Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Desperately Seeking Mary Poppins

The one very good thing about being off of work longer than expected is that I have had plenty of time to work on finding a nanny for the little one. I'm planning to return to work mid-July, which means that Asher will be about 8 weeks old when it comes time to entrust him to a stranger. We do feel very fortunate that Crockett works from home and will be around in case of any emergencies and has some flexibility if our nanny arrangement does not work out. Plus, no need for a nanny cam! But I have no idea how I would find time to sort through all the applications we're receiving if I were working full time.

The nanny search has been interesting thus far. We have found a couple of great-sounding candidates and are interviewing one of them today. However, we have also run across some doozies, which has raised a lot of questions for me about the intelligence of job-seekers in the area. Some of my personal favorites include a woman who said she had a lot of experience with kids because she babysat her friends' children on occasion (her real jobs have been in other areas) and another whose resume only listed jobs at car dealerships. It has also been interesting to see what some people's concept of a "nanny" is; one woman said that she would like to be Asher's nanny but that she needed to watch him out of her own house (and we would have to drive him there and pick him up) because she needed to be home to take care of her SIX children as well--not exactly the one-on-one attention we were hoping for him to receive in the first few months of his life.

In the long run, I'm sure we'll find a great arrangement. But it is a real challenge for me, as a planner, to remember that it might not work on the first try. Maybe we'll get lucky. For now I'm keeping my eyes open for carpet bags.

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