Catching Up!

So I am a blog FAIL.

Is the fact that I haven't updated in 2 weeks a testament to the fact that I've been super busy? Or too tired/lazy to update at the crack of dawn or in the middle of the night? I think a combination of both. Regardless, I feel like I have ruined the flow and I'm sad about that. So how should I proceed from here? Update for each day I missed separately or put it all into one long-ass entry?

Let's go all the way back to last Tuesday, the day after I spent the night at their house when W was sick. Do you remember that? I still do. I just decided I'm going to update everything in this entry...so here goes....

That Monday night when I stayed the night was one of the most exhausting evenings/mornings I've ever had. Tuesday was perhaps one of the longest days of my life. I had to wake up every 4 hours to check W's temperature. At 2:30am she had a slight fever again so I had to wake the poor girl to give her medicine. At 6:30am the fever was gone. Then at 7:15 the mom called to check in and she asked me a million questions. Then W woke up at 7:30am so I had to stay up with her all day from that point on. From 7:30am to 7:30pm I was with that girl. I stayed in my pj's the entire 12 hours. That was nice. I could hardly keep my eyes open when we were playing in the morning and the huge mug of coffee I drank did NOTHING. She's not normally allowed to watch TV or movies but I figured since today was different and we had 12 hours together, a movie would be a splendid idea. We put on her new Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure movie in the library and watched it laying down on my air mattress. I definitely fell asleep in the first 5 minutes of the movie and was thankful for that hour nap. When we woke up we made videos on my computer in the photobooth. They were pretty darn cute...I wish I could upload them to this.

Then we played a board game while I had soup. She still didn't have an appetite. We played playmobile all day and recorded us playing on her camera. I think she's going to be a director when she grows up. Mercy and W then talked shit about their old nanny. It was really funny because they would act out things she did and said. She really did seem horrible. W didn't want to take a full bath but she hadn't bathed yesterday so I gave her a sponge bath in the sink. That was not as easy as I thought it would be. I rinsed her hair in the bathtub faucet and got myself pretty wet in the process.

Eight hours later.....M came home. As I was getting her ready for her bath she complained about how she never has time to play. I really felt bad for her. Her daily schedule is so packed with tutors and homework and bath time and dinner time that she really doesn't have any time to play. I sympathized with her for awhile.

The worst part of the day was the parents kept calling to check in. That should be a good thing because the parents are expressing their concern for her! But I just felt like I was on autopilot telling them the same things over and over.

Onto Wednesday....

The mom had asked me to pick up M from school because W stayed home from school again, even though she was perfectly fine. There was a produce and vegetable stand on the sidewalk near their school where I took M after I picked her up. We got some mangoes and I got some cucumbers and peppers to bring home with me. I love those cheap stands. I gave W and M mango for their snack. It was delish.

Bathtime with the girls was fun because they taught me a Japanese song. My homework was to learn the song because they were going to quiz me on it the next day. I wrote down the words in phonetics and remembered the tune so now I have a new song I know in Japanese. Maybe I should put that on my resume....(just kidding).

Their dad came back from his trip late Tuesday night so he was there Wednesday night at his normal time. That stunk. It was bad timing because I had gotten a call from someone while I was there asking me if I could replace someone in a reading of a new play. I was so excited and she said the director was going to call soon which I said was fine. I told the girls I was getting an important call from a director who might put me in a show. They were worried I was going to leave them to do a show. That made me so sad on a few levels. I felt bad they were worried I would leave them, but when it comes down to it, if I booked a good show I would leave them for it because that's my career. It made me feel guilty about the day that I do leave them for theatre because I didn't realize they would actually be that sad about it. I assured them I wasn't leaving and that they came first :-/

The dad came home while I was on the phone so I had to hang up quickly and quietly. Awkward. I didn't get to eat dinner with them because the dad was there. In fact, I prepared his plate and cleaned up after all of them still. I couldn't believe I even catered on the dad. Correction: yes I could.

Ok, we're zipping through these....onto Thursday....

W's ballet schedule changed from Wednesdays to Thursdays but Mercy didn't know that. It occurred to me that Mercy probably didn't pack her ballet bag with her so I called Mercy and told her about the change and asked if she could get that together. We came home between school and ballet because there was an hour and a half break in between. We raced to ballet and I got her in the door right in time before her class started. I had met the mother of one of W's classmates and friends who's in the same ballet class as she is. We planned on making a playdate for the 2 of them next week between school and ballet. I told her the mom was in Japan but that I would communicate with her to make it happen.

I've been reading "The White House Nannies" and I have to say, I don't know if I have it really good or if I'm getting jipped. I'm gonna say I have it pretty good. I don't have to live at their house and be on duty ALL day. But these nannies that live with the families get their own nanny quarters, including walk-in closets, their own car, a full bathroom suite, the list goes on. These families treat their nannies amazingly, which they should since they're slave-drivers with them.

During playtime W was telling me how she's the tooth fairy. She's really into fairies. I think I've mentioned before that the only books I read to her at night are from the Fairy series. I've grown very tired of reading about Rachel Walker and Kirsty Tate and their fairy adventures. I asked her a lot of questions about how she gets the teeth from underneath the pillow without waking the children and where she keeps the teeth and how many she has. She had some pretty good answers. She's very imaginative, that one.

I had another awkward encounter with her tonight regarding the human body. I was reading her book in bed and she was laying against my chest with her head resting on my boob. All of a sudden, she sits up, and looks at it and says, "wait, what was I laying on?" And I said, "my chest". She said, "but what exactly is that?" and points to my right boob. I said, "you know what that is...." and she said "no I don't" and I said, "you know..." (pause. pause). "women have breasts". She says, "I thought they were called boobies". Now what am I supposed to say?? Doesn't she know what breasts are?! I told her that was a slang term and then had to explain what slang was. Oy vey.

Thursday wasn't anything special....now for Friday....we're almost done with the week!

Friday was ROUGH. From the second I picked up W from her classroom I knew it was going to a hard day. She was so grumpy and wouldn't talk to me and just whined about everything. I figured she was really tired because she was acting classic exhausted. She dragged her feet the entire way and wouldn't let me put on her scarf or hat. She was being such a pill. I feel bad saying that because she's only 5 but she really was. She kept whining about wanting gum and I kept telling her she can't have any because her mom doesn't let her have it. She kept trying to find loop holes and I kept saying no and she kept whining about it. Oooooh, it was so aggravating.

When we got back to her place I had a brilliant idea. I didn't want to stay home with her all afternoon if she was going to be acting like that, so I thought of a way to get out of the house. I suggested we go to the bookstore and get her a new fairy book. I had told her before that we could do that and this seemed to be the perfect opportunity. She immediately perked up. Thank G-d.

We went to Barnes and Noble and I told her she could get 2 books. I thought that was pretty generous of me but that wasn't enough for her. She kept seeing books she wanted and asked if we could get "just this one too" and I stuck to my guns and said only 2. She would give me the pouty face and say "pweease, Emmy?" I said, that is not going to work, missy. Two books is enough for one trip and if you finish them really fast we can come back and get more. I am trying to teach her to be grateful for what she gets and to be respectful. I don't want to spoil her more than she already is.

We ended up getting 2 fairy books. I saw a lot of other children's books that were classics for me and tried to get her to get one of those but she wanted only fairy books. I love children's books. I got very nostalgic in that section. There was a large woman walking in front of us and W pulled me down and whispered to me, "that woman has a really big butt". It was true and I couldn't stop laughing. But through my laughing I was trying to keep a straight face and tell her that was not a nice thing to say.

When we got in the cab she was even more tuckered out and she layed down against my side and held my hand. I wasn't mad at her in that moment.

It was when T (M's tutor) came that the real trouble started. When we got home they were already working, but they had decided to work in W's room at her table. I didn't have a problem with that as long as W didn't. She didn't mind...in fact, she wanted to sit with them and play while they were doing their work. I let her stay as long as she was quiet and didn't distract them. Then she wanted to read in there, and I told her if she wanted to read we needed to go into another room because we couldn't distract M. She was NOT happy about this. I suggested every possible place in their house to read. I even suggested her closet, but she would only have it at the table where they were working in her room. This is when the tantrum began...

She started crying a little and I thought I could remedy it and held her on my lap, but then the crying became screaming, and then the screaming became her on the floor kicking her heels into the ground and kicking her legs true tantrum style, and not letting me touch her. Mercy came running into the room because she thought was something wrong and I explained that she was just very tired and she would be fine. Mercy was worried which only made me more frustrated because I was like, she's FINE. Then T and M came into the room to find out what was wrong and so everyone is trying to get involved and stop the crying but it wasn't helping and I was just getting increasingly more frustrated and tired of trying to stop it myself. She finally stopped when T told her she could read with her for 5 minutes, which is all W wanted to do in the first place and I had said no. Now I look like the bad guy. Great. Thanks. At least it stopped the screaming and kicking!

I took a few deep breaths to calm myself because I was about to start kicking and screaming myself. She was calm for about 10 minutes and then she cut her finger with a jagged fingernail and starting crying all over again about how much it hurt. Here we go....allll over again. I gave her a pretty Strawberry Shortcake band-aid and made her take 5 deep breaths.

I gave them their bath and got them ready and packed to go to their weekend home. The dad called and said he would be there in half an hour to pick them up, so Mercy and I were frantically getting their bag packed and putting clothes on them. The dad was very punctual and was waiting downstairs in the car at exactly 6:30pm. I went downstairs with them and got them in the car and said goodbyes. I got back in the elevator to go upstairs and get my stuff to leave and almost cried I was so happy for the weekend.

Congratulations if you have made it this far in the entry. We have gone through a week of chaos in one entry. Now to do it all over again for the next 5 days!

Let's see what adventures take place in...dun dun dun....nanny land.