Another Nanny Nightmare

Okie Dokie. Currently at the moment... AJ is sleeping. YAY!!! He's been so cranky the last couple of days... hopefully some teeth will pop through soon. I am also watching a five year old. He's a very shy, very sweet, little boy. He's entralled with spiders, and sharks. I think the sharks have something to do with his father being a boat captain. :-) I only have four more hours here, but I wish that he was the kid I normally watch instead of the hooligans that I am right now.

On that topic, the eldest (11 years old) and I got into a physical altercation yesterday. We were at the park, and he was sitting with a group of teenagers. And of course Thomas has to join the big kids. The teenagers start yelling and get up to leave, one of them comes over and tells us that he was picking on Thomas. So he gets up and starts saying things like he's giong to kill them and throws a pinecone at them, but they were already gone. He starts cursing and both Heather and I asked him to stop numerous times. He keeps going, and adds in threats to hurt/kill us. I called his mom, and tried to have her talk to him but he kept hanging up on her. So the third time I called her back, I grab his arm so he could hang up again and he starts to flail and punch at me. I wasn't really expecting it so he almost got away, but I grabbed the hood to his sweatshirt. He started claiming I was choking him. (BTW: Who the hell wheres a black hooded sweatshirt in Florida in July????) He tried to bite me, and Heather got up to help. As soon as I saw that he was trying to bite me, I kicked him in the leg. His mom then said to get him home.

I'm sure that his parents hate me now, but what was I suppose to do? It was never my intention to physically harm him, but my god... if this happens again (next week is my last week) I'm calling the cops. I can't even have AJ in the house for fear that he is yet again going to threaten my baby.

So, anyway... I've got to get back to my babysitting job and check on AJ. I was offered some extra money if I clean the house, so I've done most of it already, just got to get alittle more done. It's just waiting until other things are done like once AJ is awake I'll vaccuum, once the dishes are done in the washer I'll put them away and clean the oven and counters. Besides that I'm all done.

Oh... I think I hear my son now...

Post from 7/18

I had to make some baby food today. I actually love making AJ’s baby food. It makes me feel like a mom. I had to stop breastfeeding so early because of my stupid milk supply, that I think making the baby food myself helps me feel better about that. I go onto my baby fit.com message board, and there are posts (actually not so much anymore) about nursing and it makes me think what it would be like if I were still nursing. In many ways I feel jealous. When I started to realize that I had to give it up, I started doing everything I could possibly think of to change it. I tried feeding him every hour, I tried herbal supplements, I tried feeding and then pumping. It was no use. For a couple days after I stopped I would cry and cry, I honestly felt like a horrible, incompetent mother.
So, anyway now I make baby food which makes me feel all the better. I had planned to make my own baby food since before AJ was born, and I am very happy that I stuck through it. He still gets store bought baby food, like the different cereals. I also buy banana baby food because I find it very hard to make. I know it sounds weird but the consistency doesn’t come out right for me. Also, if I find that I am out and about and not going to make it home when he needs to eat, I’ll buy a can of baby food. I have to look at the ingredients because if it has any type of citrus in it, it upsets AJ’s tummy.
I made breakfast baby foods tonight. I have a ton of food for him to eat at dinner, and I’m kinda weird, I don’t like to give him vegetables at breakfast, and I try to leave the fruits out of dinner, unless it’s part of the recipe. He is a list of foods AJ has already “mastered”: Carrots, Apples, Pears, Sweet Potato, Broccoli, Butternut Squash, Banana, Corn, Peach, Prune, Chicken, and Fish. We are still sort of working on the chicken and fish. He’s past the marker for waiting on introducing new foods, but he still really hasn’t gotten down the texture/taste of it. I’m also introducing two new foods this week: strawberries and blueberries. I’m not too worried about an allergy to strawberries because there are no known cases in either family, but my little brother was allergic to blueberries when he was a baby. He’s since out grown that allergy, but I believe he still won’t eat them.
I skipped ahead in my book to the next stage, which is 9 months and up. I can’t believe it’s getting close. I know three months doesn’t seem that close, but it is to me. The book is going to have me start introducing rice and pastas without pureeing it, and there are even some recipes that don’t need to be pureed at all. He’ll be eating whole foods. It feels so overwhelming. It’s like reality is kicking me in the butt, my baby isn’t my newborn anymore.
That last sentence brings up something else that happened today. AJ is sitting in the grocery cart by himself now.

He’s still a little wobbly, and he doesn’t like to sit the right way. He likes to put his feet up on top of the bar and lean back. This almost always makes him tip over and hit his head, and then of course he freaks out. He only did that once today, for the most part I would stop him, I talked to him about it, and I put his foot back where it belonged. Of course he doesn’t understand, and would do it again shortly after. So anyway, he finally fell over and was crying. I stopped by the toy section and picked out a toy fire truck for infants and bought it for him. He played with it a long time today. He would smack it and make it flip over. Then he would laugh. It dawned on me that my baby was making himself laugh. It was the first time that it wasn’t me making him laugh. Hehe, I’m starting to tear up. Anyway, it just goes to show that he’s starting to entertain himself… he’s growing up.

Nanny Troubles

I just knew that I was going to get screwed over by the family I nanny for. When I started there I was told that I would get my minimum 25 hours a week that I specified in my ad. I was going to watch the two kids for the inbetween time that one is going to work and the other is coming home from work. I was also told that the old child is on medication. This is what I wasn't told:
The parents were seperating and the children were not handling it very well
The child on medication is not on medication for ADD, but antipsychotic medication AND he is very violent

I found all this out very quickly of course, like the second night there. I have stuck through it and have been there for over a month. It is very obvious to me that this family can not afford me, but the fact that they have very difficult kids makes it hard for me to justify taking anything less.
So, three and a half weeks in the mother comes home crying. I can be very compasionate to people I know when they are upset, but people I'm not really close to just makes a wierd situation for me. She explains to me that she is taking a huge paycut ($3/hour) and now she'll only be work for 50 cents and hour after paying me. I honestly felt bad, but I could not give her a discount considering her kids. If these were normal children, I could have done it.
Anyway, I finish up the week. I start to actively look for a new family to nanny, I just had a bad feeling about this. Not to mention, my patience was becoming very thin. I do not have the capasity to handle these children anymore, and I have to live with the guilt of taking my child into an environment that is not very safe. The medicated child has actually threatened AJ twice.
Well, I start this week. I find out the parents are back together... that honestly is a great thing. The younger child was having a lot of anxiety over his dad leaving, and he needs his family together again. BUT... calculating my hours out, I'm not going to get my minimum of 25 hours. It just isn't acceptable.

When I screened the phone calls for nanny jobs, I didn't want to take this job. It wasn't what I wanted, but the job started right away and I felt bad for these people. They needed a nanny and didn't have anyone.
Why don't I listen to my gut? I knew I wasn't going to be happy here, and I just knew I was going to be screwed over.

Six Months

AJ went to the doctor today. My little man is 17 pound, 26.5 inches, and his big head is 43 cm around. He is in the 50th percentile for all of his measurements!
We talked about his reflux issue. The doctor has changed his formula to Similac Alimentum, and I am happy to say that as of today there has been a major difference in the amound of spitup. Just in case the formula change does not work, he wrote a prescription for Zantac, which I pray I never have to fill. I just don't see why he would need medication if he is capable of keeping everything but formula down.
I can't believe that he is six months old today. My beautiful little man is half a year old, where oh where has the time gone. He has started sitting up on his own for little bits of time, he is rolling over a lot more now, and he is in 9 month clothing. It feels like I'm going to turn around and he'll be a year old.
Aaron Elvis Jr., I command you to stop growing up so fast!

It's Real Life - Momentous Occasions

Well today's post is about momentous occasions. I haven't had that many, but I'll let you in on a few.







Graduating from college was one of my momentous occasions, even though I'm not done yet. This was May of 2006, and I had already graduated and was a lunch with my family. The ear and arm that are in the picture are from an ex boyfriend, more than likely trying to show everyone he's my property beca... never mind I'm not talking about it.









This is one of the loves of my life, but at the time this picture was taken he was sort of the only love of my life. This was our very first vacation together, and the only good picture we took. I was five months pregnant, so we didn't go to theme parks, but stayed in a hotel, ate a lot, and did some low key attractions. I had so much fun, I was laughing the whole time.






This is the biggest Momentous Occasion of my life, the other love of my life. My beautiful, wonderful, baby boy AJ. He was born at 3:50, January 11, 2008. This is our first family portrait. I don't look very flattering, but I think it's one of the most beautiful pictures I have. This was a true "Real Life" moment. My mom snapped a picture, there was no setting up involved, and too me its just an amazing picture.




I wish wish wish that this picture had turned out. My mom was working the camera, she chose a wonderful time to learn how to work a digital camera huh? Needless to say half of our pictures came out blurry, but I'll deal with it because this one is so sweet.
This picture was taken while Aaron was holding AJ for the first time. I don't remember much for acouple hours after having AJ, but I do remember watching him hold AJ and walk around talking to him. Blah, I feel tears in my
eyes just typing this up, lol.


And... this is my beautiful little boy. 8 pounds 8 ounces, 22 inches long. Aaron Elvis Jr.
It is so hard to believe that tomorrow he will be 6 months old, half a year... time has flown.

So much to do, so little time

Well, it might just turn out that I'll have quite a bit of time in the near future, which would not be good. I'll explain in a minute. So, anyway, I have to clean the house, seriously! Horrible, horrible mess everywhere. AJ has to go to the doctor on friday, and I have go to the female doctor in acouple days, ack I hate her. Today I have to go pick up another pack of birth control, get the diaper bag from my mom. She took it out of my car yesterday and didn't tell me, luckily I didn't have to take AJ to work with me. I have to start calling gynos, to find a new one.
See, I am on my last week of pills, and called the gyno for some more. Her nurse called me back and told me that they would not renew my prescription unless I come in for the procedure, or schedule a pap. I had a pap when I first was pregnant, and it came back abnormal. So they did a procedure called a colposcopy, and ended up take acouple punch biopsies. Since I was pregnant there wasn't too much that they could do, but told me I would have to have another one done after I had AJ. So in, February they did another colposcopy, and took more biopsies, and now what me to let them freeze off my cervix. OR I could come back every three months for a pap. I don't want to go back to this doctor at all. I hate her, so I made them happy and scheduled an appointment and they told me to come today to pick up the pack of pills. I'm going to go pick them up, and then cancel my appointment, and I'll find a new doctor and make an appointment with them.
Now, onto the reason why I said that I might have plenty of time to deal with all of this. As a lot of you know, I nanny two boys. Both are difficult in their own ways, but one of them is literally psychotic, so I have my handsful all the time when I am over there. I did not know about the older ones issues when they hired me or I would have actually charged them more. My rate as a nanny is $7 an hour for the first child and $2 an hour per added child. So all in all there is two of them and I get $9 an hour. I would have been willing to make exceptions, but not for this family. They are just too difficult. So, last night there mom comes home late, she did call me, but she didn't get home until 12:00 am. She is in tears, and I honestly have always felt bad for this woman. She has marraige problems, has problems with her kids, and now her pay is going to be cut. I cannot give her a discount. Her kids are just too difficult. I know in the end that this job isn't going to work out, even without the pay cut. Their home is not babyproof, and the floors are dirty. The kids run everywhere and I'm afraid to put AJ on the floor, they run and jump over him. So, now is the perfect time for me to find a child closer to AJ's age.
Gotta go though, AJ is ready for breakfast.

Nothing Much

So, I'm just sitting here. I was going to write that I was hoping AJ was sleeping now, but I just heard him kicking his mattress. It's something he does right before he falls asleep. It's not like a tantrum, but just like tapping his heel against the mattress. But since babies can't really tap it's a full blown kick.

So anyway, the other night Aaron and I were finding songs on youtube and listening to them, when he "dedicated" one of them too me. I actually can't even remember what that song was, but then I pulled up another song (I'm not telling which) and said that I wanted it to be in my wedding. So, we started talking about wedding music, hehehe. I know nothing is going to happen on that end until he gets everything straightened out with the courts. Oh, crap, I just remembered that he has to get up and go to the bail bonds. TTFN

Eventful July 4th

Oh boy oh boy was yesterday a day from hell.

We all started out the day very cranky. AJ was just being cranky and clingy since the moment he woke up, a I was still very tired when AJ woke me up. I fed AJ his bottle, and let his sit in his swing to watch "Cars" while I laid down for a little longer on the couch behind him. As I said he was being clingy so I wasn't able to lay down for very long. I fed him breakfast, which was applesauce and put him in the exercauser to play while I started to make the dessert I was bringing to the party. AJ whined and cried the whole time I was trying to make the dessert, and then I ran out of yogurt and was close to running out of strawberries and blueberries. So I put AJ down for a nap, and ran out to the store.

I went to one store and they didn't have anything that I needed on sale. So, I left and went to another store where I had coupons for anyway. All in all I spent $2.00 on two cartons of strawberries, a bag of frozen blueberries, three cartons on vanilla yogurt, oil for my car, and two sandwhiches. Yay me for being a great shopper and using coupons!

Anyway, when I had to deposit some checks in the bank and of all things I forgot my pin number, so I went home irritated trying to think of it. As soon as I walk through the door, AJ wakes up and is still cranky and clingy. I try to get him to watch the movie again, so I could take a shower and finish the dessert. As I'm turning the shower off, I hear AJ screaming. Aaron slept right through it. So, I'm completely irritated. I make AJ a bottle and feed him, it seemed to calm him down. Then I finish the desserts.

I go into the room to wake Aaron up. He absolutely refused to get out of bed. I kept bugging him and he kept saying he didn't want to go, even though he took the day of too go. He finally got out of bed, and got dressed but was just giving me a hard time about it. We left late, and I had to put my own oil in my car!

We got to the party, and everything went pretty well. We swam, we ate, we lounged, and just had a pretty good time. So, at one point, the party every year always moves from my Aunt's house to my Uncle's house for fireworks. We got all of our stuff, except for our pans which we didn't realize until later that we forgot them, and we left.

It was an absolute nightmare from this point out.

We are getting into the car when Aaron tells me that he is hungry. I was telling him that I didn't have any cash on me, and my mom heard and gave me some money to go get Aaron some food. We pull out of the drive way argueing because Aaron never tells me what he wants to eat. He always tells me to decide, but I wasn't hungry. I ate waaaayy too much food! So, I decide that I'll just stop at the first place that I see on the way, instead of turning at Main St. where there are a ton of fast food places.

We're just driving and talking, and the guy in front of me is pissing me off because its 45mph and he's only going 35. I see a cop behind us and I tell Aaron to put on his seat belt so we don't get pulled over. Well guess what..... the cop shines his lights. I start freaking out... WHAT DID I DO WRONG?!?!?! The cop walks over to me and tells me that my tags are expired.... stupid me, my birthday was over a week ago, and I completely forgot to renew them. He tells me he's just giving me a warning. He asks me for all the usual and Aaron for his name, because he didn't have his id. The cop walks away and I start to freak out even more.

Not only was this my first time ever being pulled over, but Aaron had a bench warrant because of some miscommunication with the court system, AND I could not find my insurance information. So, we knew Aaron was going to jail. Guilt..... that's all I felt. Well, I also felt scared, but mostly guilty.

I called my mom and Aaron called his work. The cop did arrest Aaron. While he was feeling him up, Aaron explained what had happened, and they talked about the baby. I'm just sitting there in tears while all of this is going on. He takes Aaron to the car, and then comes back with the bond amount and a phone number. He asked to search my car, I think he was trying to make a joke when he said he just needed to make sure that there wasn't a kilo of cocaine and a gun in the car, but if it was a joke I didn't think it was too funny. Not to mention I wouldn't have the slightest clue what a kilo of cocaine looks like.

He goes back to his car, pulls it up to my car rolls down Aaron's window, and I'm hysterically crying. I looked at Aaron and then looked away. Later, all I could think about was how stupid I was for not telling Aaron I loved him. My mom pulled up, just as they were getting ready to pull away. I made a million and a half phone calls, all the while hysterically crying, and then asked my mom to take AJ with her.

I was told that all I could do was wait from every single person I called. Heather ended up coming over to calm me down, and I went back with her to pick Thomas up from her dad's house. I called my mom to see how AJ was, and my cousin Logan, he's 2 or 3, was burned badly by a firework that fell out of the sky. When we got to Heather's dad's house, there was a lady who had just had a piece of a firework removed from her leg after it had fallen over and shot under her chair where it blew up. I didn't watch the fireworks, one because they do scare me, and two because I was sitting at the computer waiting for Aaron's arrest to be posted on the internet, which would tell me he was done processing.

I ended up having to wait until 10:45 (he was arrested at about 7:30) for Aaron to be finished processing, and then he called me. I was referred by a "friend" to call a certain bail bond, which was completely rude to me, but I ended up going to another one that was nicer. I met with her at 11:45, she posted bail at 12:30, and I went to the jail to wait at 1:00(am). Aaron was not let out until about 3:15.

We came home and talked about our nights, we both ate since we both really didn't have much to eat since he was arrested, and then we turned on a movie and went to bed. Such an anticlimatic, well nevermind cause that's not all too true, end to my nightmare of a fourth of July.

The infamous first post

So, I'm starting a blog. I have started them before but never kept up with it. I will bet more than anything not too many people, if any, will read this, but I want to start it so there.

First, a little bit about AJ:
AJ is 5 months old, soon to be 6 months in one week. He's a big boy and has been from his birth at 8 pounds 8 ounces and 22 inches long on January 11, 2008. Maybe I'll make a seperate post later about his actual birth and all of the wonderfully gross details. AJ is a sweetheart, and a flirt. His favorite movie is Cars, and his favorite toy is his exersaucer. His favorite food is bananas, and he loves it when Daddy give him sweets. He goes to work with mommy and complains about it practically the whole time. His bedtime is around 9:30 and most often than not falls to sleep by himself and sleeps the whole night, promtly waking up at 7:30 on the dot. He has a multitude of facial expressions, and he gets that a long with his looks from his daddy. He can wiggle his ears like Mommy, and seems to have her sense of humor too.

Alittle about Mommy:
I am 23 and currently working on my bachelors degree in banking, but it wasn't my first choice and I'm sure at one point I might end up changing my mind before its up. My passion first is AJ, but second is music. I was trying to major in music but I am unable to because of the time demands the curriculum has. I work as a nanny for two boys, a five year old and an eleven year old. I hate this job. I want to still nanny, but find that the family I work for drains me emotionally and physically. I could write a whole post on this, and probably will later. I am a neat person at work, but my own house is always messy with AJ's toys and "equipment" everywhere, and there always seems to be a never ending pile of dishes and laundry to be done. I vow all the time that I will become neater at home, but always fall short at the end of the night.
I am dating a wonderful man, and we have been together for abour a year and a half. He tries to give me everything I want, and he happens to be the one that cooks and cleans. He's a wonderful daddy, and AJ adores him. I couldn't have asked for a better man to have a child with. I hope to marry him very soon, and then shortly after have another child.


So that's a little bit about us. Maybe some pictures to follow soon.