Well, crap.

Despite this blog's title, I'm actually feeling pretty balanced these days. When I'm at home, my focus is my family. When I'm in Seattle, my focus is my work. For the most part, I feel like I have plenty of time for both.

This past week and a half has been a challenge, because I've been with my family in Seattle. My husband had a business trip here, so I figured I'd do my monthly trip at the same time, and bring Littles.

For the most part, it worked out well. We took advantage of our company's backup care program yet again, and they were able to place Littles at a local daycare center. I far preferred this to the in-hotel nanny situation that we had when I brought her here back in May. It was also wonderful being able to wake up next to my husband every day. Had we not combined our trips, we would have spent two full weeks apart from each other, which would have sucked.

But Wednesday was a rough day. I had a team meeting starting at 9 AM, so I had to wake Littles up (which I hate doing) and rush through our morning routine to get out the door and off to daycare. Most days, when I dropped her off there, I was able to sit with her for a little while until she warmed up and joined in the activities. But that day, since I was already late, I had to get up to leave before she was fully settled. She cried as I left. Always a crappy start to the day.

I headed off to my office, thinking I'd get there just in time for my meeting. Instead, I got caught in terrible, terrible traffic. Someone thought it was a bright idea to shut down one lane on a major thoroughfare smack in the middle of rush hour. I prayed that the my co-workers would be stuck in the same traffic jam. No such luck. I walked in 15 minutes late to find everyone waiting on me.

The meeting was supposed to go until 4 PM. Instead, it was still going strong at 5 PM, the time that I normally started packing up to go pick up Littles. I knew my husband had a dinner with his co-workers, so he couldn't go get her. I would have to do it. "Great," I was thinking, "I get to see my boss about once a month, and what is he going to see from me? Showing up late and leaving early."

Thankfully, one of my other co-workers is in a carpool, so he had to leave at 5:30 PM, and when he did, I mentioned that I would need to leave soon as well. I still had to present my product's roadmap, so I rushed through it, threw my laptop in my bag, and ran off to pick up Littles. Crappy employee.

I arrived at 6 PM, half an hour later than usual. Littles was the last kid left. Crappy mother.

I love having her with me on these trips, but I'll admit, it's a lot easier when I come alone and can just focus on work.

Mia's first day at daycare!

Kristi (Littles' normal sitter) took a day off today, so we needed backup care. For the first time, Work Options Group was able to locate a daycare center that would take Littles as a drop-in, rather than assigning a nanny to come take care of her at home. I think it helps that she's now a "toddler" rather than an "infant" -- the ratios in the toddler rooms are a little higher, so they're more likely to have open spots.

So I pulled out the Sharpie to label all her stuff last night, then packed her up this morning and off we went!

She got off to a bit of a rocky start. Moments after we arrived, they combined the two toddler rooms (10 kids and 2 teachers each) for a special "exercise" program with music. She seemed to be settling in fine, so I stepped away to hand over her diaper bag and give some instructions to the lead teacher in her room. When I came back, Littles was whimpering, and then she started crying when she saw me. I think that all the kids, activity, music, etc. just freaked her out a little.

I knew that my presence probably wasn't helping, so I left, and called about an hour later. The teacher told me that she had indeed stopped crying after I left and was off playing happily.

She ended up doing really well! She only napped for 20 minutes (normal for her is 2 hours), but that was actually more that I expected, given that she had to sleep on a mat in a room with a bunch of other kids rather than in a crib in a room by herself. She ate all her food and was a good girl. The teachers said that she did even better than two kids who started a few days ago. I was so proud of her!

Adventures in child care

I can tell within seconds of meeting a potential caregiver whether or not s/he will work out. When we first met Maria, she immediately got a big smile on her face and reached out to hold Littles. I knew right away that she would be great. Same thing with Kay, the first backup care provider that we had a few weeks ago, when Maria was unable to come one day. Littles was having a fussy morning (teething!), yet Kay was not fazed at all. She took Littles into her room and within minutes, I heard no more crying, just the sound of Kay quietly reading a book as she rocked with Littles.

Unfortunately, I had the opposite reaction to Littles' backup care provider yesterday.

First, she was about 15 minutes late. Now, I'm chronically late as well, but when I first meet someone, I do try my best to be on time, at least that one time!

Then, she just seemed... well, uninterested and apathetic. Very much like she was doing this as a job, not because she genuinely loved children.

But she seemed nice enough and normal, so I didn't fear for Littles' safety or anything. I left, thought about Littles all day, and hoped that my first impression was wrong.

Unfortunately, when I returned in the evening, I still felt like things weren't right. She told me that Littles had been really upset for an hour in the afternoon after waking up from her second nap, which is very much unlike Littles. OK, maybe it was teething... but then, after she left, I noticed that she had completely messed up with the milk I left, by using refrigerated milk first, rather than frozen milk. Since frozen milk has to be used within 24 hours of thawing, that meant I had to dump all 8 oz of frozen milk. She also left the bag of frozen peas for Littles' lunch out on the counter, so they completely thawed and had to be tossed as well. Silly little things? Yeah. But if she was careless about the frozen peas, what else was she careless about?

I just couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right. So I called back Work Options Group (the organization that contracts with my company to provide care) and asked them to assign me someone new for tomorrow and Wednesday. I really felt awful about it. Especially when the woman from yesterday called me this morning to let me know she was running late (again!). When I asked for the reassignment, I also specifically asked to make sure someone would call to tell her not to come today, but my requests have to filter through a couple of layers (me -> Work Options Group -> the local nanny service that they work with -> the caregiver herself) and I guess this request didn't make it all the way down. I lied, and told her we no longer needed care. I didn't want to get into it with her.

Anyway, I instantly felt at ease with the new caregiver and feel much better about the whole situation. I just feel really badly for the other woman. But it's my child, my baby. I need to know she's in good hands.

Stay out of the minibar!

I have to go up to Seattle next week for work. Since Hubby has already relocated to Dallas, that means that Littles needs to come along with me.

Luckily, as I mentioned previously, I recently discovered that my company provides up to 100 hours of backup child care per calendar year. All I have to do is give Work Options Group a call or submit a request online, and they'll find either a daycare center that allows drop-ins or an in-home caregiver. They're nationwide, so I can get care in Seattle just as easily as at home. I love this service! If you're in charge of benefits at a company and you want to keep your working moms (and dads!) happy, you might want to look into this one.

Anyway. For next week, I'll have an in-home caregiver for Littles, since they couldn't locate a daycare center in the area that will take an infant on a drop-in basis. Of course, that means the caregiver will have to come to my hotel, so they sent me a form with some Yes/No questions to answer. These include: "My dependent may order games and/or movies on the television," "My dependent may use the Internet," and "My dependent may order food and/or snacks or beverages from room service or in-room mini bar."

I'm just imagining Littles kicking back on the couch, watching a movie, surfing the Internet, and downing a mini-bottle of vodka :)

It's official, part 2!

So I hinted in a previous post that there was something exciting going on, besides my new job.

Well, it's now official. Hubby told his boss yesterday that he would be leaving his job!

Hubby started this job just over a year ago, when I was about six months pregnant. At the time, he was working at my company (although in a totally different division from where I work). He decided to leave with two of his co-workers to create a new start-up company.

We knew that the risk was high -- certainly, not all start-ups succeed -- but that the potential reward was high as well. We also knew it would be a lot of work.

The company has actually done very well. But all the work has really gotten to Hubby, and to me, for that matter. Particularly for the first six months of Littles' life, he traveled on business at least once a month, and even when he was home, he pretty much worked and slept. I know he was sad that he couldn't spend much time with Littles, and it was hard on me to have to shoulder the vast majority of child care responsibilities.

He started tiring of it all around Christmas, and so for the past three months or so, he's been better about putting the work down and doing more with Littles and around the house in general. It's been wonderful.

He had a business trip about two months ago to Dallas, which is where we used to live, and he ended up talking to one of his old friends. His friend works at my company and had just started managing a brand-new team. The work sounded fascinating to Hubby. And we had been talking about moving back to Dallas -- much of Hubby's family is in Texas, we both have a lot of good friends there, and it's a lot closer to my family on the East Coast.

So Hubby applied for the job and got the offer a few days ago. He'll be staying at his current job until May 5th, then taking a few days off and starting his new job in Texas on May 12th.

Now, I'm sure you're thinking, "Whaaaaaaaaa? Didn't you just get a new job?" Well, yes, but fortunately, it's a work-from-anywhere position as long as I'm willing to make trips up to Seattle. My new manager is a little concerned about the extra expense of flying me in from Dallas rather than San Francisco, and she's worried about the time zone difference between Dallas and Seattle, but I think I can effectively mitigate those risks.

The other thing you might be thinking is, "Whaaaaaaaaa? You're moving in a month?" Well, no. We're planning to move in early June. So yes, we're going to have about a month where Hubby is working in Texas but Littles and I are still living in California. It will be tough, but we have some weekend visits planned. Actually, the really tough part is that I'll probably have to travel up to Seattle during that month, but we found out that my company provides up to 100 hours of heavily-subsidized backup child care per year. So when I do need to go to Seattle, I can bring Littles with me, use the backup care in Seattle, and still pay for Maria back home (which is part of our nanny share agreement).

Hubby and I are still hashing all this out, and I'm sure many of my future posts will revolve around this pending move :)