Washable Workwear Wednesday: Floral Printed Top

Ugh, I am so annoyed at our babysitter. Our excellent preschool has a three week gap in care between the end of summer camp and the start of school. Not great, but we’ll deal. We ended up doing a nanny share with one other kid from school, at our house (both kids are 2.5). I was initially put off because we were talking about having 3 kids total, and she wanted to charge each family the same hourly rate – no discount for a share, which seems crazy to me (if I had a nanny for one kid, and then have a second child, I’d definitely give the nanny a raise, but not double). But whatever, we sorted it out. Then, the nanny kept surprising us by bringing additional kids with little/no warning. First, it was her own 9 year old, who seems to be helpful and well-behaved, but I still would’ve like more warning than same day. Then, it’s her daughter AND 7 year old nephew – again, nice kid, but zero notice. Then, last Friday as she was leaving she remarks in an offhand way that she’ll have the 18 month old she usually nannies for with her Mon/Wed/Friday this week! The older kids don’t bug me as much because they’re more self-sufficient than toddlers, but an 18 month old is in prime death-wish stage, and needs lots of supervision, especially in our house that has ungated stairs (our kid is a stairs champ at this point). Given that there’s only a few days of this left (we’re leaving for a trip on Friday, so don’t need her then), we figured we’ll just deal for a few more days, especially since overall she’s done a great job engaging with the kids, doing fun outings, and we have no safety concerns. But then this morning, 45 minutes before she was supposed to arrive, she texted to say she can’t take our kid today, because the 18 month old’s parents aren’t comfortable with it! But apparently she IS taking the other kid in the share. I get why she wants to prioritize the more long-term arrangement, but when we hired her, she didn’t mention this at all, and gave us the impression she was free to watch our kids for all 3 weeks. I feel pretty taken advantage of, and am tempted to just tell her forget about tomorrow, we’ll make other arrangements. But I guess that just hurts us, so I need to put on a reasonable face with her tomorrow…

I live in (outer borough) NYC but avoid midtown like the plague. I’m taking my 4 year old to the American Girl store this weekend for brunch – she inherited a doll from a friend and is in love with her. Any ideas of what else we should do up there? I was thinking going up to the Central Park zoo…

For those of you with kids in elementary school — what level of computer literacy, if any, was expected of your entering kindergartener? Our daughter will be starting kindergarten next fall. So far we have limited her screen time to watching PBS Kids shows, and that pretty infrequently. I’m not inclined to increase her exposure, but in your experience, would there be any benefit to introducing her to use of a computer or other device for interactive games or something?

Daycare WWYD! We visited two in-home daycares this am, equally good in terms of location. Daycare A seemed … fine. They do part-time for $45/day, and we technically only need 3 days/week ($135/week). But they also have a TV in the main room and I feel like we didn’t quite get a straight answer about how often it’s on. They had a number of records (lead test and vax records, emergency contact forms) missing at their routine inspection last year, and it seemed more hectic, although I think that’s mostly a function of the children’s ages. There are more kids close to Mini Lana’s age.
Daycare B gave me more of a confident feeling but it would be $250/week. On the other hand that would be up to full time, so Mr Lana could drop Mini Lana off more that 3x/week instead of trying to WFH around her naps, which I think would be good. They go to the park a lot, no screens, and the provider seemed generally more proactive and on top of things. The only big downside to Daycare B (besides the cost, which we could swing) is that they have a dog who runs around the kitchen while they’re eating (and throwing food on the floor) and is “very friendly and good with the kids.” Otherwise it’s shut in a different room and doesn’t play with the kids because the provider doesn’t think dogs and little kids are a good mix. Mr Lana is going to see about going back to observe a lunch (we also forgot to ask what kind of dog it is) but do you think this should be a dealbreaker? I feel like every dog that hurts a child has someone to vouch that it was friendly and perfect until it wasn’t.