Finding a Babysitter

Finding a stranger to hire to stay at your home and spend hours and hours with your baby is really difficult. The town is full of people who think of themselves as babysitters but most of them are not good enough for me. I want to find the perfect person who wont ruin my child's mental health for her entire lifetime. I want to find someone who is sweet and caring and might have a good impact on her.  It's not impossible. It's just highly unlikely.

I have been browsing through babysitter candidates for a couple of weeks and I've met with two people, neither of whom has what it takes. I'm sure I'll find someone by the end of summer but right now I'm obsessed with doing background checks and using my intuition. I've realized that it takes very little for someone to be scratched off the candidate list. There was one person who had posted a link to her Facebook page to show her picture and she had hid almost all other information about herself. There was only one other piece of data: her relationship status. She was in a relationship with someone who had a vodka bottle in his profile picture.  It wasn't even her profile picture and it was just a "funny" picture of a drunk mouse next to a vodka bottle but suddenly there was no way that I would contact her and see if she's available.

One candidate had written a funny advertisement: on the picture she had posted, she looked like a very emo young woman, with a lip and a nose ring and added a description how she has put her turbulent past behind her or something like that.  Good for you, but you certainly ain't getting close to my kid. I have nothing against lip rings or nose rings, but I am slightly prejudice against gloomy-looking people who have them and write gloomy descriptions of themselves.

Some people mention that they don't smoke or abuse alcohol. That's nice. After I had seen several advertisements that mentioned it, I started to feel cautious about the ones that didn't mention it at all. Maybe they smoke?  I have nothing against people who smoke - I used to smoke myself - but I would never hire a babysitter who is a smoker. They would have to manage 8 hours straight without having a cigarette. They will either sneak out to have a cigarette anyway, or they will end up being very easily irritated by anything that the kid might do wrong. Alcohol abuse is a difficult problem. How can you recognize it if the candidate turns up sober on her interview?! And call me sexist, but I would never hire a man for this.

It costs a fortune to hire a full time nanny. It takes nearly as much as I make. In a way it seems a good idea to just give up on the idea and stay home and take care of Liisa myself. It's the logical thing to do. But then I won't get out. And next year won't be any better either because my situation will not have changed, so I would have to stay at home for a third year as well. After one year I feel like my life is losing it's colors. Everything is turning gray and bleak. I feel a bit hopeless about going back to work because I feel like I fail at everything, while my mind tells me that's not even true!  Then I think, WAIT A MINUTE, that's not how I felt a year ago. It's a side-effect of staying at home and succeeding at nothing. That's the hardest think about being at home - it gives no opportunities to succeed.

And  before you even say it, it's impossible to succeed at being a mother. Some mothers take pride in potty-training their kid before they're 12 months old. I think, good for you. You must have been really bored to put the kid on the pot several times a day for MONTHS before they even had bladder control or ability to signal that they have to go potty. Everyone needs a hobby, I guess, but that's certainly not how I would like to spend my time. Some people in forums confess that they actively potty-train their kid for over a year and the kid is still in diapers. There are so many things to do and try in parenting that in the end it's impossible to do everything right. Besides, some people think it's parental failure if the child doesn't do what the parents say, and other people think it's parental failure to force a child within any kind of boundaries. Even forbidding a child candy for misbehaving is seen as mental terror by some idiots.  I wish I was exaggerating. There are as many opinions as there are parents. Just as everyone is right in their own way, they are also wrong in every other way. Siiri turned out great, sure, but half the "good" parents would crucify me for how long time she has spent watching cartoons on iPad. I don't think it's too long, but if she wakes up 3 hours before we do, she has 3 hours of unrestricted cartoon time.

The long pause when I didn't write any blog posts wasn't something I knowingly did. I simply didn't have anything to say because everything seemed kind of pointless anyway. I thought it had been about 5-6 weeks, but really it was over 2 months. Weeks began and ended without any change in my life. It's difficult to describe how little children make everything seem impossible. A few days ago I was giving the kids a bath while Erkki wasn't at home. At one point I found myself in a tough spot when I realized that I forgot to wash Siiri's hair before filling the bath. I was stuck with one hand on Liisa so she wouldn't climb into the bath tub and needing two hands to wash Siiri's head. Eventually I just put her in her crib in the other room and hoped she wouldn't cry. It's not often enough that I get to do things using both my hands. Today I peeled potatoes and carrots while holding Liisa who was pulling my hair. A few days ago I made cookies. It was the simplest recipe ever and then I rolled out the dough and then Liisa started demanding that I pick her up and make her dinner in stead (while still holding her). So I picked her up and stood there watching the rolled out cookie dough warming up while the oven was already hot enough to put it in the oven. Being one-handed so often gets really demotivating over time.

Finding a babysitter isn't something I could skip. Even if I were to decide that I wouldn't go back to school/work in September, I would still need a nanny for Liisa so I can get out of this rut. I don't know anyone who doesn't work or study and who would like to babysit Liisa and who would be good at it. Even Siiri's former babysitter is at home with a baby so she can't help.  My only option is to hire someone from outside my circle of friends/relatives. The choice is really difficult and it's really difficult to tell people I will not hire them. I can't wait for this to be over.

But the kids seem unaffected by my beginning (?) burnout. Siiri learned to read a couple of weeks ago. She can read simple words but it's still difficult for her so she only reads a couple of words before she wants to do something that she's good at. She loves numbers and counting. Just yesterday we counted numbers together so that she said one number and I said the next, then she said did. We had gotten to 67 when she was distracted by something she saw. Yes, she's only 3. I'm very proud of her. And she's starting kindergarten tomorrow!!! Liisa learned to walk holding one hand. She also sometimes stands for several seconds without holding on to anything at all. When she tries to step, she loses her balance. Also, she loves meat and vegetables and she sleeps really well at night. Wakes up once of twice, eats breast milk and sleeps like a baby. She also says a couple of words. She's 10 months old. I'm very proud of her too.