Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Notes as a Nanny background

I'm planning to start chronicling a bit about my days working as a nanny.  I care for two little ones, Mr. S. who will be 4 in September, and Miss M.K. who just turned 1 in May.  Moriah has had the great pleasure of life for the last year and a half as a younger "sister" to Mr. S. before his real sister's arrival, the middle child of the three friends, and oftentimes now as the older "sister to Miss M.K. when S. is away at pre-school.  Of course, she's also an only child when she's home until the Lord's plans allow for another baby here :)  So we've been tremendously blessed by this season of life as I feel like I have a dream job during this time when our family needed some income from me, though Matt and I both wanted me to care for Moriah... we have the best of both worlds in that sense.  Moriah really LOVES her friends and won't know what to do someday if she's really an only child to a stay at home mom (post-Seminary).

*For those who aren't friends in person I have a background in teaching as I graduated from Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri with my Bachelor's in Elementary Education and Early Childhood.  I taught kindergarten in Kansas City, Missouri first as a long term substitute for one semester after college, and then as a full time classroom teacher the following year.  When we moved to Louisville, I grabbed the first job that came my way, although teaching 3rd graders was out of my league I quickly realized :)  The next year I was able to go back to kindergarten which was a blessing.  Our daughter was born the next August so I didn't return to the classroom, but worked in a daycare during the first few months of her life as she was just down the hall.  While that wasn't a bad situation, it wasn't ideal in lots of ways.  The Lord's plans were perfect when He led me to nannying and I've been here since! *

I'm just hoping to share these days so that I can remember in the future what activities went well, and duplicate them as needed.  Most of my ideas come from Pinterest these days, though I sometimes tweak them to fit the ages of these little ones or the limitations we may have.  I also have the opportunity to get out of the house very frequently for fun outings with the kids.  I typically care for the kids in their home, though there are occasions when they come to our apartment to play (we live 30 minutes away from the family, but in the city which is sometimes a more logical starting point for our outings).  Lastly, there are a lot of resources at my disposal as far as good toys, craft supplies, and finances that the family makes available to me.  By no means would Moriah experience all of these things if I weren't working in this situation.  Therefore, don't think that you should be doing all of this as a stay-at-home mom yourself.  If days as a stay-at-home mom looked like this, my house would be a wreck (my cleaning is minimal as I work), my husband would be hungry (I don't do any meal prep for the family apart from lunches and cooking projects), and my kids would think the world revolved around their "fun" :)  That's not reality we all know, so these days are heavy on the side of kid focused and I realize that, just wanted to be sure you did too!

I'll list our weekly fun as a re-cap at the end of each week, with links and some pictures.  Enjoy!

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