Safari Friends (B, A, G)I have been back at work now for about 6 weeks and so far things are going pretty well. The week before i went back i had the same feeling all women do who enjoy their career and love their kids to pieces "i can't believe i'm going back to work and going to leave these precious kids with near STRANGERS. am i a bad mother? bad person? especially if there are parts of me that are looking forward to it? Will they love the nannies more than me?" I made a decision to SUCK IT UP. we are talking about 7 hours a day (i have reduced hours for one year) and i live 5 minutes away from work. i come home for lunch, people.
We have hired two nannies on the other hand who do NOT have the same ability to be close to their families. Tess and her mother Marie are from the Phillipines. Marie is in her 60s and has lived here for about 15 years working as a nanny/housemaid for Qatari families. Her daughter Tess is in her 40s and has two daughters in their early 20s who live and work in Doha and she has a 7 year old boy and a 14 year old girl who live with family in the Phillipines and she hasn't seen in at least 2 years. HEARTBREAKING. so i can suck up being gone a few hours a day and enjoy how dang EXCITED the boys are to see me when i return. you'd think they won the lottery or something. (well, they did with curt and I as parents! :) ) Aidan will stop whatever he is doing until i come over to give him a kiss - this includes eating. Today he actually whined until Marie switched with me so I could feed him. Maybe he will be our mama's boy. :)
Aidan grows a mohawkGavin has found his left thumb and BOY does it taste good! He has always needed to suck more than the other two for comfort and it seems the pacifier doesn't cut it anymore. Now, I don't think thumb sucking is a big deal (i was a pacifier kid until just before kindergarden) but Curt is against it (typical thumbsucker). This evening Gavin was sucking away happily on his passie after his bottle and took it out and promptly stuck the thumb in and began slurping away as though THAT had milk in it! I think thumbsuckers have it good - no pacifier to fall on the floor (for us to come and put back in in the middle of the night), it won't get mixed up with his brother's, etc. Curt remembers the hardships that came with trying to quit (wearing socks on his hands, hot sauce, etc) and is firmly against it. So when I see Gavin going in for the thumb (again) i start laughing and curt gets this sad/frustrated look on his face. So do we have any votes out there - pacifiers over thumbs???
Where Gavin loves his thumb, Brady is a hardcore pacifier fan. He will spend hours grabbing his passie, pulling it out of his mouth, looking at it, putting it back in. Last night he was playing with it and having it make a popping noise when he would pull it out of his mouth. I don't think curt will need to worry about thumbsucking from him.
Aidan is our number 1 roller at 22 weeks!!! the other night he rolled from his tummy to his back during his evening nap without making any noise about it. when i went in to give brady his pacifier (see, thumbs can't get lost!) i was befuddled about why Aidan was on his back when we usually tummy sleep them for naps. turns out the next day, he had also rolled over during his nap time and Tess and Marie were surprised as well! Well that same day, Brady rolled over during his nap! Aidan is our most consistent so far and seems to be trying to roll over anytime he is on his tummy - now we just need to get him to roll back the other way! We figure Gavin has a little more heft to move, so it just two more days to get the rolling thing down. Does this mean we can now put them to sleep on their tummies without feeling like the SIDS police are going to hunt us down???
