Thursday, August 28, 2008

The Mall, A Nanny Interview, and a Test Drive

I pushed the babies again on their second nap today and they behaved pretty darned well under the circumstances. I am just determined to get Claire out and enjoying my "vacation" time but unfortunately that means the babies' naps have suffered all week. But Claire has had a great week so far! At about 4pm I had all three kids asleep in the car with me so that was rather amusing, and it's good to see Lily finally adapted to sleeping in a carseat for a quick nap. Claire wasn't supposed to be asleep but she was awake due to her cold for hours last night, so she fell asleep for about 20 minutes after some shopping we did, and I let her have the rest.

Today we looked at another minivan with all the bells and whistles - power doors, DVD, leather, heated seats, navigation system, and so on (it's used, folks, I wouldn't spend a fortune again like I did on my Volvo) - and Claire is in love because of the "tv" in the car (she calls the DVD player a "tv"). I had a second round of car guys being fantastic and accommodating my kid situation by bringing vans next to my car so I could view them while the babies stayed safely in their carseats. Unfortunately, that always gets Lily screaming, so she cried for another 20 minutes straight while Claire and I checked out the car. I gave up thanks to the crying, promised the guy I'd test drive tonight (which I did over dinner time while Kyle was with the kids at home), and took the kids to the mall. Claire loves the mall - she thinks it's all about buying her stuff (what great values we teach our kids, eh?). And she did get some new barrettes and a necklace and a chocolate chip M&M cookie too. She was thrilled.

We then picked up our second nanny candidate from a bus stop (she is new to KC and doesn't have a car, having just relocated from Denver where I guess the public transportation is decidedly better than ours). We brought her back to our house, where we talked and played for a few minutes before I had to return her to the same bus stop about 15 minutes away. There's a closer bus stop to my house - one just a few hundred yards away - but I don't think the bus schedule times worked for a quick afternoon visit so we had to rely on this bus stop a ways from my house. The nanny candidate is actually from the south of France (not Denver), so I enjoyed talking with her. I am starting to check references on her and the other candidate. Our third candidate is a much younger girl who lives in our neighborhood. I just have to decide if she's too young, but her location is obviously very appealing.

After dropping the nanny at the bus stop I headed to Claire's preschool's Open House night, where I picked up our forms and paid September's dues. Then I headed over and test drove the minivan, which was quite a nice ride. Kyle is supposedly going to check out the vehicle tomorrow.

And tomorrow is my last day of vacation. Bummer. I'm enjoying all this free time I have, and yes, you stay-at-home moms, I'm envious of your lives right now. Maybe it's not all perfect all the time, but not having to juggle the demands of childcare and the demands of my job has been SO much easier this week. And at least for one week, I don't miss the intellectual stimulation from work, so I'm not suffering from an overload of baby talk so far. Too bad a cheaper car won't quite help me fund my stay-at-home mom dreams.

So tomorrow we will need to come up with one more big plan for the day, and fortunately Monday is a Labor Day holiday so that stretches this time a little more for me.

No comments: