A Nanny Story

4 (almost 5) months in and I haven’t gone insane!

Yeah yeah, I haven’t posted in forever. My goal when I started this was to post like weekly or whatever and CLEARLY that hasn’t happened. (oops!)

So much has changed, and yet, so much has stayed the same! I’m still not trusted with car seats..so that def sucks. I’d love to be able to take them to the shopping center down the street to hang out or to one of the theme parks, but oh well.

My roommate came out here one day and brought some little minions she was watching and we took them all to the park. That was a lot of fun and I think my minions loved having friends to play with. Plus, we packed a picnic lunch to have at the playground which is always exciting.

I can’t remember where I last left off about the whole “big-boys-wear-their-undies-and-if-I-have-to-chase-you-around-this-house-to-put-them-on-one-more-time-I’m-gonna-glue-them-to-your-tiny-body (but not really because I’d never do anything like that ever so please don’t report me to the authorities)” thing, but that is no longer an issue. (cue the angel chorus)

As we near the age of 3, X LOVES to test me and his limits. And absolutely loves to say no. And that..is..SO fun. Kung Fu Panda was in the movie rotation for a while but he started using his Kung fu powers for evil instead of good so we no longer watch that movie. (Poor little A got the brunt of it, too)

A is talking more, which is exciting..and its fun to watch her learn new words and new things. When I get her up from her nap she always gives me the biggest hugs that melt my heart.

Ive brought my boyfriend (bf-from now on) with me to work a lot and X and A LOVE LOVE playing with him. (I’m not sure who loves it more, them or bf! ;-) haha)

Next week I get some days off for 4th of July, so that is VERY exciting.

I hopefully will be posting more often, but I make no promises!

Good Grief.

Soooo….I (obviously) haven’t posted in FOREVER, but I had this in my drafts, so I thought of post it..I mean, I did take the time to write it all!!

First things first. I had the WORST DAY EVER with X and A a week ago. All morning long they were perfect lovely little people and then at lunch X LOST HIS MIND. I decided I was going to feed him ravioli for lunch, and took his shirt off him so it wouldn’t get covered in sauce. Well, that was not cool with him. He began to cry-no, SCREAM HIS HEAD OFF. *Side note: he likes to do this thing when he’s being a jerk where he pushes his plate of food, cup of milk, etc to the other side of the table, and naturally that makes a huge mess that I have to clean up while he laughs.* To avoid a mess, I scooted his chair away from the table and told him when he calmed down enough to tell me what was wrong then he could go back to the table, but since he’s screaming so much then I have no idea how to help him. Now, I understand, he’s two. BUT. This kid can count to 13, remember words to songs, and say my last name—which is very impressive, if you know my last name. Don’t tell me he doesn’t understand what’s wrong or doesn’t know how to express it to me. (Anyway, he did, finally, tell me that he wanted his shirt off once he got himself together) I finally gave in and put his shirt back on him and tried to get him to eat his food and he didn’t want that. He wanted peanut butter toast. So, at this point, I was so done with the whole situation that I gave in. I need to add that while all this was happening, little A had finished her food and was now screaming because she wanted to get up. So, I put her in the living room so she could play while I finished with X. (Their living room has baby gates and is completely baby proof so if I need to do something in the kitchen or whatever, I can leave them in there no problem and not worry.) Anyway. A starts screaming while I’m fixing X his *other* lunch. *insert eye roll here* I ignored her at first because a lot of the time, she gets upset when we’re both in the kitchen without her. When her crying didn’t stop I peak around the corner and HER LEG IS STUCK IN THE RAILING OF THE BABY GATE. If you ever watched 911 Rescue, then maybe you know my sudden panic. (The episode where the boy got his jacket string caught in the escalator haunts me to this day…and there was another one with someone getting something stuck in the toilet? Idk..I don’t remember, but it was horrible, whatever it was) All I could think of in that moment was having to explain to little A’s parents why the fire rescue team had to come cut her leg out of the baby gate. Anyway, with some very panicked effort, I finally got her leg free.

A month later..

Well, I’ve survived a month and I didn’t have to tie either of them to a tree once! (don’t get me wrong, I was very tempted on multiple occasions)

Things I’ve learned:

- A quick phone call to Buzz Lightyear can make a two year old do just about anything.
- No matter how insane they get if you put them in a bathtub they’re instantly happy.
- It could be -20 outside but as long as the water table is full, they’re soaked and happy.
- Bananas aren’t fun to clean out of the carpet.
- Shit happens. (literally) …and then it gets under your nails and you wanna barf…

Now, don’t get me wrong. For a two year old, X is probably an angel. We don’t have daily meltdowns, he goes potty on his own, and he’s too smart for his own good. With that being said, he drives me CRAZY. If I had a dollar for every time I say “eat your peanut butter toast” or “put your undies on” I would be retiring next year on some beach somewhere. Yet, somehow no matter how much of a monster he’s been all day, all it takes is a sweet little hug and I no longer want to tie him to that tree. Example: the other day he had been absolutely horrible. Screaming about everything, pushing his sister, climbing all over anything he could. So, after lunch we sat down to watch a movie (we do that every day after lunch) and out of no where he comes up to me and goes “I love you!” and gave me a huge hug. That moment was worth the whole day of torture.

Baby A has had not such great luck with the ground outside. She’s fallen and smacked her head on the ground -the very hard ground- twice. The first time may or may not have been my fault, too. I felt horrible. She was fine and no long term damage was done, but still. Baby-dropping isn’t exactly something I want to put down in my book of Nanny Accomplishments. She’s starting to get to the age where she’s very fussy about everything. If she’s trying to get a book and it’s stuck, she cries. If she’s trying to climb onto the couch but she can’t, she cries. So that’s pretty fun.

Despite all the madness, though, I absolutely love this job. For every time-out, there’s a sweet hug or snuggle or smile.

One day, Momma P stayed home from work and was telling me how much she hates her new job and she said that the only good thing about the whole situation was that they found me. She said how good I was with the kids and how thankful they were to have me. That compliment meant so much to me. See, at Disney, you could work hard every day and go above and beyond all day long, and you were lucky to get just a “thanks” from a manager.

In other news, I mastered the door to the bathroom..but over the weekend this past week they got new things that go on the doorknobs so I don’t have to fight with it anymore! Hooray!

Teapots and S-piders

As day one comes to a quiet (hooray!) end, I am sitting in a huge chair with a book, coffee, and the family cat. (Pumpkin is her name) Pumpkin and I have been discussing how well the day went and I’d like to say it was a pretty big success.

Let’s start. I got here early, so I need to make a note to not be over zealous and don’t leave the house so early..I can do a crazy thing called sleep in instead! Breakfast for A and X went well..I might have over cooked A’s waffle a little, but she ate it, so I consider it a success. X had peanut butter toast which is his favorite..and that’s great with me because it’s super easy. Daddy P had to do some work from their home office this morning so he stayed upstairs for quite a while on conference calls or something. We played for about an hour, probably and X went potty in his big boy potty and while I was cleaning it and putting it away I hear X scream “A s-pider!!” (I wish I could type it exactly how he talks because it’s super cute.) Now, for anyone that does not know me or doesn’t know me very well, I am absolutely terrified of spiders. I can not kill them because I can not make myself get that close to them. In that moment, I froze. I went to see exactly what he was talking about—praying it was just a weird bug or a piece of string all balled up—and it was, in fact, a nice little quarter sized s-pider. Forcing myself to act like the grown up, I refused to let myself cry. (quite often in my near-death spider encounters that is my go-to reflex. I can’t help it. Don’t judge.) Now, I had a few options. I could go upstairs and grab Daddy P..after all, he did say if there was anything we needed he was right up there…but then, that’d look kinda bad, too. What if he wasn’t home and there was a spider? Would I just let if run free in the house, terrorizing us all until he got home? No. Nope! This was the day. Today was the day that I would conquer my fear of spiders. (and by conquer I mean do this one time and hopefully never do it again) —I would also like to make it very clear that you’re crazy if you think I was having this whole conversation in my head. These words (for the most part) were actually coming out of my mouth…much like a crazy person. I gulped..grabbed 2 paper towels..and crouched beside the stupid s-pider. I quickly said a little prayer that the intruder wouldn’t try for a quick escape and went for it. Scared to pick up the towel s-piderless I smushed it further into the wall and crumpled it on both sides to make sure there was no where for it to run. After sitting there for a good thirty seconds making sure it was good and dead I slowly lifted my weapon and was rewarded with a little crumpled dead spider. Ha! Success!! Then I flushed it down the toilet so, in the likely event that this demonic creature decided to rise from the dead and return to haunt us, it would have to learn to swim first.

After the s-pider incident we decided to play outside for a little while. Snack time. Nap time for sweet little A. A couple more potty breaks for X…insisting that pants AND undies must be put back on afterwards and that pants go on our legs and not our heads. X and I built a fort while A was sleeping and we colored. A woke up, time for lunch. I prepared a gourmet meal of chicken nuggets and peas and carrots. (You can call me Iron Chef) A gobbled down her lunch and X was a bit more difficult. He didn’t want to eat his food, he wanted mine. He didn’t want to sit in his chair, he wanted to sit on the couch. I made him a little happy by getting him a “fresh new” napkin like he asked and he did eat most of his food. I told him that if he ate just maybe two more carrots then he could have a treat. (those new super fun little squeeze fruit things) Then he had to go potty again. We went potty, had our struggle with pants and undies and the importance of wearing them the correct way, and he did not get a treat because he would not sit back in his chair nor would he wash his hands the first 400 times I asked him to. A ate her lunch, got her treat, and we all sat down for an after-lunch viewing of Toy Story 3. Probably in the middle of the movie X asked for a treat and he got one because he had been good since the post-lunch-argument. I got up to change A’s diaper and when I got back X needed to potty AGAIN but he kept carrying around this toy tea pot with him. I unsnapped his pants, he dropped them in the middle of the living room and then proceeded to TRY TO SIT ON THE TEA POT TO POTTY IN IT. I saw my life flash before my eyes. This teapot is not very big and definitely not big enough for pottying (even if that was potentially a thing). Luckily I made it in time to have him sit on the big boy potty and the teapot and carpet was spared. Finished Toy Story. I cried. Time for nap and they’re still sleeping.

Maybe this was a little too detailed, but it’s my first day and I wanna remember it!

The one thing I have yet to master is unlocking the bathroom door from the outside. Certain kiddos have too much fun in there if its not locked..hopefully we never have an emergency that requires an immediate bathroom…it takes me a good 3 minutes.

And so it begins

On Thursday, I had my shadow day with my new family. We’ll call them the P family. Little boy (X) is 2 years old and little girl (A) is about 14 months old.

Nothing too exciting happened, X loved me..he kept saying “new friend” over and over. That was very cute. And hugging me. I love him already. A was very snuggly and sweet. Momma P and I think she said “read” for the first time. :-)

All in all, the kids are great, the family is great. I couldn’t be happier.