Good By No Pair - Embracing Change

So, the No Pair has officially vacated the house, and after a rousing game of name that mental illness (borderline personality disorder), we are officially ready to move on to our au pair less life. Since Conor is going to kindergarten in the fall, and we have alot of resources locally, we decided that we no longer needed an au pair anymore. Although we had two that were absolutely wonderful, the bad ones really take it out of you, and I am tired of dealing with a teenager in addition to my three little ones.

I have spent my past week or so frantically trying to re-arrange our schedule to have some sort of child care accommodations. While this is difficult already, there are many more challenges when you have a child with life threatening food allergies, severe cat allergies, many enviormental allergies and asthma. There is one wonderful woman near my house that picks up at the local elementary school and will take Michael and Natalie one day a week. I was all set up to send Conor one morning a week also, and she was ready to try and accommodate his food allergies, when I made the very unfortunate discovery that she has cats. .....Check that one off the list.

But you know, we are muddling through...... I am so thankful to have found the nut free school where Conor will go to kindergarten. He can stay later on the days he goes there, and they have a wonderful summer camp he can also attend. I found a local woman who is older, has a grown daughter with asthma, and is very responsible to help watch the kids on occasion. We joined a gym that has a safe child care everyone can go to.

At first I was frightened and scared about what we were going to do, and how this change was going to effect us. Then Mick and I sat down, and really talked about it. What I was really afraid of was not having new child care options, but the change itself. When we first discovered Conor was allergic to peanuts, it was a shock out of the blue that changed our lives in that very instant. This was also a shock, but I think in a good way. We as a family were able to sit down and re-evaluate what we want from each other and our time together. We were able to use this upheaval in our day to day lives as a way to communicate with the children about how much we love them and how important our family is to us. We were able to address our fear of change and embrace it. Fortunately or unfortunately change is an inevitable part of life. I guess I need to change the way I view change.