Moving forward, Looking back

Today is my lst official day as a full-time nanny. It has been 10 months since I started this job with these three families, and what a ride it has been. It has been much more challenging than I ever thought it would be, but it has also been so much more rewarding that I could have ever expected.

The three families I worked for were all extremely different in terms of parenting styles, foods eaten, schedules, styles of discipline, and common activities for the kids. This was a major challenge in itself, because I was constantly adjusting to going back and forth betwee each one as each day and week passed. Even something as simple as what each kid called going to the bathroom, be it "going to the potty, making a fountain, or using the bathroom" was hard for me to keep track of and consistent for each indidividual at times. During my ten months, all three, three- year-old, boys were successfully potty trained. They all took different routes, and there were times, I admit, that I never thought they'd learn how to pull up their pants, much less actually use the toilet. I never could have imagined the satisfaction and feeling of success that a potty trained kid can bring, until I experience this with them and with their parents.

I often thought of these three boys, the three-year-olds, in terms of how they filled something up. I mean this in the most literal sense, of filling up a bucket with sand, or a glass with water. C, who is extremely smart and overly cautious, would fill something up about a half inch below the top of whatever he was pouring into. K, who is pretty well rounded and easy going, would fill it up pretty much exactly to the line. L, who is a wild child and likes to screech and laugh most of the time, would just keep pouring the sand or water into the bucket until there was nothing left in the original container, no matter how much it overflowed. These simple observations say so much about their personalities and temperments, and give me a little bit of a sense of what they will be like when they're older.

The younger siblings of these three boys really came a long way in the ten months as well. When I started working, T (K's little brother) was only 5 months old. He couldn't sit up yet, and taking care of him pretty much consisted of bottle feedings and diaper changing, and putting him in a bouncy seat. Now he is 15 months old, and went from sitting up to crawling to walking, to running in that short time. He now has such a strong, bubbly personality and loves to joke and laugh.

A (L's little brother) was just shy of 15 months old when I started, and wasn't walking yet. He started at about 18 months old, and is now running all over the place, like any almost two-year-old. He also started talking over the past ten months and now has a very large vocabulary. He recently started saying my name, which comes out as "Sah", but is unmistakeable. A loves to climb things and horse around. He does well at keeping up with his big brother, who I think likes him a lot better now that they can play together.

Baby A (C's little sister) was not even born yet when I started working for her family. She was born in January, a couple weeks later than expected. She just turned 6 months old, and despite a lot of health problems related to her digestive system, is one of the happiest babies I've ever met. She smiles and shrieks and giggles, pretty much all the time. She went from being a tiny little floppy baby, to a big round chubby, jolly little girl. It amazes me that when I first met her family, she wasn't even out in the world yet.

I could go on and on about the wonders of watching these kids grow over the past year. I sometimes think about how I could create a whole resume based on the last ten months that includes skills such as being an expert wooden railroad track builder, making up dozens of stories on the spot, drawing all sorts of things by request (even when I'm not quite sure what they are), getting kids to eat things they've never tried, successful potty training, and best of all:finding patience and energy when I feel like there is nothing left in me.

I am so grateful to these six children and their families for what they have given me this year. I plan to keep in touch with them and continue watching them occasionally while I am in grad school next year. I sure will miss their happy little faces running to the door when I walk in. I wonder if there is any better way to start work than that.

Unintentional Eavesdropping

While I am taking care of small children, I tend to hear a lot of things that either I feel like I shouldn't hear, or that really just shock me. Unfortunately, when these things are overheard, I am usually only in the company of one or two children, who are totally oblivious to it, and would probably still be if I explained the whole scenario.

Yesterday, for example, I was sitting in my usual spot on the little platform below the fish tank in the "Inside Out" kids room at the Academy Of Natural Sciences. C was doing what he always does, making sand piles and "roads" in the big sandbox they have there. I was sifting through my head for interesting things to think about, or interesting people to text, to get me through the inevitable hour of watching C play with the sand (he never really wants anyone to play with him). Then a man walks in, who could be classified as a "crazy person". He's kind of hunched over and wearing HUGE thick black rimmed glasses...and he's the only person who is above the age of 5 who isn't chaperoning someone under the age of 5. You might think that the outrageous thing I overheard came from him. But wait. The man starts talking to one of the young volunteers there, who seemed to be about thirteen years old. He asks if he can see some creature called "Whip". As I watch this girl take down the little plastic terrarium that "Whip" lives in, I start wondering what "Whip" is. I figured it was a lizard, until the girl reaches in and starts beckoning to a terrifying looking insect with eight long legs and a HUGE abdomen that looks like a bird's egg. My skin was crawling. Apparently, so was the "crazy" man's because he made a comment expressing so. Then the girl says "Aww, don't worry, he's really a sweetie once you get to know him". About a creepy scorpion! Within 5 minutes, she also called the giant Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches "sweeties" too. Yuck.

The next one happened when I was at the playground with K and T. We were sitting in one corner of the playground, when the local daycare brought all their kids over to play. My favorite part of this (aside from all the cute stumbling babies) is the daycare workers, who just fascinate me with their conversation. The other day one of the women was going inside the rec center to get drinks for she and her co-worker. They were scrounging up change when they suddenly stopped, fascinated by one of the coins. The following is the dialogue I heard:

One woman: "Wow! Look at this quarter!"
Other woman: "What is that on it?"
Both women simultaneously: "Eee...Eee Pluriboos...Eee Pluriboos Ewnum"
One woman: "What are we celebrating the Spanish now? These new quarters are crazy!"

I just stood there, probably with my mouth hanging open, staring at these women in disbelief, searching around me desperately for someone who had heard this and was as shocked as I was. But all I saw were little, smiling, stumbling babies running around and screeching. Ignorance is bliss.

The Innocent Ones

Although I prefer it to sitting in an office all day, spending fifty hours a week with six kids ages 3 and under, and occasionally their parents is not always easy. As I have stated in earlier posts, three year olds are especially difficult to relate to. They are easily frustrated and at times seem bipolar in how fast their moods change from one extreme to another.

Sometimes I look at these kids though--these kids I have gotten to know so well. I look at their little bodies and I want to freeze them in time. I want to keep them where they are: where the most emotional pain they feel is when their brother takes the ball they were using, or when they can't have the snack they want. They all have their families intact--mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters are alive and healthy. They aren't having identity issues, they aren't worried about their hair or their weight and hey aren't having their hearts broken by people they love. Their little worlds are nearly perfect, and they are completely unaware of anything happening outside of their homes.

I know that they can't go through life avoiding all pain or hardship. They'll have to face scarier things than the darkness of their room at night and more tragic things than the tower they built falling down. I just wish there was some way I could tell them to appreciate this time. Or a way I could prevent them from having to deal with anything that would hurt them. I guess that is life though, and that's how we become the people we are. For now, I will enjoy that innocence for them. I hope that some day, at least one of them will have a reflective experience similar to mine, that allows them to experience this gratitude I feel knowing that I too had that time of innocence.

breakthroughs

I have made a couple breakthroughs with the kids I spend every day with in the past couple of weeks. As I have said before, L, and I don't always see eye to eye on everything. We butt heads a lot, and don't always "get along", one could say. His younger brother, A, is always wanting to snuggle with me, but L usually keeps his distance. The other day though, when he woke up from his nap, he walked over to me and held up his arms for me to pick him up. When I did he put his head on my shoulder, tucked his arms under mine, and just laid there for a while. It was so sweet. Then he started grinding his teeth and I had to put him down. None the less, I considered it a breakthrough.

C, who is another very challenging 3 year old, very seldom laughs. The only time I've really seen him laugh is when he knows he's doing something "naughty" in his words, and is laughing to make sure I am aware that he's doing something wrong. There are things I do with C, that I don't do with some of the other kids, because without other siblings/kids around that are within his age range, he is seldom told "no" and doesn't ever have to share things. Examples of this are not letting him draw on my page when we are coloring, or not letting him use a block I have for a period of time until I'm done...even though I don't really care that much about my crayon picture or tower I'm building. I figure this teaches him that he needs to respect peoples' space and that he doesn't have authoritative power over everything he sees. Maybe it just makes me feel better. Anyway, I was having a difficult day with C, where he was bossing me around, telling me to pick something up after he dropped it, etc, etc. We went outside to play soccer, and since I was feeling slightly annoyed with him, when he went to pick his soccer ball up I moved it a little to the left with my foot. I wondered what his reaction would be, and to my great surprise he laughed! I did it again and he laughed even more! C thought this was the funniest thing he'd ever seen! We actually had a lot of fun together for the next half hour or so, playing this game of keep away (of course I let him get it every 3rd or 4th time). I can't say that there have been many times I've had fun wtih C, so I think this definitely qualifies as another breakthrough.

On another note, I was just watching A play with his dog, who he loves and is driven crazy by in almost equal parts. His head is right at the level of the dog's head, so he is often being followed by her with her tongue on his face, licking of remnants of lunch, or in some cases, snot. Today though, he was actually standing face to face with her, opening his mouth and letting her lick inside it for as long as he could stand before he cracked up, presumably because it tickled so much. It was hilarious and disgusting. Hilariously disgusting.

Melt Down

For some reason I was dreading the start of this week with C, and my psychic capabilities must have been on key because today C had meltdowns about EVERYTHING. The day started off normally, with him being happy I had come, and then showing me everything in the apartment he is not supposed to touch.

The first tantrum was about wanting a circle to be a square. He kept asking me to make his train tracks loop back a certain way to connect to the ones we had already built. When I started using the curved pieces to do this, he started ripping them out and screaming/crying/drooling--generally freaking out. I asked him what was wrong and he said he wanted it to be a square. I told him that if he wanted it to loop back, it had to be a circle, that a square wasn't going to work in the space we had. Tantrums ensued for the next twenty minutes.

The next tantrum he had was about wanting a white crayon to write on white paper. It was the only crayon, out of the 24 possible, that he wanted to use. And he wanted it to write on the white paper. Another 10 minute of crying.

The final (major) tantrum in the four hours I was with C this morning, was when we were halfway to the Franklin Institute, which is about a half mile from his house, and he decided he wanted to wear a different coat. He cried almost the entire way to the museum, because he wanted to change coats. Luckily, as I have said in a previous post, when he cries, he generally walks faster. I've become pretty good at blocking out the noise, though I still notice the stares I get as people walk by.

C had one more tantrum about wanting to go into his apartment building via another door, but it didn't last very long. He was probably just too exhausted from the all the "tantrumming" he had done earlier.

What a morning.

I Want to Hold Your Hand

I wish my day had been filled with this lovely Beatles song instead of the following meltdowns. When I say meltdowns, I mean the serious kind, that last much longer than you expect--so long the kids usually don't remember what they're crying about anymore, and produce huge tears, and lots of snot.

This morning, C and I were going to go to the library. He seemed perfectly excited about it, and we have gone many times together. His mom walked out the door with us because she was going to the grocery store, and a few steps after she parted ways with us, C started screaming and crying that he wanted to hold his mom's hand. I told him we just had to walk two blocks to the library and drop off some books, and get new ones, and then we could go back to the house and hold mommy's hand. He continued to scream all the way to the library, two city blocks, and then for about 10 minutes outside of the library because I told him we couldn't go in until he could stop crying. The interesting part was, the whole time we were walking, he was keeping up with me, which is usually not the case. I guess because he was so upset he didn't have time to be distracted by other things on our walk, and it was actually pretty nice for me (despite the screaming I had to listen to).

This afternoon I was watching L and A, and L wanted to go outside. It's been kind of rainy and cold all day, so I didn't really want to stand outside while they played, but I told him we could go out for a little bit with the hopes it would tire him out and he'd take a long nap. L wanted to get in his little plastic car, and wanted his brother to as well, but A wasn't interested. This is when the meltdown began. Then, finally, A got in his little car (maybe he's conditioned to do what L wants so that he doesn't have to listen to screaming) and then L continued to scream, saying he wanted to hold A's hand. I told L he could ride his car over to A and hold his hand, but he just started screaming louder and crying. I asked him what was wrong, and to use his words, and he just kept saying he wanted to hold A's hand and reaching his hand out of the car, but not moving the car with his feet. Finally, I told L we had to go inside if he couldn't use his words and be nice, to which he of course screamed at me more and refused to go in. I took A inside and watched L from the window, sitting in the driveway screaming and crying. Every time I opened the door to ask if he wanted to come in with us, he just screamed at me at the top of his lungs. Finally I brought him inside where he cried on the floor until I brought him to his room for a (much needed) nap.

In sum, I hope everyone is able to hold the hand of the person they'd like to today, and if not, then I wish them the strength to endure the time they are unable to.

Crust

In my days with six kids ages 3 and under, I come across a lot of crust--in many forms. What I am referring to in this post though, is the crust on bread. Some kids don't like to eat it, which I have never understood. Is it because it is a different color? A different texture? On most of the white bread or soft wheat bread I've seen kids eat, the crust really doesn't feel much different than the rest of the bread. Anyway, some kids won't go near it, like L for example, who leaves about an inch of bread before he gets to the crust, which means he really doesn't get much of the sandwich, and is consequently always still hungry. I usually give L's crust (and inch of sandwich attached) to his little brother, who happily eats the whole thing.

C, on the other hand, eats his crust first. It's his favorite part. I've never seen a kid love the crust of bread so much, but for all his strange qualities, this is one I love about him.

I have found a solution to the avoidance of ultimate crust piece of bread, the heel, which even many adults I know refuse to eat. When I make the kids sandwiches, I turn the heel piece upside down, so that the white side is up. That way they don't know it's the heel, and there is the added bonus of being no crust on the other side, so they can eat the whole thing! Sarah 1, Crust 0.