An Abrupt Decision I Feel Good About!

I abruptly terminated my babysitter’s services. I don’t have a plan B, but I just couldn’t leave the kids there for one more day without knowing for sure what was going on. From the very beginning, we’ve felt that she just wasn’t like our previous sitter. I always tried to give her the benefit of the doubt even though I was sure Esteban didn’t care for the new arrangement at all. A couple of months ago, he just flat out told me that he wasn’t happy with the services we were receiving. Jayden would always came home with all kinds of bumps, bruises, scrapes, mosquito bites etc. And one day, Esteban was bathing him and found a bruise on his rear end. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to go back to our old sitter so badly and beg her to please take the baby, but instead, I got us on a wait list for Head Start. That was two months ago. Things weren’t getting better.

I picked up Jayden from the sitter last Wednesday and it was like everything that could have been done wrong was wrong. That night, Jayden cried for so long and then I felt so guilty about him being run ragged all day long at daycare and put him in bed with me. He was twisting and turning and crying out in sleep all night and fell out of the bed twice. He’s never once fallen off the bed like that. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Jayden hadn’t gotten his nap that day. Why? Was he over stimulated? What do they do besides play all day from morning to evening outside in the dirt? Do they sing songs, or dance or learn their colors, shapes or letters and numbers? Do they color or read books? In the 5 months that he’s been there, I’ve only received artwork twice.

And why is he always so banged up? Are the children being monitored or is it every man for him self out there? Once, Jayden was scratched pretty bad near his eye by another child. On another occasion, he had been bitten by another child. My mind was racing with different things that had happened on different occasions.

Also, Jayden was black with dirt. Now, he comes home filthy from the sitter’s every time he goes there. Sometimes he’s so filthy, I am disgusted with him and don’t even want to put him into his car seat. But on this day, he was super dirty. He had dirt in his nails that I had a very difficult time removing. Are they not washing hands often enough? Is that how they let him take his meals? He was wearing long pants, socks and sneakers and he even had dirt and debris inside his shoes, socks, and diaper. Yes, his genital area and bottom were black with dirt. Even the outside of his diaper was black. Don’t they use the wipes I drop off every day? Does she let them play outside in the nude or without shoes on? What’s going on?

Then Jayden was wearing one of Maya’s diapers. Yes, he had been squeezed into one of my infant daughter’s diapers. Meanwhile, Maya was wearing someone else’s generic diapers. Now, I have nothing against generic diapers, but if I’m paying for brand name diapers and I’m bringing them to you, I expect you to use my diapers. And the thought of him having dirt in places where the sun don’t shine just infuriates me.

So, I call her and express my discontent. I share my concerns to which she lightheartedly blows off. What do you think is going on here, she asks? I have no idea, but I’d rather ask than wonder about it. I’m not really happy with any of the answers she’s giving me and I don’t feel better about things after our conversation. She told me that Jayden had his diaper changed around 3pm and he must have gotten dirty afterwards.

This brings me to my next concern. I removed the tight ass diaper at 7pm. It had been four hours since it had been changed and it was completely dry inside. Four hours and he hadn’t urinated? This isn’t like Jayden. My mind is racing. I start to remember that every time I pick up Jayden from the sitter’s, he immediately asks me for juice. Is he getting enough to drink? Is he dehydrated? I gave him a drink and it was gone within 5 minutes and his diaper was full within 30 minutes. And if he’s not getting enough to drink, is he getting enough to eat. Jayden has become the pickiest eater lately. He only wants to eat snacks all day long. I remember that once I dropped him off during breakfast and they had the children sitting at the table with a few cheerios sprinkled on a napkin and a piece of fruit. I remember thinking is that all they are going to eat? I also remember asking the sitter what Jayden had eaten for lunch that day. She wanted to know why and then said he wasn’t being a picky eater and was eating just fine. But she didn’t answer the question did she?

And then there’s Maya. Once, I picked her up and her top was completely soiled with something that was not food. When I called the sitter, she said Maya had been drooling quite a bit and had spent some time on the floor. Well, how dirty was the floor? My floors aren’t the cleanest in the land but her clothes never look like the bottom of Jayden’s socks. She doesn’t even crawl and already she looks like that? I start to remember that I had even found dirt (black soil) inside of Maya’s ears as well as Jayden’s. Heck, I’ve even had to clean out the dirt from his nostrils.

Then there’s the issue of Maya’s eating habits. According to the sitter, Maya won’t eat. She doesn’t want to take her bottle. She attributed it to Maya being nursed at home and refusing the bottle, but when Maya is home with daddy, she takes 3-4 bottles and gulps them down. I remember I called the sitter distressed once because Maya had a pronounced indentation on her scalp. In the end, I determined she was dehydrated and you could really tell because her soft spot was really pronounced. I came home that day around 6pm and her diaper was dry. I didn’t change her diaper again until 3am and she still did not have a wet diaper. This solidified that she was dehydrated.

I started to drop off cereal to accompany her 3 bottles of milk. Once, she gave me the cereal back and said she had simply forgotten to give it to her. On her last day there, I dropped off three bottles, baby cereal and a container of baby food. When I picked up the kids, she returned all the bottles and half of the baby food. Maya didn’t want to eat today. What? All day, she had 2 ounces of cereal, one ounce of milk and maybe an ounce and a half of her carrots? I know Maya when she’s hungry. It’s not a pretty sight. How could she just not feed her?

Once, she told me that she had given Maya another binky she had laying around. Gross!

Another time she said she had given Maya some Tylenol because she was being fussy. I keep Tylenol in Maya’s bag, but she said she couldn’t find it and gave her some she had on hand. Hmmm. I don’t know who’s mouth the dropper has been in. And, I never filled out the medicine form so why is she dispensing medication without my consent?

Maya’s playpen is always full of stuff. It seemed to be used for storage more than anything else. So, where is Maya taking her naps?

The list could go on and on. There’s nothing I could put my finger on. There was no clear or consistent offense, but tons of these little isolated instances that just add up to a whole heap of concerns. I didn’t want to find myself saying, “I always thought something just wasn’t right”. I had to pay attention to my mother’s instinct. So I yanked them out.

I don’t know what I’m going to do, but we’ll figure it out. One step at a time!

Maya Turns 7 Months Old!

Maya is 7 months old today. I don’t know where the time goes. It seems like the more I try to hold on to it, the faster it slips through my fingers. Here are some of her milestones.

Maya is getting stronger and stronger by the day and growing out of her clothes quickly. She’s able to hold herself up pretty well in the sitting position with assistance, but can’t sit on her own yet. Her legs are really gaining strength and she supports her weight on them when you hold her up. She’s no where near crawling, but she gets tons of tummy time and when she’s on the bed, she pulls up on her arms and knees and lunges. Maya’s hair seems to be growing too. Most of the growth is on top, but I noticed that the little bald spot on the back of Maya’s head is starting to grow too. If I remember correctly, this is about the time when Jayden’s hair started to grow and get curly. I hope that Maya has a head full of curls too, but I’ll love her either way.

She has definitely decided that her favorite sleep position is on her tummy. Even when she nurses to sleep, she pops herself off and rolls over. Because of that, she’s burping herself so one less thing for me to do. Maya has four teeth now. None are big enough to get a picture of though. They broke through and they seem to be just kinda hanging out for now. Maya does quite a bit of babbling and her favorite most happy time is at her early morning feeding, somewhere around 5-6 am. Yes, we’re all just as happy as she is at that very moment. Here she is after she fell over from the sitting position.

Maya is eating cereal and baby food now. I can’t say that she has a favorite. She just eats it all up. She likes vegetables just as much as she likes fruits and she even liked sweet peas. We are starting to work on finger foods. She likes the puffs but she can’t manage to keep them in. They fall out of her mouth and she goes crazy trying to pick them up and stuff them back into her mouth. I have to note that Jayden always wants to eat when Maya does, even if he just ate. If she nurses, he tries to nurse. If she’s having cereal or baby food, he politely waits his turn and then puckers up and opens wide. He cracks me up!

Recent Pictures

Here's Maya eating cereal with a spoon for the very first time. It was every where and lots of fun, especially seeing Jayden's reaction. She didn't eat much, but I don't think she cared.
It's been such a long time since I've seen Jayden sleep in this position. It was just too cute. I had to snap his picture!

Jayden loves balloons and today, when I picked him up from the sitters, I surprised him with this one. He loved it so much, as you can see. He went to sleep with it. Of course, I removed it after the picture, but I like to let him think he went to sleep with his balloon!

Jayden loves the excersaucer more than Maya, I think. I love that they are eye to eye when she's in it. It' so much fun to watch their interactions together. It's so obvious that Maya enjoys all of Jayden's attention and he's crazy about her too.

Esteban did a great job of getting this picture of Maya rolling around in her crib. She barely spends time in there cause she still sleeps in our bedroom, but she enjoys hanging out in there.

Jayden loves books and we get a Disney magazine in the mail that is probably geared towards pre-teens, but he loves looking through it so I always give it to him. He actually fell asleep in this very position, flipping though the pages. Esteban found him completely knocked out and just had to snap his picture and I'm glad he did.

Here's Maya practicing her sitting. She still can't sit on her own, but she sure does look like it, doesn't she? I love this shot!

Happy Halloween!

This was Jayden’s first year trick or treating and I can honestly say it was both a trick and a treat for us. Esteban took the day off so he could be home with us in the evening and I left work early because it’s Halloween, a national holiday, right? We took the kids to the pumpkin patch at our church, but it was slim pickins, as could be expected on Halloween Day and all. We took a few pictures and left without a pumpkin because there was no way we could squeeze in pumpkin carving at this point. Jayden had fun rolling them around. Here they are posing for a shot.

We went back home and while Jayden had a quick dinner, I rolled out my dough for the Halloween sugar cookies I was going to make. The dough was not working with me and I had a rough time with it, but I got it rolled out and cut out my cookies in the shapes of pumpkins, bats, and ghosts. I baked them off and left them to cool, while I tended to Jayden.

Toy Story just so happens to be one of Jayden’s favorite movies right now. He sounds so cute when he says “Woody”. So it worked out great when I found the Woody costume. Now, Jayden would not be Jayden if he didn’t fuss about one thing or another. I go to put on his Halloween costume and he’s carrying on. He was not being a very good cowboy at all. He actually started to cry and then he wouldn’t put on his hat. Oh well, never mind. Here he is showing off his costume to the neighbor. I was begging him to put on his hat and trying to take his picture, but he ran away from me and hid behind the magnolia tree.

Around 6:30pm, we decided we better get going. I saw the neighborhood kids get started so we decided to head out as well. We get Maya and Jayden loaded up into the wagon and start our treck around the block.

We get to the first house and Jayden refuses to get out of the wagon. Then I pull the wagon up the driveway of the first house and he refuses to go to the door without Maya. Now I have to figure out a way to get the wagon all the way to the front door. We rang the bell and it was a neighbor we knew. He offers Jayden the bowl and Jayden actually tries to take the entire bowl. LOL Ok, now he gets what we are doing so I try to wheel the wagon down to the road and suggest to Esteban that they cut across the grass to the next house. No way! Jayden starts to scream, “Maya, Maya!” Oh brother! So now I’m pulling the wagon up and down each driveway. If I took him to the door, he would call Daddy! If Esteban took him, he was calling Mommy! So it was a family affair. Because he was getting so many compliments, he started to wear his cowboy hat. He couldn’t say trick or treat, but he said thank you and night-night!

It started to get dark really quick. I was almost thankful because now you could easily see who had their lights on and who wasn’t interested in trick or treaters. Now we started to skip houses, but do you think it sped up the process? No. It seemed to take an eternity to make it all the way around the block. But finally we did make it and we quickly got set up in the garage. Here's Maya in the highchair. She had a great old time on her first Halloween!

Here are brother and sister. Always together and always enjoying each other's company. Well, almost always. Two minutes after this shot, we put Jayden's hat on Maya and he almost keeled over!

We got Jayden settled with a lollipop from his bag of goodies. Maya was happy because finally she was getting fed her baby food. We put on the stereo and I sat down with a tall glass of ice water and the candy bowl close at hand. Jayden was greeting all of our guests and very interested in their costumes. We got quite a few trick or treaters. I was pretty happy since I was worried that we had missed them all while we were going around the block. Everything died down around 8:30pm so we went inside.

I quickly began to take care of Maya’s diaper and nursed her to sleep while Esteban took care of Jayden’s bed time rituals. Finally, we had our dinner around 9pm and I mentioned to Esteban that I was really happy. I always plan lots of stuff and it never works out like I imagined it would. For the first time ever, I got to do everything I wanted. We went to the pumpkin patch! I baked my cookies! We went trick or treating AND got back in time to give out candy. The only thing we didn’t do was decorate the cookies, which was fine because that leaves more fun for another night. I can’t wait for next year!

Progress, At Last...

Maya was fighting her way through the transition from nursing to starting solids. Thanks to my girlfriend Annie, I decided to try mixing her cereal with something other than breast milk. Diluted juice was the winner! I decided to try tag teaming her. The sitter and Esteban were getting her in the morning with cereal and I was getting her at night with either cereal or baby food. And finally, today it started getting easier. She had a full 2 ounces of cereal this morning and tonight, she had a good 2 ounces of carrots. Of course, there was carrot everywhere, on me, on her, on her boppy, on the comforter, and even on her socks, but I couldn’t have been happier. Awesome! By no means is she sleeping through the night yet. I would have to go cold turkey and let her cry it out for 3-4 nights, which I have NO intention of doing, or wait until she outgrows it. Sadly, this is my choice.

By the way, little Maya is not so little anymore. She’s now weighing 17 lbs and 12 ozs. She’s doing really well and just recently had her 6 month visit with the pediatrician. Besides a little eczema, all is well. She got all her vaccinations and her flu shot. Ouch!

Maya Starts Solids!

Day 1 – October 7, 2007

I have somehow forgotten how to start a baby on solids. It seems like ages since I transitioned Jayden. I finally decide to start with two ounces of milk and two tablespoons of cereal. I mixed it up and put Maya in the highchair. Jayden looks at me like I’m crazy. He actually starts to whine. How dare me put Maya in his chair. Oh well. Get over it Jayden. I’m desperately trying to spoon feed Maya who is spitting out more than she’s taking in. It’s like I’m willing her to open her mouth with my facial expressions and Jayden is saying “Open Maya!” over and over again. She’s making her special little raspberry sounds and getting cereal everywhere and Jayden is mimicking her. So of course, she continues. The spoon seemed so little and the bowl seemed so big. I felt like it might take me forever to accomplish this task. I finally finished but honestly, I sincerely doubt that she got any into her mouth. At the end, I thought to myself, “Can I just nurse her forever?” To top it all off, she woke up like clockwork at 2am to nurse so my hopes of her sleeping through the night went down the tubes.

Day 2 – October 8, 2007

Tonight, I decide to go with two ounces of milk and three tablespoons of cereal. It was much better, thicker. I can honestly say there was an improvement. She liked the consistency and was smacking her lips. I would guess that she had a good 50% of what I fed her, but then she got cranky so I stopped and finished the meal by nursing her. She fell asleep around 8pm. Then she woke up again around 9pm. What happened? I nurse her again and she falls asleep. Then she wakes up again at 11pm? What’s going on here? I wanted her to sleep through the night. I didn’t mean for her to wake up more often! I actually fell asleep nursing her and didn’t wake up until Esteban came home from work. He put her to bed and she slept all night. She didn’t wake until 5am. Wow! I forgot what it was like to sleep at night. I hope this wasn’t a one time thing.

Day 3 – October 9, 2007

Tonight, I stuck with the same measurements at the night before. This time I was going to try not to get too much of Maya’s saliva into the bowl so that the cereal doesn’t get runny. She opened her mouth for the spoon and I could hear her swallow so I was encouraged. She was laughing and carrying on and being super cute. About 5-10 minutes into the feeding, I lost her interest. And I don’t know what happened, but the mixture ended up going from thick to runny again. She was starting to get cranky and I didn’t want to push it so I decided to stop. I don’t know if she got tired or full, but at least she ate quite a bit of it. Afterwards, I had to run to bathe Jayden and she was crying, but when I came back to check on her, she was asleep. At 10pm, I nursed her and she slept until 4am. Not bad.

Day 4 – October 10, 2007

Tonight, I decided to increase the cereal to 4 tablespoons. It was super stiff, but after a few minutes, it became thinner. Maya took less in though. Maybe it was because the consistency was thicker, but I only got her to take about 25% of it. She fell asleep soon after just before 8pm. At 10pm, I nursed her to sleep, but she had a relapse. She was up at 3:30am and then again at 4:45am. Ugh! What is going on here?

Day 5 – October 11, 2007

Ok, I tried to spoon feed her again and she wasn’t interested in it at all. If probably took two bites, at most. Then, I begin to wonder if maybe she’s just not hungry enough. So, I wait. About an hour or so later, I try again. No luck. So now even though they recommend you don’t do this, I take the cereal and thin it out with 2 oz of milk. I put it in a sippie cup and I give it to her. She gnawed on the nipple for a while, drank/spilt about half of it and left the rest. Oh brother. Now she’s tired and cranky and crying in that “I just want to be nursed” tone. What could I do? I nursed her to sleep. Jayden took to the spoon so easily. I can’t understand what the problem could be. And then relapse! She woke up shortly past midnight, and again at 3:30 and then at 6:30!

Day 6 – October 12, 2007

Ok, what I really want to do is just forget all about cereal and spoons and bowls. I’m looking at Maya and dreading 7:30pm, which is when I’ve been doing her feedings. She’s starting to get cranky and before you know it, she’s hungry so I drag myself to the kitchen and decide to mix one ounce of milk with 2 tablespoons of cereal. She’s now screaming her little head off, tears and everything. I think I’m in more pain and agony than she is. I start to feed her and she actually eats the cereal. Of course, she’s sucking on the spoon as if it were a nipple and the bowl was completely empty with very little spillage. Too bad I didn’t mix more cereal. Afterwards, I nursed her but she didn’t fall asleep. I don’t know what she’s waiting for. And when she did fall asleep, it wasn’t for long cause she woke up in the middle of the night for her feeding.

Day 7 – October 13, 2007

Ok, tonight I feel more confident and mix the usual 2 ounces of milk with 4 tablespoons of cereal. No deal. She took 2 or 3 spoonfuls and stopped. Then she got cranky while I continued to try and finally she started wailing! Ugh. How could this be so hard? I finally gave up (which I didn’t want to as hard-headed as I am) and nursed her. She fell asleep instantly. Of course, she woke up when her daddy came home and I was so tired I have no idea what happened after that. Maybe she was latched on for the rest of the night. Who knows? When I woke up, there she was being all hungry, wiggling her hands and legs and trying to reach out for me with her mouth. Oh goodness!

Mommy and Me Class Four

This was the last class in the session. Honestly, I am not sure if we will return for another session next week. Jayden spent the entire class being cranky and whiney. This week’s theme was Goldilocks and the facilitator brought in three different size chairs to aid in telling the story but Jayden and two other kids started to heckle over who was going to get which chair. He did manage to stay still for the craft where we made paper puppets. But after that was over, he went back to being cranky. He kept peeking out of the window and pointing to my car and calling out words like home, Maya, there it is, car, Maya, cars coming, Maya, home, Maya, Daddy, Maya, Maya. He was driving me nuts. I loose my patience quickly under three circumstances: hungry, tired or hot. And I was hot. I actually had to speak to him in a strong tone, during the class. He didn’t want to participate and ran away from the class facilitator saying No, no! Or he would point to the door and say go. Grrr! I wanted to just leave, but we stuck it out until the end. Neither of us said a peep on the way home. That’s unusual too because Jayden usually talks for most of the ride. Maybe he was tired. I don’t know. I was just quiet in thought. I can’t go to class and enjoy our alone time when he’s so desperate to get home to daddy and Maya. I was so upset. Of course, I can’t take it personally, but I couldn’t help but feel disappointed.