A couple years ago, I realized how onerous daycare could be when a few mom friends of mine were posting on their social media about… how literally every single item you bring into the daycare center needs to be labeled, just short of your child. That means every single clothing item (even down to the last sock or shoe) has to be labeled.

So I ordered a bunch of labels with Kaia’s name on them and had them delivered this week. And when putting them on items like her lunch box, water bottle, and clothing, I realized… wait, how do I get these labels to stick on things like her silicone bib or Stasher bags (for her snacks) when the labels explicitly say they are not meant to be put on silicone items?

I tried using a Sharpie and writing Kaia’s name on the back of one of her silicone bibs. After using it twice and washing it by hand both times, the Sharpie ink was already coming off. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do? I immediately texted my friend, who gave me the label company she used to buy her kids’ labels, and she suggested that she could use her label maker and make a few for Kaia to test on the silicone items.

Friends with kids… what would I do without them??

Because of the ex-nanny’s departure, I’ve also been able to take Kaia to the music classes I signed her up for. On Thursday morning, I brought her to Riverside Park for one of the music sessions. Kaia clearly loves music; she clapped and bobbed her head and body along to the music and used her little “instruments” throughout. She also loved attempting to crawl away from the class, and I had to frequently carry her back to the picnic blanket.

The other funny thing to see was what caregivers came to the class. On Thursday, there were seven of us total: three nannies, two mothers, and two grandmas (at least, this is what it looked like to me). And of the strollers, it was a sea of Uppababy Vistas, plus our own Nuna Triv. It’s always comical to me how amongst groups like this, the stroller type is usually quite homogenous and predictable, even down to the accessories on the strollers. The Uppababy Vista is the most popular stroller on the Upper West Side, if not all of New York. It’s ginormous, which is why it’s so popular, but that also makes it nearly impossible to carry up and down stairs or on the subway without at least 2-3 people carrying it. It’s the stroller for you if you are happy with the size, and you never plan to take it outside of your neighborhood without throwing it into a car. It was never the stroller for us, and it always annoyed me to no end when people would give a blanket recommendation for this stroller, even when I explicitly said that I needed something that could travel well and relatively easily on the subway/trains. I occasionally get questions on how we chose our stroller, and I know the question not being asked is, “Why didn’t you get an Uppababy?”

This afternoon, I took Kaia to her very first theater performance: Flutter, a performance designed especially for kids ages 6 to 18 months of age, which follows the narrative of the changing seasons through experiential storytelling, innovative puppetry, innovative dance, and original music (that’s from the official description). I had been keeping my eye out for age-appropriate, low cost activities in the area that Kaia could do, and this definitely stood out as being one of the most interesting ones, so I signed her up over a month ago. And in the end, it was a great experience. Not only did she do exactly what the director had hoped, which was interact inside the circle they created and play with the props, dancers, and other kids, but Kaia really hammed it up in general: before the performance even started, she went around the inside of the circle, crawling to each family and saying hi and waving. She traded and fought over toys with certain kids. At least half a dozen parents came up to me after to express how cute and social my baby was.

If our ex-nanny hadn’t quit, I wouldn’t have taken Kaia to her first theater experience. So in more ways than one, the nanny’s sudden departure has actually benefited our family. I got to see Kaia be extremely social and interact in a fun theater environment, and it made me realize even more how much my baby is blossoming into a precocious, outgoing, intelligent tiny human.

I contacted the pediatrician’s office with some forms that daycare requires the doctor to fill out. Of course, they replied and said that there is a $25 order form filling fee every time there is a new daycare/school form to complete. How lovely. The one note that they shared only after I called them, gave them my credit card number to process, and then I asked about future forms to have filled out: if I ever request that they fill out one of these forms in the future, and it’s within three days of one of Kaia’s doctor appointments, and I bring the form in for them to fill out and sign, then they can do it without charge. How… weird, yet annoying.

Of course, there are registration fees for daycare/school, as well as deposits. And then on top of that, I need to get a partial refund on the spring session of the music class I purchased for Kaia. I wrote out all the classes she’d taken, plus the ones she can still take, and so in the end, she will have taken eight out of a total 13 classes in the spring session. The music company is willing to only refund 50% of the classes she FORFEITS. Ultimately, this means the cost per class she actually took is higher than I originally thought, but it’s still lower than it would be if we paid a la carte. It is what it is.

I also have had to look into daycare specific purposes, like small food storage containers (they won’t allow any glass containers, so my usual glass jars I use to store Kaia’s on-the-go snacks are out), a lunch box (I cannot believe how many iterations there are of these…), daycare labels (this was a total nightmare; I could NOT believe how many options there were online and all the different price points). I did two searches on Google and Amazon for labels, got annoyed, then texted my friend, who has put two of her own kids in daycare, and she simply sent me the one she used and told me to buy the same ones. I trust her judgment, so I just ordered them to simplify my life.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. I keep telling myself that this is all for the best and that all this effort and annoyance will be worth it in the end. Kaia was going to end up in daycare at some point, so pushing it up a few months would not only save us money, but it would also reduce my daily stress of dealing with her ex-nanny’s constant insolence.

I spoke with several colleagues and friends over the last two days about how our nanny quit with zero notice. It was very clear from the expressions on their faces who have not only experienced this situation before or something similar, but could empathize with how awful it was. When I told one of my colleagues on my team during a 1:1 chat today, her face fell as though I told her that an immediate family member of mine had died. That was how distressed her face looked.

Before I ever had a child and had to navigate childcare, I could academically understand why this would be terrible and extremely inconvenient. I just never realized how emotional the entire experience could be. It was like in one fell swoop — or rather, one long, ranty, angry text message, I was having a massive judgment made on me as a human being and an employer: “You are an awful, demeaning, condescending, slave-driving boss, and I hate you enough to give the ultimate ‘fuck you’ to you by quitting without any advance notice whatsoever because I want you to feel pain.”

And I suppose the reason it hurt so much to see this long text box on my phone was… I tried so, so hard to make sure she felt comfortable here. I constantly asked her if she felt comfortable. I got her all the food and snacks she ever requested, and then some. Once, she told me that the Trader Joe’s version of Cheerios didn’t taste the same as real branded Cheerios. So the next day, I returned the Trader Joe’s version and went to Target to get the real, branded Cheerios. And she said she was shocked, not only that I did it, but that I did it so quickly. She even went home and told her husband. I occasionally bought her lunch. Once, I even sat down at a restaurant with her when she said she never had Turkish before but always was curious (I got so many weird looks from friends when I shared this). I always, always offered her food I made and even occasionally PACKED it for her to eat when she got home. We gave her rare foods that even we had a hard time sourcing, but we knew she liked. I made her ginger tea when she had stomach pains. I double boiled her chai. I made her a full breakfast a number of mornings. I sent her home early many days when she said she either had a headache or when I just became free earlier (which Chris got mad about because he said we were paying for her time, so we need to USE her time). Some days, when she complained of foot pain, I even helped her clean up after Kaia’s dinner (I really, really regret this now). We always brought back gifts from our international travels. We got her lots of thoughtful things she said she liked, plus cash for her birthday earlier this year. I gave her Chinese treats from Chinatown that I thought she’d like. I even got her Easter flowers.

But the hurt and sadness I feel at her leaving is juxtaposed with the anger I feel about all the things she did to assert her nonexistent authority in my house and in raising my child, plus things she flat out went against and openly defied me, and agreed to do but would regularly skip out on and make excuses for. In fact, the thing that I found most puzzling was that her demeanor on her first day onward with us was like a total 180 from when she first did a FaceTime interview with me, when she was warm, sweet, and even had a higher pitched voice (that was manipulative in retrospect), to when she did her trial. On both those occasions, she was generally warm, open, and amenable (her baby log notes were extremely thorough, too). Yet on her very first day, it was like she was a totally different person: she criticized everything from how we set up Kaia’s bassinet and crib to the changing station to how frequently we empty the diaper pail (“all my other mom bosses ask me to do it at the end of every day.” Apparently, asking her to do less work was worth critiquing for her). She constantly compared our methods to her former bosses’ in a disparaging way. She gave me attitude about the level of detail on the white board we set up for her with explicit instructions on what to do (because apparently, an employer being clear with instructions is not wanted by any employee). Every time I added a daily or weekly task for her to do, whether it was to clean Kaia’s baby bath tub, spray down her changing station or play mat, or shake out the cushion under the changing station, she’d give me this look as though I told her to go jump off a cliff. Many weeks, she’d skip a lot of these weekly tasks completely and get angry when I asked her why it wasn’t done. When I recently asked her to use the dust buster to vacuum the stroller seat and under-basket, she flat out didn’t do it at all. When I told her to remember to spray and wipe down the stroller seat/handles when she fed Kaia in it because she still had food remnants speared on the handles she never cleaned (which I had to clean!!), she scowled and reluctantly agreed to clean the stroller after feeding outside.

When we started feeding Kaia solids, I educated her on baby-led weaning by discussing the method with her and sending her several Solid Starts articles and videos. I even suggested she download the Solid Starts app (she refused). She insisted babies needed to eat purees and would choke otherwise, and I had no idea what I was doing (Nanny: “I have been doing this for over 20 years, and you are relying on the Google for help? You first time moms are crazy. You think you know everything but you don’t”). She’d mash Kaia’s food behind my back and I’d catch it when I’d go the kitchen or bathroom between meetings. I confronted her several times, to which she always responded defensively and arrogantly and said she had to ensure Kaia’s safety (because apparently, I wanted my own child to choke and die). But she finally let it go when she realized Kaia hated to be fed, that she wanted to self-feed, that she was more than able to feed herself. Our ex-nanny also got upset when I suggested she practice straw and open cup drinking at about 7-8 months. First she mocked me, laughing and saying, “Ha, she is too young for that. There is no way a child her age can do it.” A few weeks later, after a few tries of the pipette method on the weekends that I showed my baby, Kaia got drinking out of a straw down pat and loved it. The next Monday, I gave our nanny a dead look and said, “Look what Kaia learned over the weekend. She can drink out of a straw (motioning to Kaia drinking milk out of a straw in a cup)… and you doubted her.” She gave me the same mocking, defiant attitude when I suggested the open cup drinking, as well as utensils. It was beyond exhausting to always get her insolent laughs. In the end, she admitted that Kaia was the first baby so young she ever knew of that could drink out of straw, an open cup, use utensils decently, and feed herself food; it was a little astounding to even hear her admit she was wrong (though she still thinks Kaia is an anomaly and that the average baby cannot do any of the above).

She took little care for our belongings; anytime something got lost or broken, she never even once apologized or took ownership for what happened. Instead, she would lash out at ME for even asking about the item. In her time here, she lost at least three pacifiers, two of Kaia’s toys, and one stroller rain cover worth over $50. Every time something like this happened, she said she didn’t think it was a big deal and that we could always buy another one (with OUR money of course, because money just grows on trees for us). She broke Kaia’s teether pop, one of our ceramic ramekins, and even a picture frame (and the picture frame was the worst because she didn’t even proactively tell me about it and tried to hide it. I realized it was broken, confronted her, and while she owned up it, she never even apologized!). With all of the above except the rain cover, she never openly told me the items got lost or broken; I had to ask her where they were. And each time this happened, she would respond defensively and arrogantly, saying that Chris and I were causing her stress, making her feel worried every day she left that she lost something when all she was here for was to ensure Kaia’s safety and happiness. “I take care of your pride and joy every single day and return her to you in one piece. Is that not enough?? And Chris just obsesses over a stupid pacifier?!”

She repeatedly shared horror stories of her previous mom bosses to me. It should have been a red flag to me; if she rants so openly about previous bosses, there’s no doubt in my mind that she will do the same to me and of course, twist the narrative to make her seem like the victim and me the villain. She mostly complained about their white privilege, how they supposedly were verbally abusive to her and thought they “owned” her and her time. She distorted the meanings of likely innocent old Christmas cards they wrote and cried about them for days, saying they didn’t see her as human. She frequently ranted about white people and how entitled they were; she constantly brought up how awful Trump and the Republican Party are until one day, I finally just told her to stop ranting about this to me. She clearly hates white people even though they are the only people other than us she’s ever worked for. But she masks it so well because all her references gave her such glowing reviews. They have no idea that the sweet, loving nanny that they see is actually a dragon who would blow fire on them behind their backs.

Everything above is just a fraction of alI I had to deal with. I put up with it all because I was never ready to put Kaia in daycare when she was younger. I also knew I would miss my sweet Pookie a lot if I couldn’t see her throughout the day… even if I couldn’t hear the happy sound of her hands slapping the floor when she crawls. Plus, with nannies and personal caregivers, there’s no such thing as “perfect.” So I turned a blind eye to a lot of things and let them go because I knew at the end of the day, yes, Kaia was safe and happy with this nanny. I’m just so tired. Although the last two days have been a lot, I’m so relieved I don’t have to deal with her insolence any longer. I don’t want to have to convince my employee every single fucking day that she NEEDS TO FOLLOW THE RESPONSIBILITIES AS OUTLINED IN HER EMPLOYMENT CONTRACT, that no, that doesn’t make ME an evil, awful employer. I can already hear the false narrative she will tell her nanny friends, her future employers, her family when she “took a chance” on working with an Asian family — us: we repeatedly made her feel like a slave. We were inhuman. We worked her like a dog. We constantly demeaned her and criticized her. We treated her like a slave or child. We never respected her or gave her anything. But well, I will always know the truth of what happened. And I just have to ignore her falsehoods. Because apparently to her, working for a white family, as a black woman, is just so, so much better.

I wish her well. But most of all, I wish her inner peace that she so clearly lacks, and I hope she is able to find help or therapy for herself to manage her emotional instability and past traumas, which clearly continue to play a huge role in her life and she has unfortunately chosen to take out on my family. As Chris said, it’s a new era for all of us.

The three of us went to a friend’s twins’ 4th birthday party at their home today. A number of kids were there, ranging in age from about 10 months to 6 years, so Kaia was a bit on the younger side in terms of the kids who were there. The oldest child who came engaged with her a bit in the beginning, as well as a three-year old who came, who mostly stuck to herself. One twin wanted to fully exclude her from “entry” into their castle, and the second twin had to wait until the first twin went to another room to “admit” her. It was a little funny and cute how distinct the two twins’ personalities were: one twin is very aggressive, exclusive, and wants what she wants when she wants it; the other twin seems a bit more thoughtful and wants to be nice to everyone.

While watching Kaia on and off and observing how all the kids interacted with each other, I had a few short conversations with the parents who came (everyone who attended the party had kids and came with their kids). It was mostly a lot of predictable conversations around pregnancy, birth, child-rearing, temper tantrums, and developmental milestones. I sort of annoyed one mom by suggesting to her daughter that if and when the school bully tries to hit her (she was telling me about the mean kid in her class), she should hit back (I mean… I’m all about self defense. Who wants to be seen as the easy target at school?). Another mom kept asking me when I was going to try for a second kid, which I kept trying to change the subject of, yet she still didn’t seem to get the message, and continued to try to steer us back to that. She also apparently has a very different definition of what it means to have family members who live “close by”: she said she had no family who lived close by. But her mom lives a 10-minute drive away, while her sister lives an hour drive away. The other dads who were there had strained conversations with me, and overall, the conversations were fairly insipid and unmemorable. Granted, I’d seen pretty much everyone here multiple times before at this friends’ events and gatherings, but we’ve never really clicked with any one of them. I think we’re at a point now where we’ve realized that we’re not going to be establishing any of these people as our own friends or people we’d want to see outside of these events. I guess in the end, we came for our friend, our own baby to have a semblance of a “play date” like setting, and for the food (which was excellent, with the main highlights being pan roasted Korean-style beef short ribs and homemade chocolate hazelnut macarons). So the overall party was just exactly what I expected it to be, end to end.