Mother's Helper

Now that Evelyn is 15 months old, we've started to get "the question" again. You know.

* * *

Acquaintance: "I can't how big she's getting! How old is she now?"

John/Emma: "A little over 15 months."

Acquaintance: "15 months, huh?" Significant look at my abdomen. "Any news to share?"

* * *

Come on people! It's just a little holiday weight!

My memories of breastfeeding and entertaining an infant on little to no sleep are still too fresh to be ready to "try" again.

The other day while doing some "internet research," I realized what I need for my next go round. "A Mother's Helper essentially helps out a stay-at-home parent or a family needing extra help while they are home. A Mother's Helper mostly works under some supervision to handle all aspects of child care, errands, easy meal preparation and light house work. Because of the varied duties and because an adult is often in the home as well, the role is different than that of a babysitter, nanny or in-home provider." Childcare.about.com.

How, you might ask, is a single-income family such as ours going to afford this luxury while living in one of the world's most expensive cities during the biggest recession in decades? It's simple, really. We just need to reallocate resources and encourage Evelyn to start doing her share. She's getting there slowly but surely. Examples:

Feeding oneself - one step closer to feeding a younger sibling

Learning to use the ergo carrier

Entertaining the baby

To illustrate the progress she's made, I offer the following example. A few short months ago, Evelyn was total deadweight when laundry time rolled around. Literally. Every Monday would see me dragging baby, bumbo, two hampers, detergent and a pocketful of quarters back and forth alone. Things started looking up after her birthday when she learned to walk. At first, she could walk down as long as I held her hand. Now, she walks to and from the laundry room by herself with only verbal encouragement (No! Yucky! Come with Mommy! Evelyn, look at Mommy! Come over here! No, yucky trash!). Yesterday was laundry day. As is my custom, I sorted through the laundry before putting it in the dryer to pull out items for air drying. I then hung said items on the drying rack in our bedroom and went about my business. A couple hours later, I walked into the kitchen to find the kitchen rug, which I had washed and hung to dry in the bedroom, back in its place on the kitchen floor. Evelyn had gone into the bedroom, pulled ONLY the rug off the drying rack, taken it into the kitchen, and laid it out on the floor in front of the sink. As you can see, this marks a big improvement over her usual throw-everything-on-the-drying-rack-into-a-pile-on-the-floor routine.

In fact, come to think of it, at this rate a second child could be closer than we think.