The last month has been quite hot in New York. While we usually leave all the blinds open to enjoy the floor-to-ceiling windows in our living area, I had to start pulling a number of them down because the apartment was just getting too hot. Even with the air conditioner running, it was like it was still hot and and miserable in the apartment, as though the AC wasn’t even on! So I pulled down 3-4 of them and immediately noticed a temperature difference when I came back into the room.

Chris absolutely hates it when the blinds are closed. He wants as much natural light as possible around the clock. He doesn’t care that the light can bleach furniture or photos. He doesn’t care that it can interfere with how hard the AC has to work to cool the room. He just wants them all open, all day and all night long. We’re paying for these large windows, so we need to maximize the value of them, right? So when he saw that I pulled the binds down, he was not very happy. But, he recognized that yes, the apartment was actually cooler with the blinds drawn down. So he kept them down.. until night time, when he would, like clockwork, go to pull them up.

So now, this is what we do: on particularly hot days, I pull the blinds down at some point in the afternoon, and in the evening, he will pull them up again. It’s almost like a mini unspoken battle of the blinds in this apartment during the summer time. Even Pookster is fascinated with the blinds being drawn because she’s not used to seeing them move, ever!

When Kaia first joined her daycare, she was on the older end of the 12-18 month age range for her class, so we knew that just after a month in, she’d have to switch classes to join the 18-24 month class. This was sad because we really liked the main teacher of her first class. This teacher was really responsive to feedback and suggestions we had, and she seemed overall like an easy-going, well-intentioned teacher who is passionate about kids (she had five of her own!). And at this age, kids tend to get attached quickly. Asking them to adjust after just a month in seemed annoying, but it had to be done.

Now that Kaia has switched classes, the new main teacher seems fine, though it’s clear she has a chip on her shoulder and doesn’t like the previous teacher. When I asked the new teacher to make sure to serve veggies first to Kaia at lunch, then her protein/carbs, along with the request to potentially put feeding instructions on the fridge so that all teachers/floaters coming in and out could carry out the same instruction, as this is the process that worked in Kaia’s previous class, she seemed like she felt insulted. Her message back to me stated, “I appreciate all the feedback. However, I do run my class differently than (former teacher).” Lo and behold, the instructions weren’t followed the next day, and I had to call it out. It’s fine if you have different methods for communication, but I’m giving you a suggestion on what has worked, so if you choose another method, it would be best if you did not fail, which she did.

This new main teacher also has not been shy about giving a stink eye to Kaia’s former teacher when passing in the hallway, which I’ve personally observed. She and her assistant teachers have also been very territorial about having the former teacher float into their class when backup is needed. They’ve made comments like, “They’re not in your class anymore! They’re not yours! You shouldn’t be so attached to them; they’ve moved on! Let them transition into their new class and stop holding onto them.” The funny thing is: the reason they make comments like this is that the kids all love the former teacher. They run to her when she walks into the room; they want to follow her out of the room when she leaves. What’s really driving all the teacher politics here is 1) the other teachers’ jealousy and 2) the fact that the former teacher just has more passion for kids, frankly, that they do not have. Kids sense this, and they gravitate towards the adults they know care.

And I’ve noticed that amongst the assistant teachers in Kaia’s new class that they don’t really have an apparent passion for early childhood education: they’ve been on their phones scrolling through Instagram and Facebook. They do the bare minimum. They let the kids roam around on their own and don’t initiate any play in the multi-purpose room. During lunch, they don’t really assist in feeding or watching the kids; they’re doing their own thing. Kaia’s thrown her food on the floor twice this week, and they weren’t anywhere nearby to even prevent or stop this (yes, we can see it via the live camera). They’re there for the job and the pay check/benefits, not so much because they are passionate about kids… they’re not. So I’ve brought this up to the director of the program and plan on having more conversations about this. This daycare is relatively new, and they are not even close to being at capacity. They are hustling to get more kids enrolled with open houses, referral bonuses, etc. But if you have crappy teachers and assistant teachers, it’s unlikely any of the kids will stay enrolled that long, especially with the high fees that all these places are charging. It’s just sad that the level of care can change so much from one classroom to another, but then again, isn’t that school in general here in the U.S.?

Yesterday, Chris alerted me to the notification in the school app that noted that Pookster got hit in the face with a toy by another kid. I looked at the photo the teacher posted, but because I didn’t see any scratch or blood, I figured it wasn’t much of anything, so I brushed it off. When I arrived at the school for pickup, the teacher had a bit of a nervous look on her face when she came over to me, explained what happened (including the need for an ice pack on Kaia’s nose, apparently), and then asked me to sign a form (which is required by the Department of Education) to acknowledge that I was informed about the incident and knew what happened. These kids are all in the 18-24 month age range, so I really didn’t think anything of this. At this age, kids don’t really know right from wrong or whether they are hurting another person. So I was a bit surprised this even needed a signed form and was a requirement. But the teacher clarified and said that this was the usual procedure that had to be followed, and for the child who actually did the offense, their parent also had to be notified and sign their own version of this form. That child got picked up earlier, and when her mom was told this, she immediately burst into tears and said the kid was going through some issues at home and was expressing it outwardly in her behavior. I felt a little bad that she cried. What could she have really done differently, anyway, and it’s not like her kid was getting suspended or some serious consequence?

People who choose to have kids today are having fewer children than their parents and grandparents. And because of that, it’s almost like we have to pour in every single resource and ounce of energy we have into them to ensure they have these picture-perfect lives. But candidly, I don’t think we should expect perfection from our kids… or anyone. It’s an impossible standard to live up to. Kids are going to have mishaps and mistakes, and we just have to deal with them as we come instead of beating ourselves up over every tiny infraction.

I’ve never worn a lot of makeup. Since I was very young, my mom always rammed into my head that while eye makeup and lip products are fine, I should always steer clear of foundation/face makeup. She said that foundation would age me faster and make the quality of my skin worse. She used to scrutinize my face occasionally after not seeing me for a while to see if I was wearing foundation. Occasionally, when I had a tinted moisturizer on, she’d ask me accusingly if I was wearing foundation. I always said no. I mean, I wasn’t lying; the moisturizer was just tinted…

While I debate a lot of things my mom says, I don’t think she was wrong about this. A lot of foundations have all kinds of weird additives and chemicals that would not allow your skin to “breathe” properly. Many are unfortunately reputed to clog pores. And because everyone is a unique person, a product can affect one person very differently than the other. While there are many on the market now that are supposed to have ingredients to moisturize and even help with skin concerns like fine lines and wrinkling, I still have no desire or patience to use them. I’m fairly satisfied with the state of my skin, so I don’t really think I need it.

At dinner the other night, my friend commented on the tinted lip balm I was using. Since the pandemic, I don’t even have the patience or desire to fuss over a lipstick or lip balm. I feel like I’m so over all those products, not to mention how expensive they are. I have always been lip balm obsessed, since I like the soft feeling of having balm on my lips, but I normally wear just plain lip balm. But TINTED lip balm: it was like the best of both worlds. I had the moisturizing properties of lip balm, combined with the “hint” of color and shine of a lipstick or gloss. I don’t think I will ever go back to a real lip gloss or lipstick again. And what’s also great about this: the tinted lip balm I’m obsessed with now is SO much cheaper than the average clean lipstick/lip balm!

Now that Kaia is in daycare/school, there’s really little to no way to control everything. Even when our ex-nanny was with us, I couldn’t control everything. She repeatedly went against my back and did things I explicitly told her not to do, and she’d overlook and forget things I gave instructions for her to do. But with daycare, even when you provide detailed notes to the administration and ask that they pass it onto the teachers of your child’s class, there’s no actual guarantee those notes will ever get to the teachers. So it can make you wonder why you have to fill out all those endless forms in the application process to begin with, when you will likely send multiple messages to the teachers directly after you start, and have to reiterate it… yet again in person during drop-offs and pick-ups.

One of the things I wrote in Kaia’s food notes in the original enrollment forms were: no foods with added sugar. Well, these notes were never passed onto the teachers. And even when they were, the teachers actually don’t even know what I mean when I say “added sugar.” To them, they didn’t recognize that fruit or fig bars actually DO have added sugar in them; they said they were “natural sugar.” No, not really: the way these things are processed, it’s definitely added sugar! I had to explicitly write: no fruit or fig bars. The teacher wrote this in capital letters for all teachers and substitutes on the fridge for all to observe (or so we think). Then, I saw photos posted on the daycare app of all the kids, including my own, eating cinnamon raisin bread. In what world does cinnamon raisin bread not have any added sugar? And what about Special K with strawberries — they were also eating this for breakfast the other day! It suddenly hit me that it was highly likely the teachers did not actually understand there were added refined sugars in any of these foods. And that really made me sad: that’s the state of our education. Average Americans don’t even know what they put in our bodies willingly.

At the end of the day, I cannot police everything, and I cannot constantly message the teachers banning all these items from being put into my baby’s body. At some point relatively soon, the Pookster will likely have regular exposure to it, so it’s really going to be up to her (to a certain degree) regarding whether she wants these things or not. For example, yesterday, they were doing deconstructed s’mores. To my inner joy, I was so happy to see that my baby ate part of the graham cracker, but refused the marshmallow (processed, nasty sugar) as well as the tiny bit of chocolate. That’s my baby.

A few weeks ago, our handyman friend came by to help repair something. It had already been over a month since our ex-nanny had left. And he said to us, “Can I just ask: doesn’t it feel good to not have a stranger in your home anymore?”

I immediately answered… YES. While I’m sure many families consider their nanny “part of their family,” unfortunately, we never got to that point with ours. Our ex-nanny was a source of a lot of frustration and tension, constantly judging the way we did things, whether that was how we set up the apartment or how we chose to parent. One of her very favorite phrases to start sentences with when she first started was, “you new moms think you know everything.” She was inflexible and hated any type of constructive feedback, instead scowling or responding harshly to it as though harm had been inflicted on her. I especially do not miss cleaning up after her, whether it is the food that she’d leave on the floor around Kaia’s eating area, which she either willfully ignored or was just blind to; the smeared fruit on the couch that she’d miss, her crumbs on our kitchen counters and in our entry way from all her snacking, the food she’d spill or smear on or in our fridge, or even her makeup stains on our walls and doors. In retrospect, sometimes it felt like it was more work having her as a nanny than not having her.

And now that Kaia is 1.5 months into daycare, it makes me even more grateful for the fact that we found a daycare/school that seems to be pretty good, where the teachers have accountability, and where I know she is exposed to and learning new skills and activities every single day. I don’t have to come up with activities or try to convince a nanny to actually do her job. Each day, I see photos and videos of her doing different arts and crafts or practicing her fine motor skills. And each day, I don’t have to think about whether I am showing enough “gratitude” toward the caregiver of my child. I don’t have to worry about whether something I said will piss the teachers off, and they will just decide to stop showing up; that does not happen at daycares the way it happens with nannies in your private home. The emotional load of having a caregiver in your home is not a small one, especially when that caregiver is repeatedly disrespectful of your wishes and requests, but fakes it to others. It’s strange to me that more people do not discuss or address this in online parent groups.