I took a little blogging break because,well, I'm really busy. I know, I know, we all are. But, my day starts between 5 and 6 AM and goes non-stop until 9 PM. Every day. Including Saturdays and Sundays. I'm not complaining, mind you, because I'm totally in love with my life in a HUGE way, I just can't always think of things to write about. Until this morning.

This is how my nanny makes me feel sometimes:

Now, before you utter the over-used and outstandingly annoying phrase "first world problem", I would like to clarify that I don't give a shit about what you think. We can afford to have a nanny and we have to work so we have one.

Our nanny is a sweet little lady who is amazing with our daughter. She is fun, energetic and really loves her, and our girl loves her back. At the end of the day, this is the most important thing. However, there are a few hundred things in between that drive me bat shit. In the beginning, when I first came back to work (which, btw, was the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life, hands down) our girl was not napping well, not taking the bottle because I'd exclusively breastfed her my entire maternity leave, and over-all being displeased with the fact that Mommy wasn't around. I cried every day for months. My nanny only served to make this worse by complaining that the fussiness and non-napping was making her job difficult and that we "really had to do something" and that our girl "wasn't like other babies". At the time, I wasn't really sure how to negotiate this new relationship so I just stifled the urge to quit my job and toss her out a window. Finally, I had a full-scale meltdown on her, and she stopped. While I want her to be happy every day since she is taking care of the single most important thing in my life , I was also not able to stand for that bs any longer.

Fast forward through about 5 months of her only getting on my nerves occasionally and sans thoughts of window-tossing, she has now found a new way to make me crazy. She is instructing me daily on things that our girl should and should not be allowed to do and how I should be keeping my house. For example, this morning our girl was running around with a container of my eye cream. I gave it to her to distract her while I got ready since Baby Daddy had already left for the day. The minute Nanny walked into the door she said "Oh, no. Jesseeecah you cannot give her that. She will choke on it. Let me tell you something, hear me: you have to tell her no sometimes." Here is what went through my head:

"First of all, you annoying twit, she is NOT going to CHOKE on the small TUB of eye-cream that she wouldn't even be able to fit all the way in her mouth. According to you, she would choke on a spatula if I let her have it. Secondly, thanks for the lesson in PARENTING ONE OH FUCKING ONE!Get out! Get out! Get out!!"

Here is what I said:

"Yes, I tell her no all of the time. I just personally didn't see it as an issue that she was carrying around my eye cream."

Here is what she said:

"Oh, you shouldn't tell her no ALL of the time. That's not good."

Somehow, she is still living.

A week ago, she came in, looked at our living room and said "Jessecah, this place is a mess. What happened?". Startled, I said that our girl had been playing all morning so of course it was a little messy. She replied that she was referring to the remnants of an animal cracker massacre on the rug, and went on for 10 minutes about how we were all "supposed to work together" to keep things neat. Here is what went through my head:

"HEY. LADY. Guess whose house you're in? Just guess. I'll wait. TIME IS UP. You are in MY HOUSE. MINE MINE MINE MINE."

Here is what I did:

Vacuumed while she was still talking, then left for work.

The next morning she was sweet as pie, clearly feeling a little guilty for her OCD outburst. She asked nice questions about how I was doing, how is my Mom and what are her paintings like? Everything inside of me wanted to smile sweetly and chat lightly, all while walking to the pantry, filling a ziploc bag with animal crackers, walk out to the living room, toss the bag casually onto the floor, crush them with my foot, pour the crumbs out all over the rug, kiss my sweet girl goodbye, and skip off to work.

If I close my eyes I can imagine of horror on her face and it is amazing.