Nannying Isn't Like Parenting

Some days, it's harder.
Obviously, I'm not saying that parenting is easy. It's not. You are responsible not only for keeping an infant alive, but for guiding them and forming them into a decent, upstanding human being who is a productive member of society.  However, with parenting, as the parent, YOU make the rules. You decide how to discipline and encourage your child. You decide what he can and cannot have to eat. You decide what his daily schedule should be, and if he should even have a schedule at all.
Nannying is all about following those rules and creating a consistent care environment for the child(ren). Even if you find yourself in serious disagreement with how the parents choose to, for example, discipline their child, it's not up to you to change what happens, it's up to you to continue doing it anyway.
Little Guy, like most 17-month-olds, is very curious and very big on pushing boundaries. More and more frequently, I find him sticking his nose (or, to be more accurate, his finger) where it doesn't belong. If I were the one deciding how to enforce boundaries and discipline LG, after the first time he touched something he wasn't supposed to, I would give him a firm "NO" and move his hand off of and away from the object. If he were to try again, it would result in a quick slap on the hand and another firm "NO." Past childcare experiences have taught me that this is a quick and effective way to enforce to a child in the one-word stage of speech development what he can and cannot do. However, because I'm not the one making the rules here, when things like this happen, I'm supposed to tell him "We don't touch [object]" and move him away from whatever it is. If it happens again, I repeat what I said earlier and tell him "time out," at which point I put him in his crib for a minute and a half. When I go to get him out, I tell him, "I know you wanted to [offending action], but we don't do that." In my experience so far, it has been wholly ineffective, especially since putting LG in his crib just results in his holding onto the guardrail and jumping up and down on the mattress. So much for punishment, huh?
I also maintain that nannying can be harder than parenting because it can be tough to make a judgement call when the parents aren't around. Recently, LG has been demanding Cheerios at lunch and refusing to eat his daily meal of veggies, yogurt, and peanut butter on crackers with a banana. When he's finished with a particular portion of his meal, LG is suppose to wave his had at the food and say "All done." Many days, he'll do this when he hasn't eaten anything yet, and then turn his head away from the spoon and yell "CHEEOS" over and over again. The first time this happened, after forty-five minutes, I gave in and gave him a handful of Cheerios because I didn't want K and N to think I was starving their child. When I summarized the day, I mentioned the lunch incident, and said that I wasn't sure what to do there because giving him Cheerios would teach him that if you complain and demand enough, you'll eventually get your way, but I also didn't want him to starve. They agreed, until about a week later when they said they'd thought about what I'd said and decided that it might be better if he doesn't eat anything if he refuses what is offered to him (I suppose this is the one instance so far where the nanny's logic has prevailed).
There are a million more examples I can come up with, but for me, what it boils down to is that nannying is like parenting, but sometimes harder.

It is worth noting that in my case, I am with LG for almost all of his waking hours. He gets up at 6:30am; I arrive (and his parents leave) at 8am. His parents arrive home (and I leave) at 6pm, and he goes to bed at 7pm. Yes, they're with him all weekend, but the 50 hours I'm with him during the week is more than the time they have with him on Saturdays and Sundays. I almost feel like I know their child's needs better than they do.

Milking It for All It's Worth

This happened yesterday, October 17th. It's the previously mentioned incident that inspired this blog to begin with.
Like any rational human being working with children, I always bring extra clothes with me to work. In the two months I've been Little Guy's nanny, yesterday is the ONLY day that I've forgotten to bring clothes with me.
LG had chugged his sippy cup of milk and asked for more, so I went over to the refrigerator and took out a brand new, never opened half-gallon jug of milk. As I set it down on the counter, it, for reasons I will NEVER comprehend, exploded. EXPLODED. As in, the factory-sealed lid flew off and milk spouted and sprayed everywhere. I was soaked down to my bra, the entire kitchen was covered in milk, and LG was on the other side of the room, strapped into his high chair and giggling like a maniac.
So there I stood in the kitchen, dumbfounded and assessing the situation. I could feel a droplet of milk rolling down my neck, and when I shook my head I realized that my hair had also fallen victim to the onslaught. Finally, I located the lid and resealed the jug to put it back in the fridge, and then I took LG out of his highchair and set him up in his playpen with Rugrats playing on Netflix to keep him distracted while I cleaned up. By the time I was done in the kitchen, the milk that was all over me had begun to dry and was getting sticky. I threw the towels I'd used to clean up in the laundry basket along with my own clothing, and I took a quick shower while LG was still watching Rugrats. By the time I was redressed (in K's gym clothes, because I had forgotten my own extra clothes for once) and got LG's shoes on him, it was 1:40. We took all the laundry down to the laundry room in the basement, and he played with the laundry cart while I set up the washer. We took the elevator back upstairs, and at 2:15 we left the apartment again to go back downstairs to switch everything into the dryer.
This is when I discovered that the elevator was down for maintenance from 2:00 til 4:00. The basement, where the washing machine with all of my clothing was, is only accessible via elevator. We went back into the apartment and played with blocks until 3:00, when I put LG down for his second nap.
At 4:00, I raced downstairs to switch the laundry over, and promptly discovered that I'd forgotten to start the washer the first time. I started it, went back upstairs, and at 4:30 went back down to switch everything over, this time successfully.
By the time the dryer was done, it was 5:30. Four hours after the fact, I finally got my clothes back.
When N got home, I explained everything that had happened and he just sort of looked incredulous. I told him it was okay to laugh, at which point he let go, because, let's face it, when you're not he one with whole milk soaking your clothes, which subsequently get stranded in the basement, it's a pretty funny situation.
That said, here's to hoping this never happens again.

The Job

Basically, as Little Guy's nanny, my job is to take care of him like a parent would while his own parents aren't home, and then to hand him over at 6pm and then show up again the next morning.
Little Guy's parents used the Babywise method with him, so he's on a crazy schedule.

8:00am - Nanny arrives
8:05am - Parents leave
8:05am - 9:00am - "Active" playtime (we go on a morning walk almost daily)
9:00am - 9:30am - "Calming" playtime
9:30am - 11:30am - Little Guy: naptime; Nanny: household tasks/free time
11:30am - 12:30pm - Little Guy: "Independent" play in playpen; Nanny: household tasks/free time
12:30pm - 1:00pm - Lunch
1:00pm - 2:15pm - "Active" playtime (usually we go to the park or we run errands)
2:15pm - 2:45pm - "Calming" playtime/snacktime
2:45pm - 3:00pm - Bathtime
3:00pm - 5:00pm -  Little Guy: naptime; Nanny: household tasks/free time
5:00pm - 5:30pm - "Structured" playtime in the living room
5:30pm - 5:45pm - Little Guy: free play in the living room; Nanny: prepare LG's dinner
5:45pm - 6:00pm - Dinnertime
6:00pm - Parent(s) arrive(s), Nanny leaves

It's structured to the max, but I'll admit I appreciate having five hours where he's either asleep or playing on his own.
As far as "household tasks" are concerned, that pretty much translates to sweeping the floors in the small apartment and doing the dishes daily, and then vacuuming and doing laundry once a week. What it comes down to is that I essentially get paid to be a housewife, which at first was a little weird, but seems pretty normal now.

The Family

Let's start with the basics. The family I nanny for lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side, hence the blog title. Their apartment building has an elevator, which is fortunate because some days I really don't feel like carrying the stroller up the stairs. They are Orthodox Jewish vegans, which means they keep Kosher but it's not terribly difficult to do so because meat isn't an issue. Milk is, but only because Little Guy eats yogurt and drinks milk, like every toddler should.
Dad is N. I'm still not clear on where he works or what he does, but it's a 9-5 thing. He already has a BA and a BS from the same school but is back there taking a class or two per semester.
Mom is K. She's a graduate student in the second year of a five-year program, which she does in conjunction with an almost full-time field-related internship. She's not much older than me, so we get along well. Both she and N are great people, so they're not hard to work for.
And then there's Little Guy, or LG. He's 17 months old and has more personality in his 24lb body than I've seen in a lot of adults. He likes to push boundaries and break rules just to see what I'll do. He uses baby sign language, so having to learn that relatively quickly was a welcome challenge. He's quite the character, and I feel like one of the phrases I use most frequently with him is "Dude, WHAT are you doing?" He likes cars, trucks and playing with balls and stuffed animals. He's also a REALLY big fan of Cheerios; if I would let him eat nothing but Cheerios for every meal, he would. And he'd be completely happy with it.

I'll Admit, I Confess...

My days are pretty predictable; feed Little Guy breakfast, play with him, take him on a walk, put him down for a nap. While he's asleep, accomplish as much housework as I can while he's not underfoot. Eventually Little Guy will wake up, and I'll put him in is playpen for an hour or so while I finish what I was doing. Then, we have lunch, we play some more (and if it's not too gross out, we'll go to the park), run errands, have a snack, and then it's bath time before Little Guy takes another nap. If I still have housework to do, that's when I'll do it, otherwise I have two precious hours to myself. When he wakes up, he plays in the living room while I make his dinner. Eventually I'll strap him in his highchair to start eating, and then at 6pm, his dad comes home.
And then I leave.
I'm not a mother. I'm not a wife. I'm a full-time, 50-hour-a-week nanny on Manhattan's Upper West Side. I arrive at 8am and leave at 6pm, Monday through Friday. "Little Guy" is how I refer to the 17-month-old I take care of, for his privacy and my own.
Why am I starting this blog? It was at the suggestion of Little Guy's dad after a particularly ridiculous incident yesterday. It was one of those times when the truth was stranger than fiction, because I couldn't have made it up if I tried. More on that later, but for now, the basics.
My name is Natalie. I moved to Manhattan from a town in suburban Pennsylvania at the end of August. I aspire to work in theatre, either as a stage manager or as an actor, but that's irrelevant to this blog. This is about my day job and how I spend my days as a cross between Mary Poppins and Fran Fine. There's never a dull moment with this job, that's for sure.