i'm counting down the days tonight

there are only sixty nine days left before i go back to work. may 28th is the day. it looms around the edges of the room lately, it is something i try not to think about. a friend of mine, thea, offered up some advice on the activity of "going back to work" and it was this, don't let the worry and fear ruin the last bit of time you have together, it will all work out and everyone will be fine. she had only recently gone back and felt that her pre-return anxiety was ill founded. i saw the logic, but also thought it was fine for her to say, she had childcare!

for me the single biggest worry i have is daycare. this city has a serious shortage of facilities, with many having waiting lists two and three years long to get in. oh sure, i got on the lists as soon as we conceived, but i knew there wouldn't be space by the time i had to go back. so then what? i would hear rumours that you needed to look at least three months ahead of time, that you need to be phoning around all the time. diligence is what will prevail. however, i am not so great at the diligence and i hate phoning around, so instead i put word out with everyone i knew asking them to keep their ears open and letting them know i would welcome suggestions. the messages coming back were clear, be worried and hope for some good luck. however, it was in a reply that i first heard about nanny sharing, and the writer told me that this may be the best way to secure a decent place, albeit slightly more expensive. the idea behind nanny sharing is that one family has a nanny that cares for their child in their home (sometimes live in, sometimes not), and they choose to take in one more child to help lessen their financial burden.

so i began checking craigslist daily looking for something that might work. i wasn't married to a nanny share, but admitted that it sounded like a best case scenario. for almost two weeks there was nothing and then one morning i saw this and got more than a little excited. so i wrote back and hoped that not too many others would respond. it couldn't have been more perfect, only five blocks from our house and on marko's way to work and a boy close in age!

as it turns out she did have four responses, but she would love to meet us, and so we all went over on saturday morning to say hello. their son dante was incredibly cute and developmentally similar to cohen, the two of them hit it off right away each banging away on a toy drum and staring pensively out the window. the apartment itself was a beautiful loft in a building that boasts an enormous courtyard complete with a garden. the energy in the apartment was so positive and bright with 16 foot ceilings and windows from top to bottom, wood floors and big play mats. we knew right away that this would be a good fit (they even have a tropical fish tank with the same fish as us!), and hoped they felt the same. luckily for us they were taken with cohen and told us straight out that they would like for us to be the ones to enter in the nanny share! the nanny lives out so we have not met her yet but from everything we are told she sounds amazing. her and dante go to music class every week and walks everyday (they even have a double stroller just waiting for cohen), so we will meet her sometime next week and then sometime in may we will slowly get cohen used to leaving home during the day (although he is likely going to love it, it is me that is going to need the getting used to).

as the ad indicates, it is part time, which is what we were looking for as my mom has been hired to come and be with cohen two days a week (mon-tue). i wish i didn't have to go back to work, and hopefully one day soon i won't need to anymore, but in the meantime this is one less thing to worry about, which means i can go back to enjoying these last sixty nine days without interruption. so i guess she was right, things do have a way or working out, sometimes sooner than we expect.