High Expectations

Maybe I just have impossibly high standards. I am silently seething as I am blogging. I am at the computer so I can remove myself from a potentially explosive situation. The new nanny (nny) has been working for us for the last month. For the most part, it has been going ok. She is the polar opposite of our old nanny (aka she-devil). She is extremely loving to g. Well...loving to the point of being g's slave. g must think that the nny is hers because when I had once asked the nny to change s' diaper. g had a massive cow, a whole herd actually. Nny has been extremely indulgent and on the surface that is really good, right? Except I am of the school of structure. I do believe in loving my kids to death, but I do provide them with a structure, a list of do's and don'ts to abide by. With Nny, a lot of these rules have been flying out the window. I don't think it helps g It just makes her more demanding and less able to deal with a no.

Thus far, I have been the "heavy". It seems like for the last few weeks, I am always saying no to her. "No, you can't play with the medicine shelf. No, you can't stand on the chair. No, you can't jump on nny. " and so on and so forth. Nny used to let her play with water as she is washing her hands. I usually intervene, but once I just let it play out to see how Nny would deal with it. It went on for about 15 minutes with the water running full blast. It only lasted 15 minutes because I decided to step in before we drain enough water to fill a pool.

Don't get me wrong. Nny is receptive to our comments and tries her best. Communication has been the worst for us since she only speaks Mandarin. Gmom speaks bad Mandarin. I know the equivalent of 20 words and G knows about 50. It is almost like the UN without the aid of interpreters. So it has been really hard to share ideas with her or really explain our philosophy on child-rearing.

I am getting frustrated though this is a much better situation than a few weeks ago. meals are becoming a battleground now. Tonight, g refused to eat her fish and rice, opting instead to "learn" to use chopsticks. After a full 30 minutes of that, g asked for a clear soup with wintermelon. How much food is that really? So she had a bowl of soup and winter melon for dinner. This is g's last meal till the morning (a full 13 hours from now). Healthwise, I think despite the good stuff that is in the soup, it is hardly enough to provide her with everything she needs to grow. She has been having the soup with melon meal for almost a week now although most of the time it is not exclusively as is the case tonight.

I guess I should stop making soup or really start brushng up on my mandarin.