The Train is Leaving the Station
I mentioned a few weeks ago, I think, that Hannah would be leaving us soon. She went to a 3-days-a-week schedule in October (The Beaner goes to sharecare the other two days), and gave us notice that she'd be quitting entirely at the end of December. With her blessing, we started our search for a new nanny when Hannah went part time.
We ended up finding someone we really like who can work the exact days Hannah works now (which means The Beaner can still do sharecare), and she starts tomorrow. Tomorrow will be Hannah's last day. (They'll both be here to ease the transition for The Beaner and for the new nanny.) I'm excited about the new person—I really, really hope she turns out to be a good fit for all of us—but I'm kinda in denial about the fact that Hannah is leaving. It's hard to imagine Hannah not coming anymore.
I think the fact that she no longer comes every weekday has helped me get used to the idea that she won't come at all, but still, I will really miss her. I still think I never would have missed my first hockey practice if Hannah had been here that day, because we would have talked about it every time I went down to the kitchen. We're always chatting about politics or sports or women's rights or environmental issues or restaurants or travel or how she got that black eye and why I'm limping, what we did last weekend and what we plan to do this one while fixing breakfast or lunch. So despite the fact that I've had some time to adjust, I think I'm still going to be discombobulated when Hannah doesn't show up next week. The good news is that she'll still be available to babysit for us when we want to go out, and I know she'll come by to visit. She and the Beaner are great friends now (as are we), so she won't just disappear entirely.
I suspect also that she'll want to come by periodically to play with the new train set she bought The Beaner as an early birthday present. He was THRILLED when she gave it to him this morning, and it was a struggle to get him to leave it for a little while to go to the zoo. Al left before Hannah arrived this morning, so he hasn't seen the set in person; he asked me to take some video of it so he could see it virtually. I did that, and because I recorded for several minutes and wanted higher video quality, the resulting QuickTime movie is huge (13MB)... too big to include here on the blog. If you don't mind waiting a little while for the movie to load, you can click on the link below to see it.
The Beaner playing with his new train set (13MB)