Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse

Today was off to a better start from the get-go because I was a whole 13 minutes early to pick up W from school. I was so proud of myself when I was one of the first 3 people in line amongst mothers and ONE father to wait outside her classroom. I've decided that I do, in fact, have a little crush on her kindergarten teacher...oh well.


W informed me that her OLD babysitter used to take her to 7-11 everyday after school. Now, let me make something clear right now...I do not like being compared to previous babysitters. I am NOT your old sitter that let you eat crap for snacks and let you take hour baths. I consider myself to be a wonderful nanny and I am fun, but there is a schedule to keep to (not one that I've enforced), so please, do not compare me to your old nanny.

Now that that's out of the way....I ended up taking her to 7-11. I know, I know. I actually wanted to go because a) I could get a snack for myself since I knew I would need to eat later, and b) it took up time that we would be at home with the mother instead. She got a gatorade and a string cheese and I got an organic string cheese and a banana to eat in the taxi, and pretzels for dinner (AGAIN). Lame.

M had to go to her tutor today (whom they call the speech therapist because they don't want it to seem as if she's getting extra help?) so I was home with just W for the majority of the day. Honestly, all we did was play. I stand back sometimes and think, I can't believe I'm getting paid $** an hour to play with a five year-old. It seems like the life but it's pretty tiring. Maybe that's why the mother needs to hire a nanny during the day, so she doesn't get worn out? Nah, I think not.

When we came home I met the cook, a thin Japanese woman. She was making chicken in a large wok on the stove. I figured out how this works- the cook makes all these dishes and then puts them in plastic containers and puts them in the fridge. This way, all the mother has to do for dinner is decide what to feed them and heat it up. How convenient. I was gonna say, I had never seen her cook and I couldn't imagine how she was cooking up all that food in such a short amount of time. It's because she DOESN'T. It's a pretty clever system, I suppose. On a side note, they have 6 burners on their stove. I've never seen a stove with more than 4...they have 6.

W and I had good timing coming home. We came in just as the mother was finishing up her private yoga lesson and receiving her massage. Words cannot say how jealous I was and how badly I wanted to ask if I could get a massage too for all the hard work I've been doing watching her children. She owns the massage table and the yoga balls and she has a trainer/massage therapist come over and they do it all in their living room. Must be nice.

Honestly, for the next 2 1/2 hours we played in her bedroom. We played with logic puzzles, building games for the budding architect, we drew (badly on my end), and then we played "nurse and mother" all from her imagination. It really amazes me to witness a child's creativity at hand. Children are more creative than any of us adults could ever hope to be. I wish we could think as freely as children do and without judgments. One of my main reasons why I love playing with children is because I get to play without abandon and no one is judging me for how I'm playing and acting. I'm not even judging myself.

One of her stuffed animal bears "has an injured leg" so she was the nurse and I was her assistant and I opened imaginary doors with imaginary keys, "washed" the instruments, and "cleaned" the entire room. Then we ate ice-cream cones made out of rolled up drawings. The colors on the drawing represented what flavor our ice-cream was. For some reason, however, mine always tasted like medicine. Once, I was so lucky as to have my ice-cream taste like legos instead. I love when kids say, "ok, now you say...." or "pretend...." and all I have to do is repeat what she said. She tells me what to say, I say it (with enthusiasm), and she acts as if she had no idea I was going to say that. It's just too cute. When I told her I was tired of having to eat medicine-flavored ice-cream and I wanted something that tasted good, I seemed pretty upset about it and said I wanted to be treated fairly, or something along those lines. At first she was playing along with me but then the smile wore off her face and she looked at me seriously and said, "wait, for real?" and I grinned and said no.

I feel very fortunate when I get to babysit for a child who loves books as much as I do and loves being read to. I get to do a lot of reading between these two at bed time, but I love reading books that were my favorite children's books and saying, "oh, I remember this book! I loved this one!!" One certain book brought back lots of nostalgia- "Lilly's Plastic Purple Purse". It is a brilliant children's book and has a really good lesson to it. Other favorites include, "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie", "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", "Goodnight, Moon", "The Mitten", and any of the ballet series that comes with a silver necklace with ballet slippers or something of the sort.

M soon came home from her "speech therapist" and it was already bath time. Normally when M comes homes, she has to start her homework right away because she has a lot. What we would think of as a lot is a paper, some reading, some responses to the reading, and some worksheets. For an 8 year-old, a lot of homework is one worksheet and 20 minutes of reading. It takes them much longer to complete their work, obviously.

Anywaaay, the girls always take their bath together which I think is really sweet. They love playing together and they play nicely, thank goodness. The younger one really looks up to the older one and does what she says. It takes me back to the days when I used to convince my younger brother that the smaller bedroom was the better one. It worked, for the record.

Bath time consists of me coming up with games to get them to wash their bodies and their hair because they could spend hours in there just playing. Don't they understand I need them to wash and get out so I have 7 minutes to blow-dry W's hair and 13 minutes to dry M's?? (M's hair is much thicker than W's...it's strange). I never thought I would say this, but I'm jealous of the way their hair looks when it's blow-dried. When I blow dry my hair, it's huge and wavy. When I blow dry THEIR hair, it's silky and straight and not frizzy at all. I want their hair. But not black.


Dinner went the same way...something heated up, me nibbling on pretzels in the other room, and then sneaking food off of their plates in the kitchen while I was supposed to be washing them. Look, 6 hours is a long time to go without eating. It's not right.

I read Bethany the Ballet fairy to W before bed and more of Harry Potter to M. I love reading Harry Potter because I can do all the voices. I think my voice of the one that Harry hears in his head was a little too scary though. It was a bit much for someone that's about to go to bed. She probably had nightmares about that one.

I'm realizing that these posts are making me sound like a horrible nanny. I promise that I'm not.