"Just keep swimming..."

God grant me the serenity 

to accept the things I cannot change; 

courage to change the things I can; 

and the wisdom to know the difference. 

Adam gave this to me and I keep it in my purse. I recite it to myself often when I get overwhelmed. Turns out it came in handy today... 

This morning as we were talking about how to spend the day, we received a call from our helper agency. The manager called to let us know that the current employer of our helper (the family she is living with) would not release her. Actually, according to the employer "I might release her Wednesday, maybe in 2 weeks, maybe in 30 days." When the owner explained why the paperwork wasn't ready yet she replied with, "Not my business, not my problem. I will release her when I want." I am shocked by her attitude and so, so saddened by the fact that Michelle won't be coming to live with us. We were really excited to have her join our family and had been building it up all week for the boys. 

Given this, I called another agency (who many moms around here have used) and explained the situation. He had several girls for us to meet, so we rushed out (with exhausted boys) to do more interviews. I want to respect their procedures and way of doing things here, so I'll just say that we experience a mixture of feelings going through the interview process. It's very sad to me, yet I would never want to demean what they do by feeling sorry for them. We've met a lot of kind, caring and wonderful ladies. We ended up finding a wonderful lady, named Annie, who will join our family on Friday evening. We are SO fortunate that an SAIS (our school) family jumped in to help us with childcare for this week, as we were left in a complete bind.

The thing that really takes me by surprise is how different it is over here when it comes to childcare. In the states, we spent months searching for the right nanny, gave 2nd and 3rd interviews to top candidates and had endless conversations about who would be the best fit. Here, helpers are the norm for working families (and even those with stay at home moms). So, I've had to let go of my anxieties and know that we're living in their culture, doing things a little differently. And that's okay.  

I hate that we don't have any contact with Michelle. We know she was so excited to watch the boys, as we were excited to have her. However, when we offered the job to Annie, there was a lot of cheering, hugs and smiles. 

Deep breath... All ended up well.