runs on coffee and sarcasm: how to hire a nanny

Bear with my while I compose this post on my phone. Too much going on here lately. It's 11:20pm on Tuesday and I haven't posted yet this week...so I need to do something.

We were very lucky that for (almost) one year a close friend was able to watch Miles along with her son. The boys are eight days apart and (typically) love spending time together. In December I started to feel our arrangement was no longer working so I set out on the task of finding a nanny for Miles. My deadline was before we left to visit family for Christmas and the new nanny would start in January when we returned from our trip.

I did not want Miles in daycare. Too many people I know with kids in daycare often have sick children. I did not want to deal with that. Plus daycare is expensive. I wanted someone to watch Miles in our home. Nanny's are also expensive. Damn.

I initially placed a classified ad in our local online newspaper. I received several responses and set up interviews with two young women. The first young woman I met with had a two month old who would also come to the house and the second young woman had limited formal experience with watching children.

I contacted a few friends in the area and asked about their childcare experiences. I decided to set up a care.com account and place an ad. And then I forgot about it. After a week of no responses from the other ad and no contact from the young woman I was considering hiring (the one with limited experience) I decided to check care.com and start sifting through he caregiver profiles then I realized that people had responded to my ad but care.com did not notify you by email. Whoops.

When I started reading responses I discovered that you cannot reply to people's messages unless you have a PAY account. Are you f-ing serious?!? They also block contact information. A one month subscription was roughly $40.

I was not amused. I decided to pony up the money since I had no other prospects and my deadline was two weeks away. I set up interviews with six other women. One was a no show/no call. That was irritating. One was a heavy smoker. Sorry but no go. One was very large and had a hard time getting up from my couch and I was concerned about her ability to play with Miles down on the floor or walk him to the park. Another had another job that she needed to get to after watching Miles. One was seventeen. SEVENTEEN. And the last one, who was really the first of this group I met with, was perfect. She was a stay at home mom of a Kindergartener and was getting bored at home. She had always worked in daycares or childcare. Perfect.

We decided on a daily rate rather than a hour rate and the rest is history. So far Miles seems to really like her and she likes him.

(I don't own this image and I couldn't find out who does)