Margo à la Maude

This is a long entry, because there's a lot to say, and I don't have an editor to reign me in. Yeeha, giddy-up, keyboard!

Last Sunday was supposed to be Margo's first swimming lesson. I was supposed to take her. Did you know that not all swimming pools are the same temperature? It's weird to hear veteran parents talk about pool temperature. "If you want warm, go to Jack Purcell. You'll sweat while you're in the water. Plant is not bad, a little cooler. Where are your lessons? Oh... Brewer Pool... yeah, um, that's pretty cold. You'll want to have a ready supply of food for when she gets out."

A ready supply of food for when she gets out. Canada... yes. Antarctica... no. This is not supposed to be the Amundsen expedition here. Can it really be that bad? Donna's from the Northwest Territories... some of the hardiness must have rubbed off on her progeny. Right?

In any case, we didn't go.

We were busy.

Signing a contract with - TA DUM! - our new nanny!

I'm still a little stunned by this. A nanny. I always thought that nannies were for the wealthy people who live in mansions with flush toilets. A luxury for shi-shi-poo-poo people who couldn't be bothered to rear their own chilluns.

How quickly prejudices change.

What I didn't know was that finding a decent daycare is on par with finding a decent physician, and finding one near you or your work is even harder. When we first started talking about daycares, I had all these lofty ideals. Like wanting a French-speaking daycare (why not bilingual? Ask any group of 9 francophones what happens when an anglophone walks in the room? The room starts speaking English pretty quickly.) At the time that we started looking, we didn't have a car, so someplace nearby wasn't optional, and taking a one year old on the bus at peak times is right up there with bathing cats in terms of fun. And then there were all the other essentials, like good caregivers, a decent space, etc.

The City of Ottawa has a waiting list that you put your name on to wait for a space. So we did. And we waited for a space.

...and waited.

...and waited.

And while we waited, we heard the horror stories. "The City called us up with our last choice the week before I went to work." "We had to ask our parents to babysit the baby for the first month, until a space opened up." "We never got a call, and had to scramble to find alternatives, and paid through the nose."

*sigh*

We did actually end up getting a call from a pretty good daycare, but a) it was about 6 km away from where we live, in the opposite direction from our workplaces, and b) they were just calling to see if we were still interested. There wasn't a space, and we had 3 or 4 people ahead of us just in case a space opened in September.

You know all those election promises that you don't understand because they don't apply to you? Like not imposing a capital gains tax if the capital gain is reinvested within X amount of time (hasn't been implemented, fyi). Well, I didn't really get the daycare promises that the Liberals and the Conservatives were promising.

I do now.

I'm not crazy about either option.

The Conservative promise of $100 a month kind of makes sense. If you chose to stay home with your child beforehand, you got nothing. At least now you get something. But $100 is a pat on the head. Enough for beer and popcorn. If you do send your kid to daycare, it falls short of covering the cost by anywhere between $650 to $1750!!! A month!!!

The other thing that the Conservatives promised (sorry, I don't mean for this to be a politics bashing rant, but voters have short memories on the details) was to subsidize businesses who wanted to create more daycare spaces to alleviate the shortage. Fantastic idea.

Except that it didn't happen. Last I heard, the feds were transferring that money to the provinces so that they could deal with it, because they knew best what their individual circumstances were. Great. Just freakin' great. Do you know what Alberta did with the Early Childhood Development money that was transferred to them from the federal gummint? They paid down their debt. Actually, I think that most provinces did. And the kids got dummer, and cudint spel.

So, reeling this entry back in, we panicked. We kind of both need to work, unless we drastically change our lifestyles. I offered to stop using shampoo when bathing, but Donna had a better suggestion: we would look into dayhomes.

Dayhomes and daycares are regulated the same way, but dayhomes are in a person's home. There are more of those, I think. But it was still hard to find spots. We went to see one woman who had a spot opening, and the stipulations that she was imposing made it even more obvious that it was hard to find spots. And, you know... deep down... we just weren't feeling it with her.

Back to the drawing board. Our names were still on the waiting list for daycares, we still had one eye open for dayhomes. But now, we (Donna) was going to see if nanny-sharing was an option.

You really have to find a good match with the other parents if this is to work, otherwise, the stress levels keep mounting when the other parents ask for something that just doesn't fit in your beliefs, like discipline or sweets or running after the children with a chainsaw wearing a hockey mask.

And we waited.

And the clouds parted and lo, the angels sang. And it was good.

Our new neighbours from across the street, have a young daughter a few years old, and a son a few months older than Margo. And they were open to dropping the spots that they had at the very local daycare in order to share a nanny.

They had us over. We talked about it. And we placed an ad on CanadianNanny.ca. This is a great idea for a service website. Nannies post their résumés for free. Parents pay to place a 2 week ad, but can also search the résumés. We got a few people answer the ad. Quite a few, but many were just applying to any ad, hoping to get a family that provided room and board so that they could move to Canada. That was a possibility, but only if the nanny accepted to wear a velcro harness and be stowed away on the basement ceiling when not in use. Otherwise, no space for room and board.

We went over ideals with the neighbours, picked a few to interview, and realized that good nannies have a lot of options. We interviewed a couple, and felt strongly about one of them. Everything was going well. Actually, I shouldn't put it that way, because it sounds like we're waiting for the other shoe to drop. We're not. There was a misunderstanding about the salary, but that was straightened out. So everything is looking good. The neighbour's son is a few months older than Margo, so the nanny will start with him and his older sister, and Margo will join them in September, when the older sister will go back to school. The kids will alternate whose house they're at.

So, to come full circle, we skipped swimming because we were signing the contract (recommended) with the nanny.

It's been a long and winding road. A lot of discoveries. A lot of panic. Figuring things out. Reading up on how to be an employer (still haven't applied for a business number yet). Learning who our neighbours are on an accelerated time frame. And seeing that sometimes institutional daycare, and even home daycare, doesn't come through for you.

We have a nanny lined up for Margo. Do I feel wealthy, like I live in a mansion with electricity and doors? No. As a matter of fact, I haven't felt this poor since that time in university when I ate rice for four days straight until my paycheque cleared, and even that wasn't all that bad; I had curry powder to flavour the rice. But daycare-induced poverty is a a topic for another day.

If you're curious, the thing that put this nanny over the top is that she truly cared, and was very warm with all three kids. I hope above all that Margo gets the care, love and nurturing that she deserves. And that she remembers us when we come to pick her up.

- Michel

Labels: event

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 at 9:09 p.m.. You can skip to the end and leave a response.