bye bye, maria and jillian

Today was Maria's last day, and yesterday was our last day of sharecare with Jillian. Waaah!

Maria has decided to move back to Barcelona, and is leaving next Wednesday. Jillian is going to be starting school full time in January and was going to be leaving the share care anyway, so she just ended a little bit earlier than she would have otherwise.

This sharecare was really great and I'm really going to miss both Maria and Jillian. Maria was great to work with and took excellent care of the girls. She took Charli to all kinds of places, made her food and straightened up after her, and was really accomodating to our schedule (which can only loosely be called a "schedule" - usually when Maria arrived, Charli would be eating or just finishing eating, but sometimes Maria would show up and Charli would still be asleep, in which case Maria would have to feed her breakfast and get her dressed). She was easy to talk to, and could dispense advice without being annoying or accusative - a necessary skill in a nanny! I never had any worries about Charli when she was with Maria - I have way more worries when she is with us.

I really liked having an older girl with Charli, to show her how to do things and inspire her and be like a big sister, and Jillian was terrific. She was really affectionate with Charli, and her mom said how spending time with Charli changed her - she was more gentle at home and always thinking of Charli, and she really tried to help take care of Charli when she was here. She was always reminding Maria to take the keys when they went out ("keys, Mina", after the time Maria forgot them), and telling Maria "Charli's hungry. Charli needs a diaper change. Charli wants that." She came up with the nickname "baby Charli", and introduced her to everyone at the parks, and named her dolls that. She recognized where we live, and every time they drove by on the way to somewhere else, she would wave in the car and say hi to baby Charli - and if she missed it because she was distracted or something, she would want her mom to go back so she could try it again. I'm sure she's going to have a great time going to school full time (coincidentally, her school is just a couple of blocks away, at the German preschool that our other nanny, Nina, used to work at until she quit to take care of Bella), and we're really going to miss her and we'll have to plan some playdates together.

We (Jillian's family and us) took Maria out for dinner last night, and it was fun and a little sad... Mostly fun. We wish her the best in Spain, and are happy she's going to be with her family, even if we are a little envious.

p.s. For those of you who are wondering what we're doing for daycare in the meantime, my parents are coming out next Wednesday and staying until next year, so that takes care of any immediate needs. In January, we will be starting with Nina 3 days a week and probably hiring a friend of Maria's, Carolina, for Tuesdays and Thursdays. Carolina already knows Charli, because she brings her current share care kids to meet up with Maria and Charli and Jillian at various parks. So convenient!

5 months

Wow! 5 months, and we haven't killed the baby yet! Happy 5 month birthday, Charli!


It's a good thing Charli is so much hardier than our plants. Crying is definitely a survival skill; I'd hate to see what her condition would be if she merely wilted quietly.

Well, just as the emailed pictures dropped off considerably when Brian went back to work, the blog posting is also having a drought now that I've gone back to work (good thing Brian can post right from his iPhone...). Lots of things are happening, but now I'm so tired all the time I pass out in the evening before I have a chance to blog. Add to that the fact that I have been trying to migrate computers, which makes it hard to update our website, and we have a complete lack of communication with the Charli fans in various parts of the country. So sorry!

For her 5 month birthday, Charli gave me a gift: she slept from about 8pm until 7:25am. Normally Brian gets up in the wee hours to give Charli a bottle, but he is currently feeling under the weather, so he slept in a different room so as not to give the baby a cold. I usually sleep through the 4am feeding, and I thought I probably would last night too, but I figured if she really started wailing I would definitely wake up. I was out until 7:25am, at which time I realized Charli was awake and perfectly happy, making noise and wiggling around in her crib. Hooray!

Charli has adapted well to our work schedules. Indeed, I don't think she even notices that we don't spend the day with her, because she is having much more fun with her nannies than she ever has with us. Nina blows bubbles and fingerpaints with her (see Charli's first piece of artwork, currently hanging on our door because our refrigerator doesn't stick to magnets), and lets her jump in Annabella's jumper. Maria takes her on the swings at the park and reads her books and successfully puts her down for naps. It's enough to make a mother feel inadequate!

So many accomplishments since our last post! Charli is sitting up much better now. She can support herself, although her balance is not so great and she falls over after a little bit (it's not so bad, Grandpa Jerry!). She held her bottle after the ballgame, but she can't get it back into her mouth if it falls out. She had a good session eating her toes after she collapsed onto them after sitting up for a while. She also had a good session of thumb sucking, although now she is back to sucking on all of her fingers individually and together. She has now eaten oatmeal, butternut squash, sweet potatos, and peas. She might be slightly allergic to the butternut squash - a day or two after we gave it to her, she developed a rash over most of her body. It didn't seem to bother her, fortunately, and I can't say for sure that's what caused it. Now it's gone, and it's left her skin a little drier than usual, so I am dousing her in lotion each night; it helps a lot. Next time we have butternut squash, I'll give her some more and see if the same thing happens. She regularly rolls to the left now, too (still no front to back).

We also had a lovely visit with Kelly, who came out last Thursday and just left yesterday. Any family resemblance there? :) We got off to a bit of a rough start, as neither Brian nor I was home when Kelly got to the front door... I thought she was arriving in the evening, but I was wrong; she arrived around 1:30 in the afternoon, while I was at lunch with Daisy - oops! But we found each other and everything worked out OK. We ate a lot of breakfast, went to a party in Palo Alto, and went to a couple of wineries in Napa. It was a lovely weekend; we have to try to get out to St. Louis soon, I think.

So that's all for now. I did manage to update the website; there's lots of new pictures now!

*sniff*

Today was the day. I took Charli to share care, put her down, and drove away. Waaaah! Of course, it didn't go that quickly. It took me about 45 minutes to actually leave. Charli was happy as a clam the whole time, but I couldn't quite make it to the door... I came home and was vaguely depressed, although I've managed to fill my time in with some reading and going out to lunch and getting my laptop more up to speed. Mostly I've spent a lot of time watching my screensaver randomly show me adorable pictures of Charli. For instance:


Nina's been very understanding. She has sent me 3 pictures of Charli already today - Charli taking a nap, Charli eating pears, Charli taking a walk... Did I mention before that Charli loves pears? She LOVES pears. I never seen a girl eat so much pears.

BTW, share care is when a nanny takes care of children from more than one home at the same time, and the participants are charged less per hour than a nanny that only takes care of one child. I am now participating in 2 different share cares. Maria comes to our house 3 days a week and we share care with Jillian, who is 2. The other 2 days a week I will take Charli to a different share care with Nina and Annabella (where she is now). I initially planned to get daycare for those 2 days, which is why I didn't just get a nanny all week - I wanted to save some money. Unfortunately, daycare for infants is not so easy to find. 18 month waiting lists? I wasn't even planning to get pregnant 18 months ago! Was I? I can't remember that far back anymore... But even if I was, there's no way I could have planned that far ahead. I mean come on, I can't even manage to make dinner reservations.

*sigh* I guess now I can go back to work...