OK, so, I must profess that I don’t actually know anything about the book, “It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us” by Hillary Rodham Clinton that I referenced in my blog post title.
I do, however, think the concept of having lots of awesome people taking part in your child’s life is important.
Having my family and friends involved in Lyla’s life is critical. When I was quite young, we spent a lot of time with my mom’s family, but as I got older she drifted from them as my cousins grew up and moved away, as things changed and as I grew up. By the time I was 15, I lost touch with all but my most immediately family, my mom and my sister.
I was close with my best friend’s family, Mike is the fifth of nine children and I spent a lot of time with them after we started hanging out in sixth grade.
After Jason and I started dating, I was blessed that his family is so wonderful, now I’m not saying there weren’t bumpy patches since I was 17 when we started dating and 19 when we got engaged but as we’ve grown up our relationships with his parents, his brother and his grandmother have gotten better.
One reason I was so dead set on moving back to Washington state after we lived in Las Vegas (where Jason attended UNLV and earned his business degree) was so that when we did decide to start a family we’d be near our own relatives. We knew there would be plenty of baby sitters.
As I’ve discussed in previous posts, we agonized over what we were going to do about child care.
In mid-December, Jason’s grandmother, Ellie was at our house with one of her sisters, Rae.
During the visit, Rae asked, “have you figured out what you’re going to do about child care?”
Oh, boy. This was a tough question while I was on maternity.
“We’re not sure yet,” I admitted.
“Oh, I’ll take care of her,” Ellie said.
She had a big smile on her face. I was thrilled. Having a family member take care of Lyla would be ideal but Jason and I had thought his mom would have retired (she’s got more than 35 years in with the Bellevue Fire Department) and would be available. We didn’t think Ellie would be available and we definitely didn’t know if we should even ask her to take on such a task.
Believe it or not, up until little more than a year ago, she was working. In fact, she was taking care of Jordan and Madison, providing in home care for those kiddos from the time Jordan was a little boy. They were the ring bearer and flower girl in our wedding.
They’re teenagers now and changes in the family left Ellie without work.
It must have been meant to be … just a few months later I was pregnant.
So, starting tomorrow, she’ll come over and help us out. Jason goes back to work next week so she is going to spend this week with him learning about what we do, where everything is, and so on.
No one is better qualified. She’s the second oldest of eight children, raised two children of her own, helped take care of my husband and his brother then later took care of Jordan and Madison.
What’s more, she only lives about 20 minutes away from us off Issaquah-Hobart Road, about halfway between Four Corners and Issaquah.
I am stoked.
Jason tells me she’s pretty excited, too.
Maybe it doesn’t take a village, it just takes a great family, and I feel so blessed that we can give that to Lyla.

Here’s Ellie and Lyla the day our baby girl was born.