr. Dolittle. His interest captured, Gatito continued to read on his own– the first time he’s engaged on his own with a book without pictures. His nose is constantly in a book– serious, pictureless chapter books as well as a lot of Asterix and picture books like Olivia– and it’s impossible to get his attention because he’s always reading in the car, on the toilet, or walking down the street. Which leads us, in some of our finer parenting moments, to threaten to throw his books in the trash. (I know, I know, but it turns out to be equally annoying when a child is ignoring you for books as for video games.) He is now in the intermediate class in karate, with a purple stripe belt. Viola advancement is slow going– it is really hard finding time to practice. And we’re forcing him to do one season of soccer this fall before choosing never to play again. He says he hates that you have to run all the time in soccer (despite spending his days running in circles around the damn house) but we’ll see how it goes.

He learned to doggy paddle this summer, in the usual fanfare-less Gatito way. In April he was clinging to me like a tiny baby, arms and legs wrapped around me in the pool. I put a life jacket on him and, with difficulty, convinced him to release the death grip so he could float on his own. Then I sent him to 3 private lessons in the week between school and camp and, a couple of weeks after camp started, he got into my parents’ pool one weekend and just swam. Well, doggy paddled, but it was still miraculous to me. Apparently he did not think it worthy of mention that he’d cracked the code the previous week.

The cat, meanwhile, declared and end to his indoors-ness the moment we moved. Every time the door opened he zipped right out, so we didn’t fight it and now he spends all day outside, mostly coming in only at night. The local chipmunk and mouse population (both indoor and outdoor, unfortunately) has suffered, but the cat is pleased as punch and so are we– no more peeing on our beds and generally a lot less irritating behavior, since he’s not in the house to jump on the dinner table, for instance. He’s off the Prozac since he started hiding it under his tongue and spitting it out when A walked away. I swear it’s like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest around here some days. I don’t know how he’ll feel come winter but I’m not throwing that bottle away. We have many predators around here, including coyotes and foxes, and I do worry about him, but I couldn’t physically keep him inside if I tried and given his improved mood, I wouldn’t try. At least if he goes, he will go happy.

We live on a busy residential road, the kind where it’s not really safe to walk down the street. I never expected to meet anyone here, but we have. Our next door neighbors keep chickens and the one they say is the dumb one is often to be found hanging out in our yard. Sometimes we get eggs with gorgeous orange yolks. Their oldest daughter has babysat for us a couple of times while their youngest took care of the cat while we went away earlier in the summer. Our neighbors across the street came by with wine a couple of months ago and we have since shared several barbecues and met another family across the street, who have a son starting Kindergarten. And their neighbors have a son going into 1st grade to whom I am hoping to introduce Gatito before school starts. I even went out to dinner and a movie with the two women last Friday night. So my low expectations have paid off and it’s nice.

The extra commute time has been hard. Where we used to get home around 5:30, it is now 6:00 or 6:15, particularly when we have to pick the kids up along the way, which we often do, for a variety of reasons. And somehow that has translated into much later bed times for both kids. They really need more sleep than they are getting, but it’s such a mad dash to get dinner made and eaten, homework done (during the school year) and viola practiced (rarely happens) and to accommodate Gatito’s very real and valid need to play before bath, reading, and bed. It’s exhausting and there isn’t a minute of peace. It’s worse when the drive home has been filled with demands for snacks, to listen to different music, or to endlessly pick up what’s been dropped– most of those from Ella. So we kind of plod along and pray to make it to the weekend, where I battle and calculate to avoid spending too much time in the car.

But it’s a happy life, and we’re doing well, if a little frantic, and I miss this space and what blogging use to be. I almost never use my computer at all anymore– just my iPhone and my new iPad for personal, so I’m wary of making declarations that I’ll be back soon, but I’m thinking about it, and I might be. There’s stuff I’d like to talk about, now that I’ve gotten the basics out of the way. If there’s anyone still out there reading, or maybe even if they’re not. I’ll see you around?

Are you there readers? It’s me, Cat. February 7, 2011

So how long do I have to abandon you guys for before I win the Worst Blogger Ever award? Does nearly two months do it? It is hard, in a Facebook and Twitter world, to get back in this groove, even though I miss it. There is lots to update…

We put our house back on the market in the beginning of January. We had patched the holes in the garage wall, paved the driveway, and updated our bathrooms. Then we put it on at a price that made it by far the best value on the market and wound up with three offers in four days. PHEW! Next was looking for a new house. I’d had my eye on the market for the past year and within a few weeks we’d come to terms on our new house. It’s in a town with great schools, which was the whole point. It’s a house we love that’s even a bit of an upgrade on our current one. I am particularly looking forward to having a master bathroom, though I’m guessing we’re still a few years away from any real privacy. But it will be nice to have a bathroom that is not right on top of the kids’ rooms and therefore the ability to get up without waking them up. The downside is a very steep driveway (and we don’t have 4wd cars) and a somewhat remote location. Really it’s within 10 minutes of two very cute towns, though. 40 minutes to work without traffic (which means never) and 50 minutes on back roads. It could be worse.

In the midst of all this, I took a business trip to Dublin, the highlight of which was falling asleep right in front of my big boss. In my defense, it was following an overnight flight and I’d also taken a Vicoden, which I’ll get to in a minute. I was in the office, basically, from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. every night and failed utterly to see Dublin in daylight other than out the window of the taxi on the way to the office, but so it goes.

Oh, and also in the midst of all this, I had more debilitating back pain, which migrated to my leg, which led to an MRI (which led to nearly hitting my $3K health plan deductible in the first week of January), which led to the information that yet another piece of my disc had broken free from its apparently not so happy home in between my vertebrae. As this one was causing lots of pain but not damaging a nerve, I am living with it for now. Apparently the body can dissolve these things, though it takes six to eight months to do so. I saw an integrated pain management specialist who combined acupuncture and herbs (did you know ginger and turmeric reduce inflammation?) with NSAIDS and muscle relaxants and now I have more good days than bad days. The surgeon said it is okay for me to take Gatito skiing in a few weeks, believe it or not.

Gatito is doing great. We’ve been taking him to this ski place an hour away from here for the past month. He has a 90 minute lesson and we are home by lunch. By the third lesson, he’d graduated from the learning hill and was up on the chairlift. Apparently all the kids do this and I think it’s amazing. The goal is for him to be able to ski with me for a couple of days over his winter break. We’re staying with my aunt, I’m borrowing skis, and his lift ticket is only $5, so we’re doing this as cheaply as humanly possible!

He’s had this break-through in viola where he really likes to play and volunteers to practice on his own. His strong point is playing in tune, to which I say, thank the lord. I can deal with scratchiness and not keeping the rhythm but playing out of tune just kills me. He had a recital a couple of weeks ago and did great. His reading continues to advance and now he reads silently to himself, which I think is just so cool. Of course, he won’t tell me what he read so I can’t confirm, but it would be out of character for him to be reading and not understanding. He’s an orange belt in karate now and enjoying that as well. He’s generally happy and has gained so much confidence over the last year. I am really proud of and happy for him. This is not to say that he is not frequently extremely difficult, but I’d honestly prefer not to document that stuff.

Ella is 17 months now and a real little person. Oh god, you guys, she’s just the cutest thing. She’s so affectionate and free with the hugs and kisses for her family. She loves the cat (“mow mow!”) and kisses him, too. She’s incredibly verbal, with more words than I can count and a creative way of getting her meaning across. One day, she was asking for her boots and I misunderstood and started picking out a book. So off she went and returned with my boots. Another day, she  she told her nanny, “butterfly! cheese!” and Pow was able to figure out that she wanted her picture taken while climbing on a butterfly in a playspace. It does seem like a lot of what she talks about, though, is her boots, or a dress, or that something is pretty. Well, that and her bottle. And she loves to take a bath. To run the water (even for myself) is to see her little head climbing up the stairs crying, “baff! baff!”

Her hair is growing in, but it’s a mess and I am trying not to be my mom and constantly talk about it or try to fix it. She has unfortunately inherited my habit of playing with her hair. She does it when she drinks her bottle or goes to sleep. Or if I’m holding her, she plays with my hair while she drinks her bottle, which I absolutely love. She loves singing and dancing and she loves her big brother, though she’s jealous when anyone pays attention to him. She’s actually pretty noisy and demanding that way. Oh, and she loves swimming. I swear she’s a natural. She’ll hold onto this floating barbell thing and kick while I support her hips only, and she’ll happily jump (well, step) in off the side into my arms. She enjoys the aquarium and the playground, too. It is kind of a delight to have a kid who loves doing all the things kids are “supposed” to enjoy, without anxiety.

Oh, and the cat! I was practically ready to put him to sleep after a couple of instances where he peed on the bed while I was in it (not to mention any chance he got when I wasn’t and other generally aggressive behavior), but there was no way I could really do that. We ended up giving Prozac another try, and suddenly I remember why I love cats in general and this one in particular! No peeing in the past few weeks, no waking us up twelve times/night and just general calmness. We even ordered in sushi and, though he perched attentively nearby, he did not jump on the table even once. It was a Prozac miracle!

So, that gets those of you who still care up-to-speed on all things Galloping Cats. Mostly all good, except for my back, but I keep reminding myself how minor that is in the scheme of health problems.

How are you guys?