Nanny time

Holly was ten weeks old last Friday which means that we're two weeks away from when I start working full time again. So far I've been squeezing work in during her naps and in the evenings when Tom is available to watch her but this week we needed to start doing trial runs of her daycare. Tom and I feel very fortunate that we've found a wonderful woman to be Holly's nanny part time and don't have to put her into full time daycare at a facility. It ain't cheap, of course, but no childcare option is cheap. I'm constantly shocked at both how expensive childcare is and how little we're actually paying for something so important. Her nanny is sweet, smart and a fantastic mother to her own two children. As much as I want to return to work, I also want to be with Holly. But leaving her with this woman is really the next best thing.

The plan is that she'll be with her nanny during the middle of the day (11-4), four days a week and that Tom and I will do flex hours at our jobs so that we can switch off. If everything works out, this means that one of us will work 8-4 and the other 11-7. We bought a second (used) car to facilitate this process. It turns out that working out these arrangements and finding her nanny were the easy part. The hard part was leaving her with at the nanny's house and driving away. I cried the whole way home and kept tearing up for the entire four hours we were apart. I don't know why it was different than leaving her with Tom or my mother, but it was.

Holly, on the other hand, had a great time! When I picked her up she was snoozing happily. Her nanny raved about how easy going she was and what an incredibly happy baby Holly is. Her nanny has two children of her own who delighted in playing with Holly. Her nanny even sent me a photo (above) of Holly playing while she was there. I know that there will be times when Holly is fussy with her nanny and times when I'll arrive to find her crying. But I'm happy that today went very well. Now we move on to the next phase---being away from her for 8 hours at a time. Sigh...