this is mostly just a vent to get off my chest. If you are bored, have a read, lol.
First the most irritating thing is my daughter's preschool decided to have their summer break two 1/2 weeks before her kindergarten started. So it made zero sense to start her back at her preschool for 1 1/2 weeks before kindergarten. So we stopped her preschool and fortunately found an inexpensive kinder camp to cover part days for two of these weeks. But that meant my mom, grandma nanny (who willingly moved into our house to be our nanny when my daughter was born and for who we spent 30K building a decent inlaw apartment in our basement), would have to pick her up at noon, toting along my 2 yr old son that usually naps at noon. So then she has two worn out kids and she can't get either one to nap very well b/c she doesn't know how to be firm and patient. She resorted to car naps most of my daughters first 3 years of life b/c she just couldn't figure out how to "make" my daughter nap (but daughter naps fine for preschool).
Once kindergarten starts, again, we are faced w/ my daughter having 1/2 days for the first 8 weeks of school (silly for kids that have been going to full time day care since they were 2).
Here lies the big issue/stressor. Grandma is fading faster than I'm ready for her to!!!! This past week I had to go home earlier than I should have twice. Once I had to tell her to put my crying son in the bath to distract him until I got home. Her pain Rx ran out on Wednesday, putting her in more pain than usual and the doc wouldn't write a new one until this week. I guess I'm irritated that my mom didn't see this coming. If I had known it was gonna be a bad week med wise, I would have planned differently. Today she called suggesting I enroll both kids in day care next week...I know she's telling me indirectly that she cannot do it, the timing is just plan BAD and adds to my normal feeling that I've never been able to count on her when I really need to. I will be taking off on maternity leave in about 3 1/2 weeks..she just needs to last until then and then I get to juggle it all myself and a new baby, when ever baby comes.
So I've spent all day trying to decide what can be done in the next three weeks to help. Added to my conflict is I know we'll have a salary hit come maternity leave and then I'm being laid-off in a few months past that, so we have to plan for longer term reduced salary. I've played around w/ the idea of sitters to come in part time (having sitters in my house stresses me to no end b/c its just not very well organized now and I don't have it in me to get it there), enrolling both kids in this drop in care for the next weeks but my son has never been in day care nor is he very verbal yet so I really do worry that it will be too much of a change right before a HUGE change in his little life. I've also thought I could work a split shift to make it thru but certain days this is not do-able. At the moment we are thinking my hubby will take one day off and I another for the next week and then once my daughter starts kinder, she can go to the on site afterschool care short term....its just too pricey to do long term w/ a reduced salary issue. Every 100 counts from here on out and I think the afterschool care is ~500. Gotta love timing.
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