The Sweetest Sound in All the World

I sound like a broken record. Everyday, it's the same phrases.

"Don't do that. You're going to hurt yourself."
"Stop screaming. That behavior is unacceptable"
"No."
"Come here. I'm not going to chase you."
"What do you need to say?"
"How do you ask?. . . Please, what?"
"What do you say?"

Those last two are the worst. Even on a good day, when I don't need to reprimand, calm, or correct, I still repeat those two. Over. And. Over.

Because manners matter. Because gratitude is important.

And just when I'm tired of saying it, when I feel like it will never stick, she says it. Without prompting, without coaching, without begging, she says it. In her tiny, (sometimes) soft voice, she says it.

"Please, may I have a snack, please, Jojo?"

"Nank you for this, Jojo."

Yes, you may, my precious girl. You are very, very welcome. I'd do it all again just for those sweet, sweet words--the sweetest sound in all the world.

Sincerely,
 

Sunshine on a Cloud Day

Yesterday was horrendously rainy. We're talking flash flood rain. While I normally love rain, it makes for a looooong day with The Kid trapped in the house. Even though she slept till 9 and took a one hour nap, it was still feeling like the never ending day. So we decided to get crafty. Or rather, I decided and she followed along. We attempted a craft I found on Pinterest. Luckily, I had all the supplies on hand, and it involved paint--The Kid's favorite!

We made a handprint sun using a paper plate. The Kid thought it was pretty fantastic, but she didn't like having her hand traced for the sun's "rays." So our sun is a little short on rays.

All in all, I good choice for this rainy day.

The Kid has also started creating dialogue for her dolls while she plays with them. Her most recent favorite is to have The Beast Ken doll threaten her Belle Barbie doll. "Come to dinner or my gonna break down the door!!" Can you tell what movie we watch all the time?

Sincerely,
 

So You're a. . . Nanny??

Random Acquaintance: So what do you do??
Me: I'm a full-time, live-in nanny.
Random Acquaintance: (chose one or more of the following responses)

• "Oh. . . that's nice."
• "You spent for years in college to be a nanny?"
• "Oh, cause you couldn't get a teaching job mid year, right? But you'll be looking in the fall."
• "Well that must be a fun and easy job!"

Since starting my job in December I have received each of those responses several times. People who don't know me well can hardly seem to grasp that I'm doing this because *gasp* I want to.

• Why yes, it is nice, isn't it? 
• Yes, I did spend four years in college to be a nanny. I also spent four years in college to hopefully someday be a stay-at-home mom which will give me no income. At least I'm getting paid for this.
• I didn't think it would be easy to get a teaching job mid year, but that's not why I took this job. And no, I won't be looking in the fall. I took this job for at least 18 months.
• Yes, it is fun. But it is also hard. You try being trapped in the house for 13 hours with a screaming two-year-old who refuses to take a nap and throws a tantrum every 10 minutes. Having fun yet?*

However, I think my all time favorite question is the one that I seem to be asked all the time by stay-at-home moms: "So what exactly do you do??"

Well, I do everything you do with your child on a daily basis. . .

I dress her and do her hair.

I take her on walks.

I clean the jelly off of her after I feed her.

I feed her.

I take her to the park.

I snuggle her when she's tired.

And I snuggle her when she's sick.

I play with her outside.

I do hand tattoos.

I potty trained her (and Belle).

I do crafts with her.

I put her in time out.

I do silly with her.

I put her to sleep at night.

I love her.

. . .only I get paid for it.

Sincerely,
 


*In defense of The Kid, these types of days are few and far between, but that doesn't mean the other days are stress free. Nannying, like parenting, is exhausting, draining, and stressful. But oh so worth it.

Mine, Mine, Mine, But His First

            I tend to be pretty possessive. Not so much about things (although like the typical American, I do like my stuff), but about people. They're my friends, my family, my kiddo, my man. I think it's partly because I like to take care of people and to be there for them. If they have a problem, I want to fix it. I tend to invest in people, and the more I invest in them, the more I think of them as mine.

            For the most part, this works for me. However, there are some times when it just doesn't work. For example, when they have a problem I can't fix, this doesn't work for me. If something is yours and it's broken, you fix it. But sometimes, your things (or people) that you want must to fix, you just can't fix. That's when it helps me to remember that the while the people I love are mine in a sense, they belong first and foremost to Someone so much greater than I. What I can't fix, He can if He so chooses. Why do I struggle so much with surrendering them to Him? I can't seem to handle losing control for even one minute even though it means that they'll be taken much better care of. In fact, it's often easier for me to surrender my own problems to Him than to surrender the problems of those whom I love, my loved ones.

            How much greater is His love for them than my own? He is their creator, and what He created was good. Yes, we messed it up. But it was good, and He wants it to be good again. That's why He provided a redeemer "Christ Jesus whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith." For those I love who love Him as well, He works all things together for good. Now if only I can remember that. . .

Sincerely,
 

Kites, Ladybugs, and Lollipops

While my dad may have been a little less than thrilled that I chose not to "use my degree" in the typical way, I have loved "using my degree" to teach The Kid. I put "use my degree" in quotes because so far I think most of what I've done with The Kid has been common sense stuff. You want your kid to learn the alphabet? You show them the alphabet and train them to recognize letters.

With The Kid, we began by singing the ABCs because she loves to sing. For a while, since it was hard for her to produce the letter names in the song, it was mostly just her hearing me and others sing the ABCs. I used it a lot while we were potty training her. She never wanted to stay on the potty long enough to actually go, so I told her she had to stay seated while I sang through the ABCs. She usually made it till about the letter p before she started going. ;)

Next, I made flash cards of all of the letters. I know flashcards are to some outdated and believed to teach by memorization apart from true understanding, but honestly, she's two. She's not really going to grasp the alphabetic principle right away. By using the flashcards, The Kid was able to see the letters easily and get used to working with them. After going over the flashcards once, she began to ask to "do my ABCs." Since the only letter she remembered was a, after saying "doesn't know" to several cards, she began to take the cards herself, point to them, and mimicking my tone of voice say "What one is that?"

Last week we started to work on individual letters. I started with the letter k because before they moved to Staten Island, her mother had her enrolled in a mommy and me preschool. In the preschool, they were making an ABC book and had covered a-j. For k, we made a kite. She picked up on the letter really well and now recognizes it and can tell you what sound it makes.

This week we worked on the letter L. We started by reading The Grouchy Ladybug. We made a lady bug, but The Kid decided that her ladybug was going to be a friendly ladybug not a grouchy one.

I love how she put the dots in straight lines.
Can you tell her mother and I are just a little OCD?
 We're training her well.

 Next we made a lollipop. This one was  a lot of fun because she got to squish paint with her hands. She loved it! She also colored some k and l pictures. Obviously, she liked the crafts a little bit more.

We also started reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and making our very own alphabet coconut tree. I order a bulletin board tree cutout on Amazon. I also found someone who had made a pdf of the letters which I printed out and laminated so they would last. So far we have k and l on our tree. However, The Mom and I decided that we should backtrack and recover the letters she learned in mommy and me preschool because she doesn't remember those. She can identify a and sometimes b, but that's really it. So next week, we'll be covering a. I'm sensing some apple crafts.

 

Sincerely,
 

Introducing. . . The Kid, Or How I've Spent the 3 Months Since Graduation

            Last summer, I was a nanny for the cutest little two-year-old on the face of the planet. I mentioned her here and began to refer to her The Kid, or The Kiddo. Toward the end of my time with them, The Mom told me that they were looking into buying a house on Staten Island with a basement apartment for a live-in nanny. While they knew this would be a pretty big change for me, they wanted to offer me the position because The Kid and I got along so well. So I prayed about it and talked about with my family. While I knew I could make more using my degree in the public school, a position was not guaranteed, and I did love The Kid quite a bit. After a few months in which The Family interviewed another nanny and I completed most of my student teaching, they offered me the position and I accepted. So, the day after officially finishing my college coursework, I moved into my new apartment, and two days after, I started my new job.

            I've been here three months now, and I can officially say I LOVE my job. The Kid is brilliant, hysterical, and adorable. And I'm only a little biased ;) Considering most of my time is spent with this wee one, she'll probably provide me with a lot of the material for this here blog. So I thought I should introduce her. If you're friends with me on Facebook, you already know A LOT about The Kid. Hopefully, I'll be able to share some of the longer funny stories on here. For obvious reasons, her picture won't appear here, but I'll tell you a bit her. She'll be three in June, she loves singing, dancing, Disney, swimming, and Adele. So we spend our days singing, dancing (to Adele), watching/reading/playing/dancing to Disney, and talking about when it will be warm enough to go swimming. We're also working on learning our alphabet and counting. Have I mentioned she's brilliant?

I may not post pictures of her, but I can post pictures of what she does to me, or in this case, makes me wear.

Apparently, the green St. Paddy's Day shades weren't enough. We had to add the bunny ears.

Sincerely,
 

Holy Lack of Posts, Batman!

Not that lack of posts are holy. Or even something noteworthy considering practically no one reads this blog.  (Please, don't hate me for calling you no one if you are someone who reads this blog). It's just a saying. . .

Anyways, I have no excuse for not posting for hmm, let's see. . . six months? Yeah, six months. But I haven't exactly done a ton of interesting things either. So you're really not missing much. I finished the first semester of my senior year, served on my first (and hopefully last) jury, watched one of my best and dearest friends get married, got a job as a part time nanny, went to the Bronx Zoo with my boyfriend and bought Josiah the Red Panda, spent some time visiting at the hospital when my dad had a pulmonary embolism and spent a whole week there, headed to Maine for a week with my boyfriend and two other super close friends, ended my job as a nanny (much to my sadness) so that I could start student teaching, and started student teaching three days after Labor Day. So that was my six months in a nutshell. There's no accurate way to sum up the highs and lows of a summer, but this one was crazy and uneventful all at the same time. The scary part? I have absolutely no idea what next year holds. Maybe nannying, maybe grad school, maybe teaching?? Hopefully I'll actually remember to post about some of the interesting things I do. But don't count on it. . .

And for good measure, some pictures.

Ali's Wedding

Giraffes at the Bronx Zoo!

Take your boyfriend to work day. They're making me tea.

Josiah the Red Panda begins his travels.

Nate and Shelby in Maine

Eric and I in Maine

Maine!!

Sincerely,