theparkerfamily.org

Tag: Nanny Share

  • mount pleasant-er

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    we might be in the market for a house.

    we’re not moving — at least, not moving out of mount pleasant — but there are a couple things going on that make us (er, the lady sparkler) think that it could be time to upgrade.

    • interest rates are down 2+ percentage points from when we signed a last mortgage. when you add that savings to what we pay each month in condo association fees, we can have about a 50% larger place without paying a dime extra per month.
    • we were planning on moving in the next 2 to 3 years anyway, and *man* our place seems a lot smaller than it did, saaaay 16 months ago.
    • the market has stabilized enough that we’re sure we can get all our money out of our current place.
    • the economy is starting to show signs of life again, which means that housing prices only have one direction to go (and that would be “up”).

    that said, if we can’t find a nice little fixer-upper row house in mount pleasant that we can afford now, we’ll just stay put until we’re on the other side of our daycare payments.

    we love our neighborhood, and haven’t given up on the idea that we can raise baby sparklet here. we love our friends, we love our nanny. we love the fact that our vote for federal office is basically meaningless (wait, scratch that last one).

    and, besides, there aren’t a lot of other options …

    within D.C., we certainly wouldn’t move east of 16th street (too speculative), nor south or west of mount pleasant (we couldn’t afford it), and there really isn’t much in D.C. that’s north of us (all residential, little commerce, reduced transit).

    outside of D.C., we have the same problems we’ve always had: new england and chicago are too cold (for my beloved); texas is utterly without seasons (for me); the pacific northwest is really far away and people there actually slow down at yellow lights (the latter is a “third rail” for the lady sparkler).

    and besides, we all know how much my beloved likes change.

  • nanny shots

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    nanny shots with the boyfriend, washington, dc

  • spreading like a virus

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    yesterday was a day of worshiping the porcelain bowl goddess for the sparkler family.

    it started with the nanny shortly before noon, followed by myself around 12:30pm, emily the cat was next at 2pm, sparklet later around 9pm, and finally the lady sparkler at 10:30pm.

    and, it turns out that our nanny share family had a similar vision — they just got a two day jump on us.

    it’s looking like it’s just a 24-hour bug — the first three hours you think you’re going to die, the next three hours you wish you would, closely followed by 18 hours on your back.

    sparklet’s actually been a trooper through it all — not only last night during all the madness, but today with no nanny and two utterly debilitated parents.

    she even took an hour and a half nap on the couch with me early this morning once it was pretty obvious that i wasn’t going to be able to do much else.

    that’s my girl.

    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    spreading like a virus

  • the nanny’s halloween party

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    EDITOR’S NOTE: from what i can make out with my limited español, the nannies of mount pleasant got together today and threw their kids a Halloween party. I imagine there was at least some awkwardness when two attendees (sparklet included) realized they were sharing the same tiger costume.
    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    the nanny’s halloween party

  • “is it true that red heads have more fun?”

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  • el tigre en el zoológico

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    el tigre en el zoológico, national zoo, washington, dc

  • the pizza garden

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    our nanny share nanny doesn’t speak english. the lady sparkler and i haven’t spoken Spanish since high school.

    if that’s not a recipe for a laugh-track worth sit-com, i’m not sure what is.

    about six weeks ago, our nanny started saying how much sparklet loves running around “the pixa” — “the pesca” we ask?

    “no, the pixa” she she replies. “pixa! pixa!”

    “oh, of course — the ‘pixa!’” we finally replied, without an ounce of comprehension. “boy, does she love that!”

    over the next six weeks, we proceeded to ask every native Spanish speaker we’ve ever known what “pixa” meant en Español.

    not a clue.

    i Google translated about a dozen different spellings — pisca, pixa, pitsa, pesca, pixza.

    nothing.

    we finally decided that she meant either “pesca” which is Spanish for “fishing” or PISCA which is the Paranormal Investigation Society of Central Alabama.

    we were pretty confused about where they could possibly go fishing in northwest D.C., much less the intricacies of travel to Central Alabama, so we gave up and called it a day.

    fast forward to yesterday, when our beloved nanny share partners came to the zoo for sparklet’s birthday, and they said:

    hey, have you guys been over to the pizza garden yet? it’s a giant pizza that the kids can climb all over. maria says that they really love it.

    pizza. pixa. pizza = pixa.

    (cue laugh track.)

    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    the pizza garden, national zoo, washington, dc

  • boyfriend, nanny, me

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  • transitions

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    like the crazy, measures driven parents we are, we’ve been so focused lately on young sparklet’s developmental milestones (almost crawling! she knows her name!) that we’ve totally neglected some of the “other” news in our lives.

    namely, we have a new nanny, a new nanny share family … and the lady sparkler got a new job.

    i’m not drunk enough to publicly explore the reasons behind the nanny transition — if you’d like to contribute to the drinking fund, i’m happy to talk in person — but the important things are that (a) sparklet’s still great, (b) we still love the talimo’s (bff!), and (c) during the transition, the bff’s got an offer of free familial child care that they just couldn’t refuse.

    the new nanny share is working out great. the nanny is über comfortable with a kid on each hip, and the share has been going on for more than a decade (tho, obviously, different families have rotated through).

    the new share baby is a boy, is exactly sparklet’s age (have i mentioned that i strongly support arranged marriages?!?) and lives within walking distance (over by auntie melissa).

    as if that wasn’t enough excitement for sparklet’s first summer, the lady sparkler went and got herself a new job.

    she wasn’t looking (decidedly not, actually) but got contacted by a head hunter and took the interview for reasons somewhere between being polite and making new contacts in the industry. but, four interviews later, the company made the proverbial offer-she-couldn’t-refuse (salary, seniority, benefits) and as of June 14th, the lady sparkler has a new job.

    still doing mostly the same thing, just a couple of blocks farther away — which pretty well sums up the nanny situation, too.