New School and Nanny

After two months of worrying about Jack starting a new school, all went well this week. His new school at the YMCA is going well. They have all the toys out all the time, the rooms are very homey with wood floors and rugs, and the teachers are really nice. Brian couldn’t get Jack to say good-bye when he dropped him off the first day because Jack was so into gluing his glitter on his paper. I was really worried about sending Jack to a school that just opened but they seem to be working out the kinks pretty quickly. It’s nice to pick Jack up and he is not in a big room with 40 other kids (at the end of the day at our old day care, they put all the kids in one room to wait for the parents—I will say that Jack always seemed to be having fun with the older kids in the room or had managed to be sitting on a teacher’s lap). Instead he is snuggled up to the teacher on the couch reading a book or sitting at the table drawing. But the new school only has 25 kids total and it’s not up to capacity yet so Jack is getting a lot of attention.

The nanny also went well this week. The nanny, Holly, has a daughter Gracie who comes with her. Gracie is almost 2 years old. Brian and I spent some time writing out expectations and Holly did great with them. One day she did the kids’ laundry and put it away and ran the dishwasher and unloaded it. She takes out the trash and always leaves the kitchen spotless and picks up the kids’ toys. I worked from home twice during the week. I was worried about doing that but working in the office with the door shut seems to work fine. I like seeing Ty throughout the day. Holly also babysat for us Saturday night because she is trying to make some extra money. That was nice for us because Jack knows her really well and didn’t see to care that we were leaving him.

I guess I missed writing about last weekend’s activities, so I have two weekends to catch up on. On the last Friday in April, we had some new neighbors over. The guy, Stan, works with me and Brian and he moved into our neighborhood. Stan and his wife have a 6 year old daughter and a 4 year old son who is autistic. Stan and Pam are very dedicated to their son and are learning techniques to help their son integrate into the world a little better. Pam is pregnant with their third child and I don’t know how she does it. It takes a lot of time, dedication and energy with kids to begin with and then on top of that… well, it’s a lot. She doesn’t believe in immunizations which to me is interesting because my parents never had us immunized. This never presented a problem until I was a junior in high school and contracted the measles. I looked like the Elephant Man—it swelled up my head. It’s hard for me to decide if the measles was the worst illness I ever had or if it was mononucleosis when I was 19 (quote from the doctor: I’ve never seen such a high level of the virus in anyone’s blood before!!) but the measles was bad enough for me to drive myself to the health department and ask them to immunize me. Well, there really isn’t a standard process for immunizing adults and they were a little baffled at what to do. So they gave me a German measles shot. That’s it. So when I read about a mumps outbreak in the mid-west, I’m a little nervous. Of course, I went to the Far East six times before someone mentioned that I should be immunized. So I went to some clinic and got a Hep A shot and maybe even polio but I never did the boosters or follow up injections. I’m kind of in vaccination limbo. After living through this, I decided that I would immunize my children. But now I have a friend who is going to space out her MMR shots for her daughter and I read about how a lot of kids in Britain are not getting their shots because of fear of what the shots do (which obviously isn’t anything new because my mother felt the same way in the 1960’s!) It’s all very confusing.

I met my friend Sarah at IKEA for their $1.99 breakfast on Saturday. I bought a new office chair and a few other things. I am so grateful that we have an IKEA here. On Sunday we spent all day getting ready for Jack’s new school and for the nanny. She showed up at 7 AM on Monday and we went through everything. Because I knew her from Jack’s school and felt really comfortable with her, I didn’t have any problems worrying about Ty throughout the day.
I met Jill B for lunch at Abuello’s on Tuesday. There is something decadent about meeting a friend for lunch during the week without the kids. I feel like I’m really getting away with something. On Wednesday I worked from home with the nanny in the house. I was worried about the noise level mostly but fortunately it went fine with the door shut. This is Liz’s last week here before she moves to the east coast so I had lunch with her on Wednesday. It’s so unusual for me to go to lunch at all, let alone 2 times in one week. But I was able to say good-bye to yet another friend who is moving away. So then on Friday a couple co-workers asked if I wanted to each lunch out with them and I thought, Why not? Four of us met at the Cheesecake Factory and talked shop.

The naturopath called me back on Friday and we talked about why I am so tired. She thinks my adrenal system is in overload, so she is going to send me some stuff to sort that out.

Jill M (now 8 months pregnant) and her son Connor came over to play with Jack on Saturday morning. I hope everyone is used to seeing my son run around with his pants off but that is the only way he will go on the potty without being prompted. Even underwear doesn’t prevent him from having accidents. But bottomless, he jumps up and runs to the potty. So Connor played with our naked Jack. Holly came over Saturday night and Brian and I went to Fleming’s, a well respected steak house. It is a chain like Ruth Chris’s and I’m always skeptical of chains. However, the steaks were excellent and I got the beef Wellington, one of my all time favorite meals. They had a big wine selection too. It was quite expensive though. Cinco de Mayo is the anniversary of when we first met in 1998 so we were celebrating. We met a big Cinco de Mayo party in Queen Creek.

On Sunday, our friend Mindy came over for dinner. She was amused by watching us interact with two very active boys. After she left and the chores were done, I watched both Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives. I like both of those shows but The Office is quickly becoming one my favorite shows. It makes me laugh out loud. This week I will start the weaning process. I expect it will take about a month which will put me a couple weeks shy of my goal of 1 year but that’s pretty darn close. I’m ready to quit because I think it’s contributing to my being tired a lot. And I’m tired of being tired!