Pissed.

I wrote an entry on Monday and never got around to posting it, but I am so ticked off right now that I have to get this off my chest instead.

 
So when we first hired the nanny, we didn’t have a lot of expectations. Emily couldn’t walk or talk yet and at the time Bryan’s schedule was such that we only needed her very few hours a week.  So, it was basically be there while she naps, change and feed her when needed, make sure she is safe and comfortable, etc.  Pretty hard to screw that up.  And she didn’t.  We used the nanny cams for a few weeks to make sure of it, then didn’t bother anymore because we felt comfortable.  
 
Emily got older and started walking and talking and we were needing the nanny more hours because Bryan was teaching more classes.  It’s still part time, between one to four hours a day usually, but when work gets busy for me it’s definitely four hours a day.  I would like to say we were upfront about a lot of things when we hired her.  We said basically no discipline, no spanking, anything physical whatsoever, etc.  She wasn’t even one yet, so we didn’t really have to get into timeouts or anything like that.
 
Now Emily is two.  Like I’ve said, she is a VERY good girl, but she is two and she is learning to test boundaries and all that fun stuff little kids do.  It hasn’t been a huge problem.  We do say no to her and she doesn’t get away with stuff she’s not supposed to, but I will say that I am a very laid back parent.  It takes a lot for her to tick me off.  We never thought to readdress issues of punishment or timeouts or anything because I guess we assumed she would talk to us (the nanny) if issues were arising.  
 
I am also a big stickler on being active with her, playing with her, doing things, reading, teaching, etc.  I don’t want her sitting inside all day playing by herself.  I feel like I’ve made that clear.
 
So Bryan came home an hour after he left for work on Monday because he forgot his shop keys.  The nanny obviously wasn’t expecting anyone to come home for hours.  So when he opened the front door it caught her by surprise.  She was kicked back on the couch doing something with her phone and Emily was across the room playing with toys by herself.  Now, not a huge deal as she could have just been checking her phone and I don’t need her to interact with her every single second..I think we are reasonable people..but Bryan was bugged by the fact that she acted very guilty and bolted up off the couch.  Something just rubbed him wrong.  Anyways, my car was in the shop this week and I had a loaner.  It’s quieter than my car.  The nanny can always hear my car going up our driveway and then I come in the downstairs door and essentially she has a good minute of knowing I’m home before I get upstairs to them.  I got off work earlier than expected yesterday, drive the quiet loaner car into the garage, then decided to go in the front door because I saw a package on the doorstep.  When I opened the door, it was the exact same scenario.  She was kicked back on the couch on her phone, Emily in the kitchen this time, and she bolted up.  I acted normal and hugged and kissed Emily.  She had a little cut on her chest so I asked the nanny what happened and she said Emily tried to run under her slide (little plastic red thing that she could not possible stand up under, yet alone run under) and it scraped her.  She even picked up the slide and showed me a "sharp spot" that I didn’t actually see.  Again, kids get hurt..tried not to think much about it.  It wasn’t a huge owie.  Then Emily starts talking and she is completely hoarse, like she was losing her voice.  She was not like that that morning or three hours prior when Bryan left.  That worried me.  I asked about her day and she said they played, when she woke up, what she ate for lunch, etc, and left.
 
<div style="font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); “>All of it together, mainly her voice being hoarse, brought us to the decision to fire up the nanny cams again.  She said Emily hadn’t had a bad day, said she didn’t cry, so there was no reason for her to sound like that.  It worried me and I wanted to make sure everything was going the way she said it was going.
 
From the tone of this entry, you can guess that what we saw on the nanny cams today was not good.  It brought tears to my eyes and I have *extreme* mommy guilt over it right now.   No, she didn’t spank her or punch her or be mean to her..she basically ignored her..for hours.  She sat on the couch or talking across the room on her phone the entire time.  That is, when she wasn’t bringing her to her room, turning the light off, putting her in her crib and leaving her there to cry as a punishment over things we would never punish her for.  My eyes filled with tears as the seconds ticked by in the video and I knew she was crying alone in her crib in a dark room, probably not understanding what she did wrong or why it was happening.  Four minutes might not sound long until you sit there waiting for it to end.  She did it twice, once over the fact that Emily was playing with the TV headset and pulled one of the earpieces off.  If I was home I would have said uh oh!  That’s a no-no, picked them up and put them out of her reach.  That was NOT something I would punish her like that over!  And she is very well behaved, so it’s not like I’m letting her get away with a bunch of shit and run the household.  The other thing she punished her for was out of sight from the camera, but I can’t imagine what she could have done to deserve that.  
 
Like I said, I feel like I’m a reasonable person and I understand that other people discipline differently and raise children differently and all that.  We hadn’t had a talk about discipline since that vague "we don’t spank or hit" talk so long ago, and I have never brought up having to discipline her since, nor had she, so I just didn’t think about it.  It was a non-issue.  Wouldn’t she tell me if she was putting Emily in time-outs and how she was going about it and is that a way we feel comfortable with her dealing with it, if it comes to that?  Apparently not.  A fail on both our parts, I guess.
 
Interestingly enough, even though that brought me to tears, seeing Emily so upset and crying when she got her out of her crib, I have to say what bugs me the most is how she utterly ignored her the rest of the time.  When I got home she told me they colored and played with playdoh and toys, etc.  It sounded like a semi-active day.  But she did NOTHING with her.  She lied.  For hours she sat on the couch not even looking at what Emily was doing.  She just sat there on her phone.  She spent a long time talking on her phone, looking out our front window (I’m presuming waiting for me to come home) with her back completely turned to Emily.  I’m not talking a minute or two.  A LONG time.  She didn’t watch her at all.  Emily walked up to her once when she was sitting on the couch and held up a playdoh jar so she would open it for her.  She didn’t even look up, grabbed the jar and just held it while Emily waited and eventually walked away because she wasn’t even acknowledging her.
 
It rips my fucking heart out to know that THIS is what my daughter had been doing every day.  Nothing.  Playing by herself.  That’s it.  I am livid because the nanny goes on and on about how much she loves Emily, how much she misses her over the weekend, etc, how she’s going to make sure she can come back after my maternity leave because Emily means so much to her and she doesn’t want to leave her.  Bullshit.  All fucking bullshit.  She gets paid a lot of money to sit on her ass a few hours a day and THAT is what she doesn’t want to lose.  
 
Bryan and I said immediately after watching that that’s it, she’s fired.  But in all honesty, as much as my first reaction is anger and wanting to yell at her and can her, I also want to see if maybe this was an off day or if this is the usual.  Try to give her the benefit of the doubt again, one last time.  We’ve been going through stages after talking about it for the last few hours.  The anger is slightly subsiding and we’re thinking a little more rationally now..at least I think.  I still don’t know what we’re going to do.  She only works another week before Bryan has all of September off and we won’t need her.  We would need someone to watch Emily in October up until Caden’s birth, then I am on maternity leave for four months.  Bryan’s first idea was to wait until the last week in October and then tell her everything.  Tell her we watched her on the nanny cam, what we saw, and tell her we don’t want her to come back after my maternity leave.  She’s a big crier so it’s going to be bad any way we do it..but I also would be putting another ad on care.com, which is where we got her, so I can’t say we just don’t need her anymore because she will see that I’m looking for someone else.  We have to tell her a reason we don’t want her back specifically.
 
Bryan’s newest idea is to tell her everything, that we watched her on the nanny cam, that we are not happy that she doesn’t interact with Emily or actually DO anything, that we don’t agree with how she’s disciplining, etc, and give her a chance to correct her behavior, knowing we’re watching, putting cameras in plain view and setting out specific expectations.  
 
I don’t know what to do.  I’m torn.  She’s been with us for over a year.  Emily does like her..God only knows why.  With Bryan’s schedule, having a month off here and there, hours changing from quarter to quarter, it would be incredibly hard to find someone else willing to deal with that.  She has always been extremely flexible with time and has not caused problems with calling in sick a lot or any of that.  She’s alway on time, etc.  None of that makes up for what she’s lacking though.  Even if it did change, I’m still so angry.  I feel duped.  I would almost rather find a daycare that can handle Emily’s food allergies and put her in there.  She wouldn’t get the one-on-one time we THOUGHT she was getting by having a nanny, but there would be other children to play with and socialization skills.  But not only would that be a tough transition, I just don’t think I’ll be ready to stick a four-month-old Caden in daycare anyways.  So, we’ll need a nanny.  
 
Now, there’s a perfectly good possibility that after telling her we watched her on nanny cams she might just not come back.  I’m obviously willing to live with that.  I am torn between wanting to fix it with her because we have a history, because, most importantly, Emily is comfortable with her, and wanting to just start over with someone new, set out CLEAR expectations, put those webcams up in plain view and be open that we just like to check in from time to time.  The problem is we will probably not be lucky enough to find one person to work with us for so long and we’ll struggle with finding someone new and setting expectations and being comfortable with someone..having different people coming in our house and the kids having to go through a transition period every time.
 
I don’t know what to do.  I also worry that if this nanny isn’t meeting our expectations with one child, what’s going to happen when we add an infant?  
 
And to jump around topics, another thing that bugs me still is Emily’s hoarse voice.  She’s cried before, for minutes even, and hasn’t been hoarse or lost her voice.  We didn’t have a nanny cam up that day.  Did she punish Emily so many times, did she cry so much she went hoarse? I mentioned her voice when I got home and she didn’t say anything.
 
I could go on for hours, but I’m exhausted and it’s almost 1am.  I hope I can stop my mind a second and sleep and hopefully come up with a plan tomorrow.  *sigh*
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