2008-09-15 - 6:23 p.m.

...and the band plays on...

As I type this, Susi is down on the floor doing three-sixties. She can't crawl. And she's beginning to show the inevitable signs of stir-craziness - shaking her body with this frustrated sound.

Thanks to all of you who put in your opinions.. They were extremely useful in convincing me (us) that we probably weren't imagining our discontent.

But today we took stock of the situation... I went to look at my position on the waiting list for care at Mountain. Somehow we've slipped from #9 to #22 in line for 12 spaces. And for toddler care? We are #38 in line for 12 spaces. This prompted K to call around local childcare organizations to get us on waiting lists for when she is 3. Several places weren't even taking voice mail messages, because the sheer volume of calls is too high.

So we also put out another ad on the list of cra1g. K got five responses, all of a dubious nature. It's not a good market for childcare.

As you might imagine, this situation framed what we said to Nanny today. Because our options are basically bupkis. So instead, we had a talk about how things are going. During which we discussed how she's been absent-minded, and how we weren't feeling confident, etc.

The conversation sucked, basically.

It was our saying that these things weren't working out for us. And our saying, "is there any way we can improve this situation?" without coming out with the god's honest truth of what we were thinking...because such approaches truly get you nowhere.

She was visibly surprised by our conversation, and she did agree to work a bit harder at the things we mentioned. (Although Klaus said that through the conversation she was looking at the clock). And what else could she say?

And what else can we do? We are stuck. At least for the moment. We will see if she does a bit more to communicate, and if she works harder on doing all of the things that we've asked. And we will keep the ad up as well.

Who knows. Maybe our concern will do something.