It's been a while since I have posted here. Life has been so busy! Our business is picking up, the kids are back to school, we all have to get to karate twice a week, soccer 4 to 5 days a week, guitar lessons...that doesn't leave much time for taking care of the household! I should have a lot of time on my hands, since my kids are in school 6 hours a day, but there is this one major factor...my 11 month old nephew!
I love the kid! He's great! I'm so thankful that I have been able to spend the last year with him while his parents are working. It's been so nice being able to bond with him and my kids have gotten to be close with their cousin. When I was a kid, we were always around family. I knew my cousins well, and we spent a lot of time together. As we got older, that didn't happen as much, and now as adults I keep in contact with them through facebook and we get together on occasion, but we're not close.
My husband and I have been discussing a lot of things that need to change in our lives! We have a business for a reason...so I can stay home and raise our kids. The business is how I make money. It's been slow, so it hasn't been an issue for a while, but now things are picking up and I need more time. How do I get more time? The most logical answer is to stop watching my nephew. So my husband came up with a plan to tell his sister that we were done watching her son as of October 1. I told him 2 weeks notice wasn't fair, at least give her til the end of the year. He agreed, and we wanted to make time to talk to her and her husband when we could both be there, but it just didn't work out. So he went to talk to them on his own.
I would love to say that they reacted well and were happy to get 3 1/2 months notice. However, that wasn't the case. They got really defensive and said if I couldn't handle it I shouldn't have committed to it. Then she said it is my job, she hired me to watch her kid, and I am committed to it. She broke down into tears, got mad, made rude comments. I'm sure it was a great conversation for my husband to go through! He said he was nice about it all. He told her that we didn't watch their kid for the money, it was to help them out, and that none of us committed to any specific amount of time to watch him. He explained how our business is picking up, and that is how I make money for the family and how I want to be able to volunteer at school for my kids. She didn't care though. It was all about her and what was she going to do. By the end, they said they weren't mad and they would figure something out. However, a couple days later, I forgot to give her back some stuff for the baby and asked if I could drop it off. My husband said he was going there anyway to pick something else up, so I texted her and told her he would be coming later. He rang the doorbell. She opened the door just enough to grab the bag, grunted when my husband said "Sorry we forgot to give this to you" and slammed the door on him.
My thoughts on the whole situation are this:
- they have issues with me because I stood up to them regarding them not treating my son the way they treated my husband's son and it was making my son feel bad. Because they didn't want to hear it, they stopped talking to us for 3 years.
- As with any job I have ever had, I have the right to give 2 weeks notice to end my employment. Apparently, she sees me as her employee, which I am not! She should be happy to have gotten 3 1/2 months notice. She would have gotten 2 weeks notice if my husband had anything to say about it!
- They have been struggling for months over money. They had a house and an apartment. They were getting money from his parents and her parents to pay the mortgage on their house for the past year or so. And as of last month, they stopped paying the mortgage so they could let it go into foreclosure. They should totally understand that we need to make money to pay our bills too, and our business is the only way I make money.
- To say this is my "job" when I only get paid $20 a day for watching her kid for 10+ hours is a joke! We did this to help them, not for the money. $20 a day won't buy much, especially for a family of 5.
- My family and my business come first. I can't not take new business because of someone else's kid. I can't not volunteer at my kids schools because I have to take care of someone else's kid. I don't think it's fair to my family to put someone else's kid before them.
- She has made horrible comments about me in the past. She is always very cold to me. It's awkward being around her. She has never liked me. We have never been close. So why should I give up everything in my world for her? She told my husband's brother when I first agreed to watch the baby for $20 a day that she was making out! She knew she was getting a great deal. She's ok with taking advantage of me!
- Along with the taking advantage of me thing...she is always picking him up late. Sometimes I get a call or text and sometimes I get nothing. He is at my house from 5:45am to 4pm. She'll get here anytime between 4pm and 5pm to pick him up. She claims she can't take him food shopping, so she will stop and pick stuff up on her way. As if I have nothing better to do with my time!
I think the thing that bugs me the most about all of this is that when my oldest son was younger, I did work full time and my parents watched him. They watched him for a while, and then one day, they told me they couldn't do it anymore because my dad had lung cancer. It was a horrible thing to hear my dad say he had lung cancer. Trying to deal with that was just too much for me to handle. On top of that, I wanted to make arrangements quickly so I had someone to care for my son. Did I get mad at them or call them names? Of course not! I understand that life happens and you have to take responsibility and go with the flow. I was able to find a daycare quickly and I enrolled him so he could start asap. Still, I didn't get over the shock of my dad being sick.
My point is that I got a bombshell dropped on me when my parents told me they couldn't watch my son anymore, but I did what I needed to do without complaint. She is complaining about me stopping in December, and yet she has 3 1/2 months to find someone else. She has a lot of nerve.
Life happens, and it may not always be the way you want it to happen but you have to go with the flow. It's not the end of the world that we put an end date on watching her kid. Maybe it will push her to actually find a job and move to where her husband is so they can be together and she can stop complaining about that!
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