mixed feelings

I am feeling quite mixed up at the moment about having household help.  On the one hand, it is nice to have someone else do the sweep/vacuum/mop routine, and to have somebody look after the kids while I am doing the grocery shopping or going to my piano lesson, for instance.  But on the other hand, I am very very VERY used to having Emma and Daniel accompany me everywhere I go, and having them around when I do the cleaning.  Emma even helps out by now.  It is hard, exceptionally hard sometimes to have to carry four piano books, a super-bundled up baby (the clothes have more volume than the baby at this point of winter), and a toddler that is dressed in head to toe snow gear to the point that she needs help getting in and out of the car.  I definitely stress out about not having enough hands.  So that madness can end now...

On the other hand...how sweet to have my two children with me everywhere.  They are part of my life just like the air I breathe.  The post office lady knows them, and is used to me shuffling boxes and baby while struggling to find my VISA, all at the same time as unwrapping the compulsory lollipop that Emma gets whenever we go there (she has learned to expect it, and now she asks the post office lady for it shamelessly!).  The piano teacher is used to holding my baby on her lap, while Emma is sitting on her couch looking at books.  The baby is used to being on the kitchen floor while Emma and I empty the dishwasher.  It is not always love all around, but it mostly is, and we are incredibly close.  Now this bond is about to change somehow, because of the presence of the nanny, and because of the shortened amount of time that I will be spending with the kids.  I feel that we are always going to be quite attached at the hip, if the kids allow it, because that is my natural tendency, but the truth is that we will probably never be quite as close as we have been during this past year.  So much has happened, so much trauma, so many miracles, so much drama, so much love, and while it was hard, it created this intimacy that envelops us at this point, and that I am scared of losing.

As an aside, I am suddenly aware that ever since I have emigrated to Canada in my late teens, it has been just my nuclear family around me and no other relatives or help of any kind.  It was difficult, but  it created a type of enmeshment which I have felt comfortable recreating within my own family.  I love having just MrH, Emma and Daniel around, and nobody else. I feel a bit protective towards this small and dear family of mine, and do not want to share this space and this love with anybody else.  I am pretty sure that somewhere in the past few sentences I have lost all logic and am thinking with my primitive brain, the one that is trying to protect the tribe from intruders.  Even when the intruders are helping me clean the house and make it possible for me to work, earn money and practice the profession that I love.  Sounds terrible, doesn't it?