Wednesday, June 11, 2008

writing rather than napping

The heat finally broke, which is more wonderful than I can explain here. Yes, I'm a steely southern girl who should be used to such excesses but down there is not a building without air conditioning. And this house has none. Usually, I assume, that's not an issue here in NY. Most of the houses we looked at didn't have air, but this past week has been pretty miserable. Now we have a window unit on the first floor and it makes an amazing difference. Getting one on the 2nd floor might make my life complete.

Just a bit ago I put F down for her nap and as I was leaving her room, literally as I was closing the door, I heard Clark waking up. Sigh. He was up more than usual in the night last night so I'm rather jonesing for a nap today, but there it is. Right now he's beside me in his bouncy seat chewing on his hand as I write. He's very cute.

So the girl we hired to sit for us is working out okay. Better than I expected, actually. She's only a temporary fix anyway, as she goes back to school in August, but even for this short time I wasn't sure about her. What's surprising to me is how much anxiety there has been in trying to find someone. I suppose it shouldn't surprise me... I'm choosing someone to take care of my KIDS for crying out loud. When I was a kid sitters were meant only to be sure the kids didn't kill themselves or the house didn't catch fire. I'm not sure anyone expected a sitter to enrich the child's life. But now I want someone who will teach Frances things, help her navigate the world a bit better, blah blah. On one hand I feel this is ridiculous and that it's just the run off from the Baby Boomers and their full toddlers' schedules, the norm they set for parenting. I don't want to be this kind of parent.

Yesterday F and her sitter played outside in the rain. This is one benefit to having a younger person with her... I'm not likely to play in the rain and neither would be someone older. They also recently spent a large amount of time burying and then finding things in the sand box... That's a good life, I think.

1 comment:

Paige said...

Yay for heat breaking! We went to the M of L&S today and hung out mostly in the Butterfly House bc they keep it 80 in there.
Yay for the sitter working out! Maybe she can teach F Mandarin Chinese and how to do macrame later this month.
I have been obsessing (mind-fucking, as Shara likes to say) over how to do naps with a toddler and a baby. Sounds like it's going to be about as hard as I'm thinking it will be. Hope you get some sleep...