Nanny Interviews: The third time around

To give you a brief history, to date Jackson has had two nannies. We found Christine when I was pregnant with Jackson. Her and her husband were moving to Louisiana from Kansas City and we definitely bonded over being "Northerners".

Christine was with us from August through February. She wasn't a rock star, but she was good. She loved Jackson and soaked in all of his infant days. However, they both needed more and it was time to move on...literally, Christine and her husband wanted to start a family of their own and move back home.

At the time, this reality totally sucked. And well, the interview process for nanny #2 was awful. If you recall this post, I was sure we were being punked or on some hidden camera reality show. But, all that changed the minute that Felicia walked through our door.

Felicia is one of the sweetest girls I've ever met. Children are seriously drawn to her, I call her the baby whisper, and she is just 20-years-old. She has a gift, which may come from being one of 11 children. Yes, 11. There isn't much that gets to her. I mean she gladly piled into my little Honda and willingly drove 12 hours completely smooched in the backseat of my car. Seriously, rock.star.

When we got the news from her that she needed to move home to be with her family, my heart sank. We were completely devastated. I don't think I slept that whole week. I even went into a little bit of denial and avoided looking for a new nanny for weeks.

But, the time came. I paid my $30 and joined another month at care.com. I figured Felicia was well worth the $30, so surely my money would be well spent again. Oh my was I sadly mistaken.

I had about 20 applicants, which were weeded down to the handful I wanted to interview. Their living situation played a huge part in the process. I did not want to go through another situation were our nanny would move away, again. We're two for two now!

The girls that wanted to make more than my salary, in cash, were immediately cut...those and the girls with profile pictures that belonged on girls gone wild.

The first few interviews were okay, just not good fits for us. One girl had a few too many facial piercings for Mr. to see past. The other had a bad back and I had nightmares about her picking up Jackson, throwing it out, and suing us. There was also the girl who canceled last minute because her child was being rushed to the hospital...but it sounded more like she overslept and I didn't buy it. 

However, the last interview was by far the worst. She was scheduled to interview at out house at 6:15, but did not walk through our front door until 7:30!!! She called at 6:30 to say the traffic was bad and she'd be late. Which was no big deal, as Mr. and I were also stuck in that traffic and were running late as well.

When she called she said she was about a mile away, so I got concerned after another 20 minutes past and she still wasn't at our house. I called to make sure she wasn't lost, and sure enough she plugged us into her GPS instead of taking down the directions I gave her.  I explicitly warned everyone that this would happen. {We've lived in our house for three years and have yet to be able to straighten this issue out. Mapquest has just recently found us.} Since half of our mail goes to the other address, we knew exactly where she was.

I will stop with the play-by-play details here, and just say that the poor girl did not know her left from her right. And for the next 40 minutes I tried ever so patiently to get her to our house. I never knew someone could get so lost in a one mile radius in my life. All the while, still arguing with me that the GPS told her to go the opposite direction. I wanted to come through the phone and throw the GPS out her window! Mr. was not so quietly telling me just to hang up and tell her never mind.

I am not the greatest with directions, and it was a dark night in an unfamiliar area to her, so I felt bad for her.  Well, that was until she walked in my door and introduced herself as Ya-ya. That was about the last thing that I understood from her mouth. It was bad.

She tired to read Jackson a book, and it was painful. Ya-ya even thought the author's name was the book title. I could never figure out if she was planning on bringing her god-child with her to our house. Her "job experience" was always having her with her, 'cause her sister works a lot?!? I questioned whether or not she needed to bring her to work with her and she kept saying that was her work...

Oh and we never found out where so actually lived, only that she "stayed to her boyfriend's a lot" or "to her sister's house" sometimes.

And in a moment of FB status updates, our situation totally changed.  Our sweet neighbor offered up her services to keep Jackson. I never realized she watched kids during the day, which is going to be so perfect for Jackson! He absolutely loves them as it is, I can't imagine how excited he'll be to spend the whole day with them:) 

Now I can how a moment of relief, until the next "thing" comes along.  I mean it's always something, isn't it?!?