My part-time working-from-home contract is over, which means I'm back to being a stay-at-home-Mom for a while. I've told my consulting company that at this point in time, I'm only going to consider a a local or remote position that is less than 20 hours a week.
Why? Well, when it comes to childcare we've really struck out. With 3 weeks left to go in my contract, our Nanny sent me a text 5 minutes before she was supposed to arrive on a Monday morning stating that she wouldn't be coming back. She's pregnant, and said it was just too much for her. I get that -- I've worked while pregnant and it's hard -- but MORE THAN 5 MINUTES NOTICE would have been nice. You know?
Mike's work offers a limited number of subsidized backup-care hours per school year so we used a little of that, and for the rest? I took care of the girls all day and squeezed in as much work as I could and then worked all night, too. For 3 weeks. A few days in I was exhausted and by the end I felt like a zombie.
It's nice to be back to just one job now - being with my girls. I've blogged so little in the last 6 months I've missed chronicling a number of firsts, milestones, and fun stories. I might go back and try to recall some in the coming weeks but for now I'm just going to jump in and go from here.
Quick catch-up/what's new:
Carina starts preschool in the Fall two half-days a week. I'm so excited for her to socialize and learn, and I'm also glad that Aurelia and I will have a little bit of just-us time. We ditched the crib when we moved (back in December) and she's been in a full-size big girl bed ever since. I just measured her at the doctor's office yesterday and she is over 30 lbs. and 37.5 in. We've come a long way since the Failure to Thrive diagnosis. I can't tell you how glad I am that all of that is over.
And now onto my Mommy Fail. On my 2nd day not working I thought it would be fun to take the girls out to Toys R Us to buy them a little treat for being so good while I was trying to jam as much work as possible into daylight hours.
I put them in the cart and we headed down the Princess aisle. Of course they wanted to hold the entire contents of the aisle and whined when I put Rapunzel and her pony back on the shelf and cried when I set Baby Princess Anna down (even though they already have her at home!) and completely lost their shit when I insisted that we couldn't take home the jumbo-pack of 6" Disney Toddler Dolls for the low price of $80. "But Moooom, they have Tiana!"
I began to feel like the cruelest {and dumbest} person alive. Take them to a toy store and show them all these cute and fun things that they can't have…brilliant. So I made haste for the Disney Junior section to pick up the Sofia the First sisters doll set I had picked out ahead of time for the girls to share. They looked at it for 10 seconds, definitely excited, but then they spied the Doc McStuffins and Jake and the Neverland Pirates displays and promptly made it clear to me that they needed ALL THE THINGS.
We left that part of the store as quickly as possible and trudged over to a corner that had a train table set up. Perfect. I got them out of the cart and set them down to play for a few minutes. I had barely put Aurelia down when Carina announced to me {and to all the other kids playing} that she needed to go poopoo. NOW.
Aurelia protested getting back in the cart so I carried her while pushing the cart with the other hand and praying that Carina didn't poo her pants on the way to the bathroom, which just had to be all the way at the other end of the store. Once inside the stall I discovered that unfortunately I'd left our portable potty seat at home. So I held Carina in a hover position on the toilet (otherwise she would have fallen in) and pleaded with Aurelia to not crawl on the dirty bathroom floor.
She looked at me, said "go!" and began to crawl under the stall door. Thankfully Carina finished soon thereafter so I set her down and told her to wait, swung upon the door, and chased down Aurelia who had just about made it to the sinks and was still on all fours {ew}. Carina came bounding out of the stall with her pants and Princess underpants down around her ankles shouting, "silly baby!"
I scooped up Aurelia and pulled up Carina's clothes as quickly as possible and made for the cash registers. We were just about to check out when my phone rang. It was work. Of course it was a phone call I had been waiting for regarding whether or not my current customer was going to extend anyone so I spent a few minutes on the phone getting bad news while trying to keep Carina from diving into the dollar bin and prevent Aurelia from emptying the entire contents all over the floor.
Hang up phone. Purchase Sofia doll. Get in car. Put on Frozen soundtrack for the millionth time. Sigh. Drive home. Thank God I had put something in the crockpot earlier that morning.
Welcome back to being a stay-at-home Mom, Mama G ;)
