Ruby's Favorite Things II

The second edition of Ruby's Favorite Things:

1) Jumperoo



Ruby's favorite activity these days is bouncing in her Precious Planet Jumperoo. She can spend upwards of 20-30 min. jumping away, sometimes so vigorously that she has to close her eyes as if she's afraid the room will topple in around her. The toys on the Jumperoo light up and play music in response to her jumping, further adding to her delight. Anytime one of her little friends come over for a playdate, they always love playing in the jumperoo as well, and their parents leave with the intention of buying one for themselves. There are several baby products similar to the Jumperoo, such as the Exersaucer, which is like a Jumperoo without the jumpy cables, and the Doorway Jumper, which is like a Jumperoo without the surrounding toys. But why get either of these when through the genius of Fisher Price, you can have the best of both worlds?

2) Zip Front Sleep 'N Plays

If you follow photos of Ruby, you will notice that she is almost always dressed in a Zip Front Sleep 'N Play.



We discovered early on that this article of clothing is by far the easiest to take on and off. They are also very appropriate for the type of temperature it always is around here, and plus they are just gosh darn cute. Since she can both sleep 'n play in them, we saw no reason to ever dress Ruby in anything else. It wasn't until I started going to our playgroups that I noticed that other parents dress their babies in real clothes, and I was the only one who had my baby out in her pajamas. To spare her further embarrassment, I now dress Ruby in real clothes when we go out and keep her in Zip Front Sleep 'N Plays whenever she is home.

3) StayDry Bath Apron Towel

I have to commend the ingenuity of these bathtime towels. Not only do they keep you dry as you are giving the bath, they make it so much easier to dry off baby when the bath is done. Conventional hooded towels, while adorable, seem difficult to get your child into without getting yourself wet or making the baby cold.



With the bath apron towel, you can bring the baby directly to your chest and fold up the bottom of the apron to dry the baby and keep her warm. They also create many great photo opportunities.

Preschool preview

Last night Steve and I attended SF's annual Preschool Preview Night. Despite having received recommendations from many different sources that we should attend, I could not help but feel a little insane putting my 4.5-month-old baby on waitlists for preschool. However, I was redeemed by the presence of many pregnant women who were searching for preschools for their as-yet-unborn fetuses.

Overall, I feel like the event was more overwhelming than helpful. It was set up as an exhibition with a large roomful of booths representing the various preschools in the city. Swarms of eager parents crowded in front of the most "prestigious" preschool booths, such as the Montessori schools and all of the ones located in Presidio Heights. I approached one preschool representative and asked how one goes about applying for their school, and she explained to me that they were very focused on "connections." As I stared at her blankly, she advised me to start going to their functions, meet the teachers and other parents, write letters, etc. Apparently many preschools ask for letters of recommendation in their application, seriously.

At this point the only criteria that Steve and I have agreed upon is that we want to send Ruby to a play-based preschool versus academic-based. The academic-centered philosophy is that preschool is a place to prepare children for elementary school and to start teaching them the basics in reading, math, etc. I assume play-centered preschools are where kids eat playdough and finger paint. We want to go for the playdough and paint. In a world where you need letters of recommendation to get into preschool, we feel like it's our role to encourage her to be a slacker for as long as possible.

4 month check up

Ruby had her 4 month check up on Friday. She weighed 13 lbs 12 oz and was 26.75 inches long, which still puts her at around 50th percentile for weight and 95th percentile for height. The pediatrician said that we need to start transitioning her out of the cosleeper and into her own crib at night, and that we need to start setting a bedtime routine. Ruby has gotten into the habit of being nursed to sleep, and while she can fall asleep on her own for naps, she won't go to sleep at night unless she's nursing. We fell into the habit in an effort to have her eat as much as possible before going to bed so that she would sleep for longer through the night. I don't mind nursing her to sleep, but I guess it's supposed to be a bad habit for when she gets older. Unfortunately, I don't think I will be very good at breaking her of this habit because alas, I am weak, and I cannot resist this:

Childcare

I have been back at lab for a month now, and although productivity has not been high on my part, we are somewhat getting into our routine at home. Everyone told me that it would "get easier," and while it certainly is easier now than on Day 1, I'm not sure it's getting progressively easier. I have been staying at home with Ruby on most Wednesdays, so on Thursdays and Mondays when I have to leave her again, I still feel down in the dumps. This is despite the fact that I make things very easy on myself by coming home early whenever I can to take Ruby to playgroups and whatnot. It's the days when I'm gone the whole day that are the hardest, and I'm not sure I could do a job that would require me to be away all day every day. Like most babies, Ruby is at her best and happiest in the morning. By the time the evening comes along, she is often cranky and tired from her long day of playing, eating, and pooping. Unfortunately, this happens to coincide with the time the parents come home and are themselves tired and hungry. From my experience, on the days when I am away the whole day, there is a lot less opportunity to enjoy the baby and a lot more focus on accomplishing the essentials, i.e. feeding the baby, feeding myself, and putting the baby to bed.

For the first two weeks that I was back in lab, Steve stayed home with Ruby. This really helped me through the initial Leaving of the Baby, as I knew that Ruby was used to being with Steve, and they often skyped me during the day so that I could see them through the webcam. Since then, Ruby has been at home with the nanny, which has required a whole new set of adjustments on my part.

We found our nanny through Golden Gate Mothers Group, my primary source for everything baby. Finding childcare was one of the parts of parenthood that I was least looking forward to. However, I had started to consider my options long before Ruby was born. Her name has been on the waitlist for the UCSF childcare center at Mission Bay since we found out we were pregnant. However, we don't hold out any hope that she will be offered a spot, as the waitlist is so long that by the time we are called, Ruby might be fully grown. After considering our remaining childcare options, we decided that the most ideal was a nanny share, where two families share one nanny. We liked this arrangement for several reasons:

1) It's more economicable than having a single-family nanny.
2) It allows Ruby to have social interaction with another baby, much like having a sibling
3) It gives us a support system in the other parents, providing an extra set of eyes and increased security in the event that there is some issue with the nanny.

Although the concept is really great, we found out quickly that a nanny share is not so easy to set up. First there's the matter of which to find first, the family or the nanny. We initially met with several other families, but we realized that that was a little like putting the carriage in front of the horse, because what was most important to us was finding a good nanny. We decided that we would really like to have a Mandarin-speaking nanny so that Ruby can have some Mandarin immersion on a regular basis. While Steve and I do speak some Mandarin, we just can't muster the energy to speak it around Ruby all the time. Finding a Mandarin-speaking nanny was not as easy as I thought it would be, even in a city with so many Chinese people. Perhaps if we took out an ad in Chinatown or a Chinese newspaper we would have gotten a lot more leads, but I really felt more comfortable finding a nanny through a recommendation by another Golden Gate Mothers Group mom.

In the end, we only interviewed two nannies, and we decided on the first one. Our nanny is originally from Beijing, so her Mandarin is very easy for us to understand. She has about 9 years of nanny experience around the Bay Area with 3 different families. She has an 8-year-old daughter as well as a 22-year-old son who lives in China. Even though she had impeccable references and a great deal of knowledge about infants, I still had a lot of anxiety about entrusting Ruby to her care. The reality is that I would have had a lot of anxiety leaving Ruby with anyone, even if I found the Number One Mary Poppins Champion of the World Nanny.

I stayed at home for the nanny's first day to show her where everything was in the house and to teach her a bit about Ruby's habits and cues. The next day I went to work half of the day and called once to check in. By the nanny's second week, I stopped calling to check in so as to not be overbearing.

Ruby adjusted to the nanny much more easily than I did, and she has pretty much had no problems at all. So far, as nannies go, I feel like ours is pretty close to exactly what I was looking for. She plays with the baby and talks and sings to her in Chinese. Ruby seems to be able to take much longer naps when she's with the nanny, perhaps because she is tired out from being stimulated and active. She is quite fastidious; she's always careful not to jostle the baby too much right after she eats, and she makes sure the baby doesn't catch too much of a draft when they go on their afternoon walk. She's very communicative; she relays to me in great detail everything that happened during the day, including the exact times when the baby ate and napped, when she was fussy, and how many times she pooped. She is also quite laid-back for a middle-aged Chinese woman. When Ruby went through a green poop phase a couple of weeks ago, the nanny was the first to reassure us that it was normal and nothing to worry about.

Of course when most people envision the "ideal nanny," they think of someone who "loves the baby like their own child." If you were to ask me if our nanny loves our baby, then I would say the honest answer is no. Maybe there do exist nannies who truly love the children they care for during the day, but in my opinion, I don't think you should expect that the person you pay to look after your child will love her the same way you do. I think once I came to terms with that, I realized that our nanny is just about as close to the ideal nanny as one could get.

The process of finding a family to share our nanny with has also been more difficult than I imagined. Although there are many families looking for nanny shares, finding one that lives in a convenient location, works similar hours, and prefers a Mandarin-speaking nanny is not so easy. The search is still on-going, but we're currently speaking with a family that has a newborn baby boy who might join our nanny share in January.

One thing I've learned is that you can never start your childcare search too early in San Francisco. That's why next week Steve and I are going to attend the city's Preschool Preview Night in preparation for Ruby's enrollment in Fall of 2012. I hear from some other parents that we may already be too late ...