The Nanny Saga
Aidan has been with a nanny all his life. I started interviewing caregivers when I was 4 months pregnant because I wanted to be prepared. I wanted time to get to know the person that would come to our house 5 days a week to look after our baby & our dog, Cali. I thought that I would find the perfect nanny and she’d look after Aidan until he turned 5 and started kindergarten. Boy was I wrong!
August 2011 (A=3 months): Nanny#1 was 18 years old and had a 2 year old daughter. They both lived with her parents, who watched her daughter while she worked. It was a great first nanny because we were paying a low weekly rate in cash, which worked out great for both of us…until 6 weeks later when she asked for more money VIA TEXT! After discussing with Ryan, we decided to let her go. She was honestly shocked and thought that we were in such a bad way that we would cave and pay whatever she asked. She was wrong.
September 2011 (A=4 months): Nanny#2 was 20 years old and had a 4 year old daughter. They both lived with the baby-daddy in an apartment. We had to pay her a little bit more than Nanny#1, but it was still a reasonable amount, in cash, that she got weekly. She swore to me up & down that she would never have to bring her daughter to our house because she had an arrangement with a relative who ran a daycare and that relative would watch her daughter while she worked. That lasted a couple of weeks and one day, she brought her daughter to our house in the morning. Before I left for work she told me something came up with the daycare so she had to bring her to our house. But she promised it was just this once. This went on for a couple of months where the daughter came every single day. Our house was getting slowly trashed and the love for Cali was quickly fading. I didn’t like what was happening, but Nanny#2 was good with Aidan and she genuinely loved caring for him so I sucked it up (cleaned my house) and just let her continue to bring her daughter to the house when she watched Aidan.
It was in October 2012 when work was getting so busy for me and Nanny#2 dropped a bombshell: she was struggling financially and was getting a 2nd job at McDonald’s. The only way she could make this 2nd job work was if Ryan continued to come home at his normal time of 4:30pm so she could get to the evening shift at McD’s. This only worked out for a couple of weeks before Ryan started coaching soccer after work so I had to guarantee getting out of work on time (during our busy holiday season) and pick up Aidan from the soccer field. I was so never on time. I was so stressed out.
The 2nd job made Nanny#2 tired and she started sleeping through her alarm and rolling to my house in the mornings about 30-45 minutes late. I remember screaming at her as I was running to my car to speed to work. My boss was getting tired of my tardiness and I ran out of excuses and started telling her the truth, “My nanny sucks!”
Aidan & I went to NH that year for Thanksgiving and I made a deal with Nanny#2: I’d pay her for the full week before I left for NH, she just had to come to our house everyday at noon to take the dog out to go pee. Just one visit. That’s all. It was a sweet deal if you were Nanny#2 because she was working double shifts at McD’s and getting paid in full (and in cash) by me for making a 20 minute stop each day. But this was too much for her to remember, so she took my cash and never let the dog out, not one single day.
I was livid. I screamed at her for probably the millionth time and after I hung up the phone, I started an online hunt for a new nanny as well as a daycare that would take my then 2 year old son. I got a couple leads on a few daycare programs, but they would cost more than what we were paying Nanny#2. Then if Aidan did go to daycare, we would have to hire a dog walker, which would mean even more money out of our pockets. You can imagine that my husband, the king of the finances, was not happy about any of this. He just wanted to let it all go and keep Nanny#2 to avoid paying any more money. But I was determined to fire her as soon as possible.
I decided to line up a few interviews with some nanny candidates for when I returned from our Thanksgiving trip to NH; and that’s how I found our current caregiver, Nanny#3.
January 2013 (A=1 1/2 years): Nanny#3 is the bomb! I’m so sorry I have to say goodbye to her in July when Aidan starts preschool. She has been A’s best friend for more than a year. But we all knew this would happen; one day, he’d grow up and need to go to school. I just can’t believe it’s finally here.
