How the universe sent me a babysitter - Part II

When I walked in to her little house on the prairie I immediately breathed in the smell of spice tea. It was toasty warm inside, clean but not sterile. Yael had the look of a home schooling, bread baking, granola rolling, all-terrain strolling, pioneer mama. I stayed for about forty minutes and we played with the babies. I nursed my boy. She nursed hers. We talked about how he sleeps, what he eats, how he motors across a carpet on elbows. He stared at everything with his giant eyes. When it was time for me to go he made the boo boo face and started to cry. I said goodbye and left him with Yael. And then I went to get a great big coffee from the cafe across main road. After, I went home and straightened up the house, did some laundry and generally felt happy to be alone. Really alone. Not the kind of alone where you still have a baby strapped on to you. We were separate and it was fine.

I picked him up two hours later. He had cried. But he also slept. I gave him the food I had made. He hadn't taken it from Yael. But she wasn't discouraged and neither was I. We wanted to make it work.

The next day we came straight after dropping off the big kids. He was tired and I didn't stay long so that she could put him to bed. Before I left she changed his diaper and sang his favorite song, Itsy Bitsy Spider, but in Hebrew. He calmed down. He was starting to connect to her. He cried again when I left but she texted soon after that he was asleep.

This time when I got home I got out my paints and a drawing, the third in a series, that I had sketched a while ago but never painted. So I painted it. The series is called Day of Rest. One panel is Sabbath Eve with the two candles, the glass of wine and the challah. The second panel is Sabbath day - a tree of life shading a quiet village. The third one, the one I just painted, is called Havdalah, the separation between the Sabbath and a new week, the symbols of which are the braided candle, the glass of wine and the spice box. It seemed the perfect theme to celebrate my own brief separation.

When I went back to Yael's he was awake and cried when he saw me. I nursed him and we snuggled. He relaxed.  He had slept a lot and eaten both jars of his food but still no bottle. In due time. While I was nursing him Yael asked me if I knew someone named Galit from the moshav. I asked, does she have a seven month old? Yes. A few weeks before I had been in the cafe with my kids and another family was there with some out of towners so they were speaking English. I guess the husband overheard us speaking English too and when we were leaving he asked where we were from. We had a brief conversation about California because someone from his family was living there but I don't remember the details. Nice guy. They live in the moshav across from the cafe. A week later I was at our health clinic with the baby and I ran into the guy's wife with their seven month old. She asked, didn't I see you at the cafe? Yes. I gave her my card and said she should email me if she ever wanted to get together. I told her I work from home but I don't yet have childcare and I'm with the baby a lot. Hoping to find a sitter sometime soon...

That was Galit. Turns out Galit had given that card to Yael a few days later and mentioned she had met an American looking for some part time childcare. At that point in our conversation Yael went over to her jacket pocket and pulled out my card.

The universe is funny that way. Sometimes it expects you to take the last step and close the circle. Which is fine by me since I'm one who thinks we make our own fate. But I learned from a good friend not to  dismiss the powers of attraction and our abilities to draw exactly the right people at the right time into our lives.

How the universe sent me a babysitter - Part I

This was a very big week. I found a babysitter for Bug Eye McChicken Legs. This is big for a number of reasons but mainly because I wasn't totally convinced that I could rationalize spending money for someone else to take care of him when I only earn barely enough to cover it. I always have it in my head that I can still run my business and my household in two hour increments while he's napping and why would I pay for someone else to watch him sleep. Except he doesn't always nap as he should. And I never feel at ease starting the next project because I know that at any moment I will have to stop. And then I secretly start to resent just a teeny bit the McChicken. Plus maybe the reason I am only earning enough to barely cover childcare, is that I'm not actually working much at all.

Since he was born I haven't painted a thing. In the weeks leading up to his birth I had several commissions to finish and it was quite a fruitful period. But then the baby came and the house sold and the RV trip and the move and leaving the country and settling into a new county. Well, it hasn't been super conducive to creating. And unfortunately I'm not the type to just jot down sketches and doodles whenever I can. I know that about myself so I don't even buy journals anymore.  I've continued to fill orders and have them printed and shipped through a lovely print shop in North Carolina thanks to the magic of the Internet, so business goes on. But nothing new has hit paper in seven months which had me feeling like I'm not really an artist (I feel this way from time to time. Impostor syndrome. Very destructive).

So when I saw a flyer posted next to the neighborhood grocery (think Israeli bodega) advertising a 29 year old mom of two (baby and toddler) looking to watch another baby three days a week in the morning while her two year old is at preschool, I sort of thought this might be perfect. So I took a tear off with her number.

And I stuck it in my pocket where it sat for a week.

I had those thoughts again that I don't deserve childcare. That my baby is too problematic. (no binky, no lovie, no bottle, lots of nursing). That it's not worth the hassle of getting him ready in the morning and packing up his food and diapers and wipes. That surely she's already taken another baby since half the tear-offs were gone and that was a week ago.

Finally I called and even during the conversation I felt a weight rising in my chest. I don't really want to do this. I can't do this. I don't deserve it. She had one other family interested but she was waiting to hear back from them. She'd call me back. A few days later I got a text that she'd like me to bring the baby over and we could try it out for a week or so. See how it goes. I liked that approach.

So this week on Tuesday I took the kids to school and put the baby down for his nap when we got home. When he woke up we rode over to the village next door where the sitter lives (across from the awesome cafe that I wrote about last month which will prove to be an important part of the second part of this story). As I drove in I already started to feel lighter. She lives in a moshav which is kind of a little farming community. This one happens to be a vineyard. And she lives down a dirt road next to a few abandoned chicken coops which I find endlessly charming. Her personal roost overlooks a beautiful valley. And when she opened the door and welcomed me with a giant smile, I sort of knew this would be right for us.

Part II to come.

Sitter situation

Here's the deal. I had bronchitis and then we went to New York for a week for my cousin's wedding and to visit my in-laws who flew in from Israel for my husband's grandmother's ninety-fifth birthday. So that's why I've been MIA. And now I have all kinds of stories stored up in my head. Where to begin...

Let's go back a few weeks to July 26th when I meant to write about going to see the John Mayer concert with my husband and brother and sister-in-law. Great show. We don't often go out because getting a babysitter is such an ordeal. The last time we got one the babysitter called from her train in San Francisco because there was a fatality somewhere on the southbound line and she was stuck so we had thirty minutes to find a back-up before we needed to leave for our friends' wedding in a town an hour away. I scrambled and managed to find the friend of our old babysitter. When we left my son he was basically having a seizure, beside himself with grief that we were leaving him with a perfect stranger. I can hardly blame him. But still, did he have to be so dramatic?

Where was I? Yes, John Mayer. He is a tasty little morsel I must say. So we told my brother to get us tickets and I set up our usual babysitter who is lovely and sweet, but not the sharpest cheddar in the refrigerated section, if you know what I mean. And even though she's babysat for us at least a half dozen times, my son had a major come-apart because of the last ordeal and shrieked for twenty minutes until we finally left.

Anyway the concert was great and when we got home our babysitter said all was fine. But all was not fine. I mean no one was bleeding and she'd even cleaned up the hosue which was nice. But when I went in to check on my daughter she was sleeping in her crib wearing only her diaper lying on a sheet drenched with some kind of liquid. Then I saw her bottle in there with her. What in the hell?

I took her out and put her on my son's bed (he was sleeping in our room) and changed her sheet. The mystery liquid was milk. I got her into pajamas and realizing she hadn't had any milk since it was all in her crib, I made her a new bottle which she drank and went back to sleep. When I opened the bottle I came to understand that the babysitter had not put the valve in correctly so when my daughter tried to drink her milk it basically spilled all over her. I can only imagine the crying that that caused. What an idiot! Granted, this bottle is not the most sensical design but it's not quantum physics. It's just regular physics! I mean my son could have figured this one out. Shit, my DAUGHTER could have figured it out. Uch.

And it's not just this babysitter. The one before, the friend of the old babysitter, seemed like a competent 19-year-old. But when I went in to get my daughter the following morning she was drenched in her own pee. Why, you ask? Because the babysitter had put the diaper on backwards so all the absorbent part was on her tushy. I don't even know how she managed to get it on that way. It would have required her to put the sticky tape part on around her back. Huh?

I feel like if you can't make a bottle or change a diaper you shouldn't be offering your services as a babysitter. Maybe I'm too nonchalant in my hiring. I just take recommendations from friends and then hope for the best. It really shouldn't be this difficult. I can't decide what's worse, sleeping hungry and naked in milk or sleeping with a full belly in your own pee. Or some new babysitter whose shortcomings are undisclosed. I'm throwing my hands up.

Au contraire au pair

I was standing in line at Starbucks today and there was a beautiful young woman behind me pushing a stroller in which sat the chunkiest, poutiest, blue-eyed baby. So, trying to be friendly, I asked, "how old is your baby?" In fact it wasn't her baby, she explained in her Scandinavian lilt. She was the au pair.

Now what woman in her right mind is going to hire a beautiful Scandinavian woman to live in her house, WITH HER HUSBAND, and watch after her baby?

Wait, maybe I'm being to quick to judge. It wouldn't be the first time. Let me reassess the situation for a second. I've just had a baby so I look four months pregnant, even though I'm not pregnant at all. I have milk stains on every blouse I own. My hair is falling out. I have post-partum acne. And my spouse is seriously sex-deprived. I know. I'll hire a beautiful woman with a sexy accent and a washboard stomach who wears those low-rise jeans that on normal women create that oddly popular "muffin top" effect but on her only provide better viewing of her hip bones and her thong. And she can sleep down the hall.

Nope. I just can't spin it. Bad choice any way you look at it. Bad bad choice.