Note from Laura: This week, the Seattle City Council passed a hastily organized Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights. Despite the best efforts of nannies, the language in the bill is muddled, and may be interpreted in a way that runs counter to industry standards and established law. More specifically, parts of this bill leave nannies open to being misclassified as independent contracts or salaried employees. This bill could NEGATIVELY impact families that employ nannies or other household employees.

Please take a moment to read the below message written by nannies and join me in signing their petition to Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan calling on her to hear the collective voice of nannies across Seattle. You will find the link to the petition at the end of this post. Thank you in advance!

As you may have seen in the news, the Seattle City Council unanimously passed the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights. This bill, and the laws that it just enacted, seek equal rights for domestic workers such as home caregivers, house cleaners, and nannies.

Specifically, the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights will:

• Ensure domestic workers are paid the minimum wage
• Provide guaranteed breaks
• Make withholding of identity papers (e.g. passports, gov’t issued immigration documents) illegal
• Stipulate overtime pay regulations
• Require 24 hours off for every six consecutive days worked for live-in domestic workers
• Create a standards board where federal and state laws can be upheld for domestic workers

Continue reading “Help Nannies Be Heard! Sign Their Petition Today!” →

My husband is a tad obsessed with technology. While we currently have both an audio and video baby monitor to keep an eye (and ear) on the twin babies, he wanted to make use of the Amazon Echo Dots that we currently have scattered across our house to monitor the children.

I’ve tried this out and it works GREAT! An excellent idea for parents not wanting to shell out $100+ for a new baby monitor and for nannies and sitters that might want to keep an ear on what the older kids are doing in the other room.

If you already have Echo devices installed in your home, this will literally take about three minutes to set up.

Continue reading “Pro Tip: Use Amazon Echo Devices As A Baby Monitor” →

This excellent post is by Jason King – a male nanny (or manny) and member of the Nanny Parent Connection. Find out more about Jason at the conclusion of this post.

How fortunate are we to live in a city where a collective striving toward open-mindedness, inclusion, and equity is commonplace?

Undoubtedly, there’s still much room for improvement on all fronts, but nonetheless, when all is said and done, we’ve got it pretty good up here. I’m always heartened to hear stories of individuals who’ve uprooted from a rather difficult life elsewhere in search of solace, acceptance, and community here in Seattle.

I’m so grateful that, in the place we call home, most of our friends and neighbors are of the belief that diversity inherently produces a richer, more nuanced, and more dynamic society. Beyond mere acceptance, many of us yearn for and deeply appreciate any opportunity to challenge our traditional notions of class, race, gender, orientation, etc., and we pride ourselves on the willingness and ability to navigate this often treacherous terrain.

So it’s for this very reason that I find it all the more perplexing and confounding that there are still so few male nannies employed in childcare (as mannies), and even fewer represented as birth professionals (midwives, birth/postpartum doulas, childbirth educators, etc).

Continue reading “Guest Post: Why A Male Nanny?” →

The Mr. took our three year old boy and our 11 month old twins (boy and girl) to the Woodland Park Zoo earlier this week. He wrote this great post about what the kids enjoyed the most, and what they found to be kind of “meh”. Enjoy!

Our three year old boy has been asking me to go to the zoo for the past couple of weeks. Earlier this week, we loaded up the twins and trekked up to the zoo.

If you have ever visited the zoo, you know there are dozens of activities and exhibits to visit. It’s hard to see it all if the zoo is busy or it’s getting close to nap time. For this visit, I wanted to put together a list of what the kids enjoyed the most so that next time we visit, I know what to prioritize.

To accomplish this, I enlisted the help of my three youngest children. I explained to the three year old boy that I wanted him to tell me what exhibits/activities he liked the best via thumbs up. We came up with the following scale:

👍👍 – Awesome, amazing, “the coolest ever”

👍 – Pretty cool, “I’m tired of this Dad. Let’s go see the elephants”

🖐 – Okay, meh, “Wow, look at this – a leaf!”

Note: I know that there are no longer elephants at Woodland Park Zoo but he didn’t believe me. Despite about 17 attempts.

The twins don’t talk yet so no “thumbs up scale” with them. Instead I determined their level of interest in an exhibit/activity based on whether it seemed to capture their attention or not.

Without further ado…

Continue reading “Woodland Park Zoo: Top 12 Things to See and Do | Kids’ Perspective” →