It's a TRAP!!!

Back when I was in my teens and early 20s, I remember being regularly annoyed by my brother's inability to do simple tasks. Actually, that's inaccurate. It was his inability to do "woman" tasks. The best example I can give of this was the time he asked me to make him a hot dog. Seeing as how he was a dick to me like 95% of the time, obviously I told him to make his own fucking hot dog. "But I don't know how", he said. And so I gave him a simple explanation for a simple task- "Put them in some water and boil them for a few minutes". But as it is with men, he put a fantastic amount of effort into trying to convince me that he literally could not figure out how to boil water. First, he poured water into a frying pan. Then, when I showed him which pot to use, he turned the faucet as high as it would go and held it under the water and let it overflow for several minutes before I finally snapped "what the hell are you doing?". "I don't know how much water to use", he told me. "Enough to cover the hot dog", I explained. And so he turned the water to barely a drip and held the pot there for 5 solid minutes, asking every few drops "is this enough?". It went this way with every step of the excruciatingly simple task of boiling a hot dog, until my sister gave up and made it for him.

At the time I refused to cave because of course you know how to fucking boil water, you imbecile. And then I got married and realized that my brother was a) simply not a good enough an actor to pull off "too dumb to boil water" and b) carrying on a long standing tradition of men making the task of ASKING THEM TO DO A TASK so infuriating, that you really would rather just do it yourself.

Caitlyn's last day of preschool was yesterday. Rodolfo is bringing his parents from Peru to spend the summer with us while she is out of school. In preparation of that, I've been toiling away, cleaning and organizing the house to be ready for their arrival this Thursday. And so last night when April told me she wanted to bring Caitlyn to a water park with her today, I asked Rodolfo to get her bag ready for the morning, while I organized some things in the kitchen.

I'm a seasoned veteran now when it comes to dealing with feigned stupidity, so I didn't dare simply tell him where she would be going and expect him to figure out what that meant in terms of "get a bag ready". I gave him a short list of what to include- a bathing suit, a change of clothes- including socks and underwear-, a towel, flip-flops, sunscreen, her waterpark pass, and money for lunch.

First he assured me that she did not have any clean clothes. Since I organized her closet 2 days ago, I knew this was bullshit. Still, I had to explicitly tell him what she should wear TO A WATER PARK and practically give him the longitudinal coordinates in her closet to find "any one of the 10 summer dresses hanging up in there". Then, he could not find her bathing suit. This led to a heated argument in which he complained that I had left a basket of clean laundry in her room that has not been put away, and maybe if I had done that, her bathing suit would have been easy to find. He then spent 5 minutes rifling through the DIRTY laundry, all the while complaining that this bathing suit was simply impossible to find. In case you were wondering, there wasn't ONE, but TWO clean bathing suits in that one basket of laundry that he would not check under protest of my not having put it into her drawers.

He managed to find the towel himself, completely forgot the sunscreen and water park pass, and then launched into another rant when he could not track down her flip-flops. I told him to check under the couch. They were not there. I told him to check under her bed. Not there either. Apparently they had evaporated into thin air. He decided she would instead wear sneakers. To a water park.

This entire process (during which I ended up finding literally every single thing besides the towel myself) took him around 40 minutes. To put a few things in a bag. Next time I think I'll just do it myself.

Why do I always have babysitter drama?

So I'm sure everyone is sick of hearing me bitch about my sister and brother-in-law. If you can't stand to hear it anymore, you should probably skip this post.

When I picked Caitlyn up on Friday, T., my brother-in-law, mentioned that he wanted to talk to me. My dad was at their house and he's notorious for putting his ill-informed 2 cents in on absolutely everything, so T. said he would give me a call because he didn't want to talk in front of my dad.

I thought I knew what it would be about. My sister tends to be overly sensitive about everything. She's all about playing the victim and for some reason, she is completely convinced that I'm out to get her. I can say the most harmless thing and she gets totally defensive and tells me I'm being condescending. Just so you don't think I'm exaggerating, let me give you an example:

I had spoken to A., my sister, several times about changing Caitlyn's schedule so she would go to sleep before midnight because I have to get up at 6am. The way it had been going, Caitlyn would sleep from 7am when I dropped her off, till around 10am, then she would nap for 2-3 hours in the afternoon. I simply asked that A. wake her up earlier from her naps. The inital answer I got was "well, if she's cranky I'm going to let her sleep as much as she wants- I HAVE TO DO WHAT'S EASIEST FOR ME". But she assured me she was willing to try. And try she did. For TWO WHOLE DAYS!

A. informed me that Caitlyn had been really fussy with less nap time and that it was simply too difficult for her to keep Caitlyn awake. Two days isn't what I would call a transition period, but it occurred to me that my lovely daughter was teething pretty hard at the time. I told A. that we would postpone the transition until her teeth cut through.

When Caitlyn's teeth cut and she was sleeping through the night again, I had the second conversation with A. about cutting an hour from Caitlyn's nap time. At that point she told me that, once again, this was a bad time. Her own son was teething now and was keeping her awake every night and she was absolutely exhausted and nap time was the only break she got from the kids. "Fine", I said. "Let me know when he cuts his molars and we will give it another shot then".
A few weeks later came the final conversation regarding what I felt was best for my child and my family. It went down like this:


Me: So, has S. cut his molars yet? I'd really like to get Caitlyn on that new schedule.

A: Well, he's sleeping through the night again.

Me: Great, so as we talked about before, let's just cut an hour off of Caitlyn's nap time in the afternoons.

A: I don't know. She was really fussy when I tried it before.

Me: If you remember, she hadn't been sleeping through the night because she was teething. And you only did it for 2 days so she didn't really have a chance to adjust.

A: Well I just think that's not enough nap time for her. She's gonna be cranky all the time and I have 2 kids to take care of and it's gonna be really hard for me if she's always cranky.

Me: Well I want to give it a try. I'm not expecting you to continue it no matter what. If she's cranky all the time then we will let her sleep more. But she needs a couple of weeks to adjust her sleeping schedule.

A: ......

Me: Well what about cutting the time down gradually. We can start by cutting out a half hour and see how that works. Then after another week or two of that, we can try the hour if she still isn't going to bed any earlier.

A: .....

Me: Ok, I'm trying really hard here to accommodate you.

A: I'm really tired and it's really hard for me to watch 2 kids- you have NO IDEA.

Me: So you are saying.....what, exactly?

A: When the kids are asleep is the only time I have to myself and I NEED that time.

Me: So this isn't about Caitlyn being cranky at all? You're just telling me you won't do what I want and need for my child and my family because you want more free time?

A: I just wish you would listen to me when I say something. You can never just accept what I say (I SWEAR these exact words came out of her mouth). You always have to question me.

Me: Well, I'm PAYING you to provide a service. You aren't doing this as a favor to me. When I went looking for another babysitter, you told me you "don't want Caitlyn with a stranger" and asked me for more money, which I GAVE you to continue to watch Caitlyn. And I don't think it's unreasonable for me to expect you to follow my instructions for my daughter. I shouldn't have to just "accept" what you say when my life and family are directly affected. You can't just say you aren't going to do something. If you were at any other job, you wouldn't just tell your boss "sorry, I don't agree with that and it's going to make my life difficult, so I'm just not going to do it".

A: (this part is paraphrased- but you get the idea) You aren't the boss of me! I can do whatever I want! You are being condescending like ALWAYS! You think I'm stupid and you never let me do what I want to do. Watching 2 kids is super hard and even though I allegedly feel overwhelmed, a month after we have this conversation I'm going to start watching my friend's kid FOR FREE because I need everyone to love me and think I'm the most giving person on the planet, except to my sister who I squeeze for cash at every opportunity.

Me: ::throws up hands in frustration and walks out::

SCENE

Ok, so I went off on a little tangent. My point is that she is unbearably dramatic and all she cares about are her own interests and there was a similar incident where she completed disregarded my feelings that just happened last week:

Caitlyn is very close to taking her first steps. She can stand on her own for several seconds and you can just see her building up the nerve to take a step. I recognized this and remembered when I missed the first time she crawled. It happened while my sister was babysitting and I felt really sad about missing a milestone. So as she nears walking, I asked my sister to keep me in the dark if I missed anything. I quite literally said "even if I ask you, please don't tell me because it will just make me sad that I missed it". She told me not to ask her if I didn't want to know, because she's a bad liar.

So I go to pick up Caitlyn early last week and the first words out of A.'s mouth are "I really want to tell you something, but you specifically asked me not to". Well, dumbass, that's just as good as telling me, now isn't it? She justified her complete defiance of any simple thing I ask of her by saying "well, I thought it was one of those things where you said you didn't want to know but you really did". Sometimes it hurts to talk to someone so stupid. I was upset and yelled at her a little for having no consideration and left. So when I got that call from T., I figured he was calling to tell me I hurt his wife's precious little feelings or some bullshit like that. Clearly, that was not the case.

The conversation that followed was T. explaining to me all the reasons they could not babysit anymore. Which would have been significantly less infuriating if we hadn't had this very conversation 2 months ago end when I found a suitable replacement and A. decided that she DID want to babysit and that our personal issues were at the heart of her deciding she didn't want to do it anymore. "Caitlyn is such an easy baby and it was never about her. We just weren't getting along and I didn't want to watch her because of that, but actually it's become very easy to watch them both now. I'm so used to it, it doesn't bother me anymore. But hey, since you were planning to pay someone else more, would you mind matching that for me? (in all reality, she actually asked for MORE than I would have paid the new babysitter, but we settled on matching it- how fucking audacious is she? SERIOUSLY!)". So, as she explained it then, it had nothing to do with it being too much work for her, it was simply a personal issue, which we addressed and resolved at that time. Until I got that phone call from T, listing all the reasons they couldn't do it anymore.

In case you are wondering what the reasons were, here they are for you, along with my commentary in red.

1. It's about S. We want to give him as much of our time as we can. You understand that, right? Yeah, I guess. Until you got to point #2.
2. We are planning to have another baby in the next year. So, what you are saying is that you want your kid to get used to being the only child again so you can pull the rug out from under him in a year when he has a new sibling? Yeah, that makes perfect sense!
3. S. comes out of his shell at night when the other kids aren't around. I just think it's overwhelming for him and he's not getting enough attention. Aaaaaand again. You think your kid doesn't enjoy being around other children and feels desperate for Mom and Dad's one-on-one attention, yet you plan to give him a sibling when he's barely 2 years old?
4. I want to do things with S. that I just can't do when I have both kids, because the age difference really is HUGE in terms of what you can do with them and where you can bring them. Yeah, I mean S. is totally ready for go-karting and strip clubs and bars. And most bars have a strictly enforced 'only one kid under the age of 2' rule. And with strip clubs, you can't have 2 kids on your lap. How would you get lap dances?
5. A. and I have been fighting all the time because the housework is falling by the wayside. I bust my ass at work then I have to come home and do dishes (Seriously, these exact words) because she just can't keep up now that she's watching 3 kids (remember that friend's kid who they are watching for free?). Ok, for the record, this guy is a math teacher, not a construction worker. Ever since he said this I keep imagining him wearing a sweatband with his shirt and tie. The theme music from "Rocky" is playing in the background and he downs a glass of raw eggs before working up a sweat writing equations on the blackboard. Hardcore.
6. This will be the first summer where I'm not planning to work and I'm really looking forward to the time off. Whatever, I guess he's entitled to time off. But I'm still annoyed about this one for a couple of reasons. First, they have no common sense about money. He's a teacher and instead of stretching his paychecks out throughout the entire year, he takes a little more each check then gets nothing for 3 months while on summer vacation. Then they spend the entire summer crying about how broke they are. Even before, during and after the weeklong vacation they take to Florida every single year. And second, remember what I said about them gouging me for more money despite babysitting their friend's kid for free? Maybe he should work at his summer waiter job like he always does. I get 2 weeks vacation a year and I go to work every other day. No other job gets 3 months off. Even working just part time for the summer would be like a vacation for me. And HELLO- you have a child now! Stop bitching about your debt and how hard and expensive it is to have a kid while simultaneously planning to spend 3 months not working and to have another kid within a year.

I think I hit most of his bullshit points. Wow, did this post get long. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I can respect that they are trying to make the right choices for their family and if babysitting for Caitlyn isn't the right choice, I can respect that too. But it's hard to feel anything other than disbelief when I'm constantly getting conflicting stories from the both of them. It's also frustrating because they always talk about how much they need the money they get from me until they can't be bothered anymore. It makes me feel a little manipulated about how hard they pushed the agenda that they would NEVER ask me for more money (or any money at all!)except that they REALLY needed it. I'm also exceptionally annoyed that I keep hearing the phrase "what's best for my family" when what's best for MY family has been consistently and continually ignored. Alright. I think I made my point.

Babysitterless

I mentioned in one of my first posts that my sister and brother-in-law have been babysitting for me since I went back to work. My sister only works part time and my brother-in-law is a teacher, and her schedule is quite flexible so there is always someone home with their son and my daughter. Or there was.

I knew it was coming. Before Caitlyn was even born, I knew. A. (my sister) is the type to change her mind in the blink of an eye. When I was pregnant, she was babysitting for a friend of hers a couple of days a week and one day just decided she was done with it. The official story was that the friend's daughter was in day care most other days and was "always sick" and my sister didn't want her son getting sick all the time. When we made arrangements for her to watch Caitlyn, this was obviously a point of concern for me. I couldn't just have her decide one day that she didn't feel like doing it anymore. So we talked about it. She assured me that she would "never do that" to me. She emphasized that her friend was 1. not paying her, 2. already comfortable with the day care her daughter attended so she wasn't worried about sending her for an extra day or two and 3. that she was really just worried about her son's health... since my daughter wouldn't be in day care at all, we wouldn't have to worry about her bringing other kids germs around all the time. She never mentioned being overwhelmed or feeling like she couldn't handle more then one kid. Not even once.

There has been tension between us lately. I could feel her resentment the day last week that she sent me a bitchy text message about how she couldn't believe I'd forgotten Caitlyn's pacifier because she had things to do and couldn't " hold her all day". I found it especially odd because Caitlyn is almost always fine to play with a toy or just hang out. She's not high maintenance at all, so I couldn't figure out why my sister was OMG SO ANNOYED. I texted her back with obvious sarcasm "oh is she that much of a nightmare to watch? Just give her a toy or put her in the jumperoo" and "have you never forgotten anything". What I got back were 7 back to back messages about how I have NO IDEA how hard it is to watch 2 kids at once and how dare I even say such a thing to her! Oh and "yes, sometimes she IS A NIGHTMARE". Hmmm... are you sure you don't mean your own kid? I took the high road and kept that comment to myself...along with about 6 others, almost all of which included the word "cunt".

Then there was the comment she made to me when I picked Caitlyn up on Saturday. She made some bitchy reference to how I'm only paying her like $4 an hour. And yeah, that week it did come out to about that. But she seems to forget about the occasions where she only babysat one or two days and I paid her the same flat $100 for the week. In my opinion, it was a fair arrangement for both of us. There were weeks I made out better and weeks where she did. And hey, remember how I mentioned that she did it for her friend for FREE?

So it isn't even like she mentioned to me more then just the one time that she was feeling a little overwhelmed. But then today I get a text message that said "I need to talk to you and Rodolfo". And that's when I found out I no longer have a babysitter. We discussed, in detail, before Caitlyn was born that if she decided she didn't want to babysit anymore that she needed to give me a reasonable amount of time to make other arrangements. We haven't discussed that yet, but I really hope she understands that a week isn't reasonable time. She's selfish in that way... when she stopped babysitting for her friend she told her 2 or 3 days before she was supposed to babysit and thought that was plenty of time. Which is why we had the conversation about "reasonable time" in the first place. So I'm wondering how that conversation is going to go.

And ok, just to go to the bitter place, let's smack talk for a minute, shall we? This woman is the same person who wants "at least 2, but probably 3" children. This is the woman who knew at 18 that the only aspiration she ever had for herself was to be a mother. She didn't want a career, didn't bother to even finish high school. She just wanted a dude with a good job to take care of her while she stayed home and shot out babies. That's always been her plan. And, in fact, when her husband pushed her to have some sort of goal for herself, the best she could come up with was that she would L-O-V-E to open a daycare. She went so far as to look into how to get certified and what she would need to do to make it happen. And I know, a few minutes worth of research doesn't sound like anything, but damn, that's because you don't know my sister. For her, that's the closest she's ever come to a career.

So I guess I'm curious what she thinks the reality of any of these things would be. Does she expect it to be magically easier to care for more then one kid when they are both her own and she has to do it all the time? Umm, yeah, not really. Especially since she turns them into overscheduled whiners. And with the daycare thing, did she think she was going to just throw on "Finding Nemo" for half a dozen kids and rake in a bunch of cash without doing any real work?

My problem now is that I don't have a plan. Daycare isn't going to work for me. My schedule is too flexible...my hours are too varied. Most daycares aren't open past 7pm and that's not even close to late enough for it to work. And even if it would, I really don't want to leave my kid at a daycare. Not to say I couldn't find a trustworthy person or place, but in a daycare setting, no matter how good a person is, one kid can't be the priority over all others. And I need to know that my kid is the priority. As far as finding a babysitter that will come to my home or whose home I can take Caitlyn to, well, in theory I would be more comfortable with that. Unfortunately, peace of mind ain't cheap, and a stranger isn't going to take $4 an hour to watch an infant. So right now... I just don't know where I'm at. I considered talking to my boss about working a 4 day week with 10 hour days as opposed to 5- 8 hour days but Rodolfo doesn't seem to think she would go for it (my boss is notoriously family unfriendly).

Just overall this whole situation makes me long for a major change in my career path. I've gotten stuck in this retail rut for 10 years now and I hate it. At 18 I wasn't focused enough to realize that I didn't have all the time in the world and that HEY- SCHOOL IS EXPENSIVE AND THE GOVERNMENT WILL PAY IF I GO NOW BECAUSE MY FAMILY IS POOR! If only I could talk to my 18 year old self...smack her upside her head and tell her not to waste her life and intelligence recommending outfits to people I don't give a shit about and dealing with crazy people who like to shit in fitting rooms (true story). I know that wisdom comes with experience, and nobody is expected to have that wisdom at 18, but fuck, a drop of common sense would have been helpful. If I had a regular job, with regular hours and the money and opportunities I deserve, I surely wouldn't be in this situation right now.

Bloggin' and Bitchin'

Not Ferberized

So this is my first blog post and I wanted to tell you a little bit about it. I'm going to talk about my life, and my life revolves around my daughter. Just in general I have my own way of doing things when it comes to parenting. I think it's funny and a little bit retarded when people read books about parenting and decide that's the kind of parent they want to be. I haven't done what I would call research in this particular area, so correct me if I'm wrong, but the two main things I hear about a lot are attachment parenting and the Ferber method. From my understanding they are pretty much opposites of each other. One says "be all up on your baby all the time" and the other says "leave that kid alone and let him figure it out on his own". Both of these ideas are stupid if you ask me. First, let's talk about a little thing called EVOLUTION. The reason we have survived for thousands of years is because it in ingrained in us, how to raise our children, how to keep them safe and hopefully have them grow into well-adjusted adults. Can't people just follow their instincts? And babies aren't dolls or dogs. We can't just bend them to our will. They are individuals. The very premise of having a child is to mix DNA with someone you love to create A WHOLE NEW PERSON. And people have opinions, preferences, things that piss them off. Caitlyn, for example, for every single day of her life, sleeps with her arms up over her head. It's just what is comfortable for her. Which brings me to what's really been annoying me: my sister and brother-in-law.

My brother-in-law read all the books. Therefore, he obviously knows everything there is to know about babies, right? RIGHT??? It started when I was pregnant. Their son is 7 months older than Caitlyn and he was a nightmare the first couple of months. He screamed constantly. And it was their fault. He has reflux, they finally figured out after changing his formula 5 times in the first month of his life (on a side note, I'm not usually one to judge when someone doesn't breastfeed, but my sister wouldn't even TRY...she thought it was "gross"). All those changes caused him to be gassy, constipated, overtired and flat out douchey on an almost constant basis. Especially coupled with the fact that they aren't patient people and found the fastest nipples possible and practically poured formula down his throat (he would eat 6oz in 5 minutes. I wish I was kidding). So they had all these troubles, and truthfully, they still do. He's such a whiner. I love him and all, but they turned him into the baby who needs everything to be JUUUUST right or he won't eat, can't sleep, can't poop, screams endlessly. And they try to give me advice. First it was swaddling. T. (the brother-in-law) would tell me before Caitlyn was even born "you know Jaclyn, you should swaddle her a lot when she is born, babies need to be swaddled, it reminds them of being in the womb and it's the only way Shawn will sleep". Hmmm, really? Then why did you spend months bitching about how sleep deprived you were because Shawn never wanted to sleep? Of course, that's what I said in my head, what I said out loud was something like "well, every baby is different, but I will give it a try". Then I got "well, you know at first we thought Shawn hated it, but it turns out we were doing it wrong. Bring her over after she is born, I can show you the RIGHT way to swaddle". Eye roll.

His newest thing is that he keeps pushing me to let him "put Caitlyn on a schedule" for me (they babysit while I'm at work). Let me explain that I'm not a baby retard. I understand that they do need some sort of regularity in their lives. And she has that. But my husband and I work retail and our schedules change constantly. Some days I'm in at 7am and some days I don't go in till 3pm. It's virtually impossible to keep the exact same schedule every day. So we are flexible, and I think that's a GOOD thing. Imagine what my life would be like if Caitlyn was on a strict schedule and half the time I had to pick her up from her babysitter at 11pm and completely disturb her sleep. Then I'd have a cranky asshole too. So we are realistic about what is possible. Most nights she doesn't go to bed till 11 or midnight. But then she sleeps till 8 most mornings. On days when we need to get her up earlier we do, and then she will go back to sleep till 10 or so. And between 7am and

Clearly Exhausted from a lack of a cohesive schedule.

around 2pm, she takes 30-40 minute naps every 2 hours no matter if she's at home in her crib, resting in her swing or en route to my sister's house in her car seat. Once we hit the late afternoon, she tends to be awake more often. When she gets really tired she takes 15 minute cat naps then she's up again. I don't think that just because she doesn't eat and nap at the same time every day that I'm doing something wrong. Especially since my kid is awesome and sweet and smiles all the time.

Ok, so clearly this devolved into a full-blown rant. But now you know a few things about me, I hate schedules and I'm not fond of book learnin'. That's a start.