Strap-on Nanny

After all the nanny-cam stories that have been coming out, many families worry that even the sweetest nanny could be treating your baby like a sack of potatoes when you're not looking. When you leave your children with another adult, you would have to be blind and dumb not to at least consider the possibility that something bad could be happening when you're not around.

Thankfully, I work from home and I can either see or hear what the nanny is up to 90% of the time. The other 10% is when she is out with T-Bone at storytime, art class, or some other pre-approved activity. (Of course for all I know they're spending their time at the McDonald's drive-thru, eating donut holes and sucking lead paint off a happy meal toy). The baby is never totally alone with the nanny. So I don't worry too much about the nanny-cam stuff.

References and work history are sufficient to determine that your nanny is not a convict or a flight risk. But how do you really know what your nanny is made of?

When we interviewed nanny candidates, my husband would always do informal background checks by way of internet sleuthing -- it is amazing what kids will post on their myspace pages. One had a friend pictured with a gun (or a very realistic looking toy gun).. NEXT! One had photos of herself in drunken stupors (pretty much stock myspace stuff, but not something you want in nanny).

One candidate had this message displayed on her publicly available myspace page (names changed to protect the innocent slutty):

"hahaha oooooooh yes it was definitely FUN! i don't remember anything really, that shit was good. i was royally fucked up haha. :) i sent ashley a text message saying i wanted to fuck the shit out her with a strap on. what the fuck! lol oh dear, the things i say when i'm out of my mind :) love you girly!"

Well, long story short, strap-on girl is now our Strap-on Nanny.

In all other respects she was the perfect candidate -- solid live-in experience, references, sweet and personable. What she does with her friends in her free time does not impact her ability to make a PB&J, to drive or to change a poopy diaper. In fact in the 5 or so months since she's been with us things have been great.

Until last night. Every night my husband does a cursory check of the home computer history... He usually finds nothing of note. Photos of friends, emails about weekend plans. Even a cute photo or two of our own adorable children. But last night was different.

He came into the bedroom while I was putting the baby down.

He says "I don't know if I should even tell you about this..."

Of course then I'm immediately thinking jesus, tell me right now!

And he continues, "But I think I need you to look at it to verify something."

Me: "Verify what?"

Him: "Well, that it's an adult."

An adult what!???, should I be concerned for our children?

We go on with a bizarre form of twenty questions before I determine that while looking at Strap-on's email history, my husband discovered a photo of, er, how do I say this? A hairless va-jay-jay taken with a cell phone camera. Because it was hairless, my husband could not immediately determine if it was that of an adult.

Ok, so I'm a little dismayed that my husband cannot differentiate between an infant's vagina and some skanky ho's hairless hoo-ha. For that reason I did not panic, because I was pretty sure a child's private parts would be glaringly obvious.

So I put the baby down and we go to the computer together. He pulls up the photo. I look. And I look. I do have to look for quite a bit because, yes indeed it doesn't look quite adult. But then again, perhaps my perception is a bit skewed, but I digress. After careful consideration we both conclude that it is in fact the bald cooter of a grown woman. Further, we are fairly certain it is the vagina of our very own Strap-on Nanny.

For the next few hours we mull it over. We determined that Strap-on had taken the photo with her cell phone, at a location other than our home. She then sent it to herself at an internet mail address. Where she planned to send it from there is anyone's guess. Does that even matter?

I'll get to the punchline and just say we are not going to fire her. Again, there is nothing to indicate that this behavior interferes with her ability to make a PB&J (so long as she washes her hands first). We lived on the west coast long enough to be pretty hip with any shit people may be into -- in their free time and far away from our children.

But if we weren't moving in less than a year we would seriously be reconsidering our longterm childcare options. Who does this? Not just the hairless part, but the photo taking and sending part? I mean, is the straight up skanky-ho behavior, or is this what all the kids are doing with technology and the internets? If it's the later, then god help us when our daughters are grown....

Spitzer Sparks Debate

Thanks Eliot. I was happily sailing into my seventh month post-partum with nary a peep from my poor, poor neglected husband, when BAM, the whole world is suddenly talking about $4000 sex with a 22 year old with three aliases.
And worse - the whole damn world is talking about salad tossing. What does all this have to do with my neglected husband? We'll get to that...

Over the last week or so since the story broke, everyone -- and by everyone I'm not just talking about the housewives of the Upper East side on urbanbaby.com -- every "news" source from rag to respectable has gotten in on this opportunity to discuss this imminently titillating event.

My observation is that the analysis falls clearly into two camps, answering one of two questions:

1) Why did he do something so Stupid!? These are the psycho-analyzers. The people who think that he has to be sick to do something so careless, cruel and self-destructive. I tend to fall into this camp, or at least I want to fall into it. Normally law-abiding, healthy adult males do not frequent prostitutes. And even if you won't give me that, normal, law-abiding, presidential hopefuls do not frequent prostitutes.


2) Can this happen to me? (with the other half of the partnership asking "why can't this happen for me?") These are the folks who just see the sexless marriage (we speculate), and human nature, men will be men, yadda yadda. For this group, Spitzer is a warning (or a threat). Don't let this happen to your marriage! And the corollary "This is what will happen to us if you don't shape up (or even more ominously --if you don't toss the salad)!"

So back to the MOT household. This is our problem: I am solidly in Camp #1, and my husband, poor misled soul that he is, is in Camp #2. What my husband doesn't understand, is that even if Camp #2 has it right, there are several key elements of our situation that distinguish us from the Spitzers.

1. I'm still breastfeeding. I am tapped out, no pun intended, as far as physical contact goes. For this reason, our drought is not the result of a broken, worn out marriage -- rather it is merely nature's way of protecting me from certain death that would come from a third pregnancy within 3 years. The result of a broken, worn out womb? Perhaps.

2. I'm still breastfeeding. The baby still doesn't even take a bottle. That means every 3-4 hours, 24/7. So, I'm pretty much tired all. the. time. See above re: drought.

3. My husband is not the governor. Not sure how this works for us. Arguably if he were the governor, that might jazz things up a bit, so perhaps this one doesn't count with respect to the drought.

4. We've only been married 4 years and 5 months. The Spitzers have been together over 20 years. So even if things were really, really bad, our drought could only be 4 years long, and since we have a seven month old baby, it could biologically only be 17 months long. So by my calculation, we have, oh, 15 more years before one of us can justify a Spitzer.

5. Our ATM limits withdrawals to $300 per day.

6. Did I mention that I'm still breastfeeding? Because that is basically the cause and excuse for pretty much everything for me and the universe, as far as I'm concerned.

So whether the warning/threat applies or not, couples all over the eastern seaboard, have Eliot to thank for opening up the airwaves for these important questions.... Would a healthy adult male frequent a prostitute? Wow, I didn't know the feds tracked large cash withdrawals?! How come you won't toss my salad? And maybe in some small way, couples will be better off, thanks to Eliot.

Anonymous

This is my goal in life: to make a bazillion dollars, legally change my name to "Anonymous" and then make donations to Children's libraries across the country, with the condition that they change the name to the Anonymous A. Anonymous Library.

Most Embarrassing Moment, Really?

Somewhere in the book called Script Writing for Reality Competition Shows, if it existed, is a chapter about having the contestants respond to the question: "What was your most embarrassing moment?"

Ok, I admit, that's just a creative way for me to get around saying, "Last night, on American Idol, they asked the contestants, What was your most embarrassing moment?..."

Of course when you hear the responses, "I tripped during my flute recital" etc, you start to think about your own blush-inducing life moments... Thinking of my own embarrassing moments always makes me chuckle. And then it occurred to me that I have a strange need to share my embarrassing moments at every possible opportunity, and in fact they aren't really embarrassing. Is that normal? I just find it strangely liberating, and because they always seem to involve poop, I find them downright hilarious. I hope you do too.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, you did not come to the wrong place. This is still a mommy blog, and not a fecal fetish site, or similar. No worries. I promise not to talk about poop in more than 20% of my entries; and at least 90% of poop-related entries will involve only baby-poop (not mommy poop).

So yes, if asked this question during my Reality Show Competition, my "most embarrassing* moment" would be:

Pooping in the delivery room with Baby #2 (gotta come up with a name for her!). Every woman facing childbirth for the first time knows that this is a possibility. I worried about it before and during delivery of T-Bone. I even fretted about it to the nurse, asking her to let me use the bathroom ten times before they hooked me up to the IV -- when I knew I would be peeing through a catheter and pooping on the table from there on out... But with T-Bone no poop was forthcoming. I was actually a bit disappointed. Well none that I know of.

Long, sordid story short, it happened with Baby #2, and I am certain of it. I could have missed it, but my husband was kind enough inform me in his own subtle way. During some of the more intense contractions, he looked at me with that wide-eyed inquisitive face that is usually reserved for the aisles of Borders and other public places to silently ask "Did you FART?" but in this case the facial expression was so exaggerated and fill with horror, it was clear that I had not only farted, but also shat right there on the table in front of a room full of people. And if the facial expression was not clear enough, he also added the ever-so-subtle wave of his hand as if to say P.U. Gee thanks for the update honey!

Of course at the time I could not have cared less, nor did I see any humor in the situation. I was just happy to have had my bladder finally relieved with some magical maneuvering of the baby's head to un-block the catheter, and whatever else was choosing to clear-on-out of there to make way for the baby, was A-OKAY by me. But looking back, yeah it's funny.

*Is this really embarrassing? Well, can a woman who has lived through childbirth ever be embarrassed by bodily functions?

SDIADLD (Sleep Deprivation Induced Attention Deficit Lethargy Disorder

Oh for fucks sake I have just about had E-NOUGH of this sleep deprivation thing. Maybe that's why I didn't write for so long? A little sleep deprivation makes me punchy and funny. Well I make myself laugh, at least, which could be a result of the sleep-deprivation, but I digress.... A LOT of sleep deprivation makes me downright stupid.

We're now going on 7 months of sleep deprivation. Woah, wait, did I say "we"? Because there's really no "we" in the 4 am club at the M.O.T. household. Last time I checked, the baby gets plenty of sleep. And there's no one else awake, lurking in the bedroom at 12 pm, 2, 3 or 5 am. Yeah, I could play along with the whole "we're" having a baby, and in a pinch "we're" pregnant. I don't want to leave Chris out entirely, but let's be honest here about sleep. No one else is feeding this baby. I know, she should be taking a bottle from daddy. I know, I KNOW. We suck and are THAT lazy and somehow managed to miss the good windows for introducing the bottle. That and our tolerance for screaming baby is just that low. When you're that tired, tolerance of pretty much anything is limited.

So where was I? Oh yeah. Attention Deficit. The worst part about sleep deprivation, I've found, is that I can't get shit done. Not because I'm so bone-achingly fatigued (even though I am), or because I'm spending my days napping (I wish!). No, I can't get shit done because about thirty seconds into the project I forget: i) why I'm doing it; ii) how to do it; or ii) what the hell it is I'm even doing.

The most sinister part of this infliction is that while sleep deprived and mortally bonded to the 3-4 hour feeding cycle, you think of so many great things you want to accomplish in life... yet none of it has a snowballs chance in hell of getting done, at least not this year. The time and the attention span required just isn't there. So the least I can do is jot it down in a blog entry, and hope to come back to it someday.

Lifetime projects I will not get done this year:

* Pull out the guitar and brush up on those Police and CSN songs that my instructor painstakingly transcribed for me in 11th grade;

* Pick up knitting again (become wonderfully proficient at it; i.e., move beyond the scarf) and knit beautiful sweaters for the girls to wear and cherish for generations;

* write that novel!;

* finish, or in Baby #2s case, start the baby book;

there are more, but for the life of me I can't remember them now....So thank god for blogs, right? I can just spew my shit here and call it a body of work and feel like I've gotten something done, right?