Two weeks ago I posted a note on my Mommy & Me message board: "Help. Does anyone know of a good daycare/babysitter?" The time had come. After six months of staying home while working part-time, a break was in order. And not a break to get work done, a break to just be. A break to eat lunch without someone's sticky little fingers trying to flip over my plate, to go sit in a coffee shop and read the paper, to pee with the door closed, to grocery shop without constantly checking the cart to make sure my baby hadn't flipped over the handlebar despite being buckled in, to listen to Eminem in the car (loudly), to read a book (a book with no pictures), to take a nap, to go four hours without saying 'Did you poop?' or 'How are your teethers?' or 'Where's your puppy brother?', to go four hours without saying anything -- because these are things you do not get to do when you have an 8 month old sidekick who is under your direct supervision 24 hours a day. All I needed was an hour or two to regroup, live dangerously (or boringly...either one), to just be. And in response to my post (err, plea) Shana answered, "You have to meet my neighbor Renae."
I loved Renae as soon as I met her. Her house smelled like cinnamon and she had pictures of her own three kids (4th, 9th, and 11th grade) everywhere. When she said hello, I noticed a faint accent that made my heart grow three sizes... a Midwesterner! Renae and her family had moved to Albuquerque from North Dakota when her husband got a job on base. She had been a preschool teacher for 13 years, but hadn't yet gone back to work since moving south. Instead, a couple days a week she babysat two of her neighbor's kids while her own were at school. And she was very willing (and excited) to add Asher to the mix. We agreed that I would bring him the following Thursday at noon and pick him up around four.
Thursday rolled around and I started to feel anxious. I drank my first diet coke in over three years (Erika, if you're reading this, I'm sorry!) and paced around our house. At 11:30 Asher started to look sleepy. My first thought was, Oh I should just bring him now, that way he can get in a good nap at her house. But then my second thought was, Or I could put him down for nap here and we'll just go to Renae's a little bit later. And of course, thought number two won. And by 'thought' number two, I mean my "I'm so not ready for this" alter ego. At 12:45 we were in the car heading across town. Four hours of free time was already down to three, and still I was coming up with all sorts of excuses for not making it to Renae's at all. Asher is teething. Asher didn't nap well. Asher is sick. We were attacked by a herd of wildebeasts on High Resort Boulevard. Yet somehow, we made it. Asher would be the only child at her house that afternoon, and as we walked into our living room I smiled (despite feeling like I was going to cry). She had set out about thirty toys that were exactly at Asher's developmental level, they were all in a circle on her living room floor, just waiting for him to play with. It was then that I knew, with 100% certainty, that this was a good thing.
It's an odd feeling- handing your child over to a(n almost) stranger for the first time. On the one hand you want to jump up and down and soak in this limited time of just being you. In your heart you're a mom every second of every day, whether you've got your baby on your hip or not. But when you walk into Target with a regular-sized purse instead of a diaper bag, and don't have a Sophie stuffed in your back pocket, you are as close to 'free' as you're going to get. And while I did enjoy driving around with all the windows down, hip hop blaring (which, by the way, is really bad ass when you're driving a Dodge caravan), I felt lost. And I missed my baby. So while we will continue to have Asher go to Renae's once a week (tomorrow is a Renae day), it is going to take some time for me to get used to the change.
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