Another School Shooting?

When I see it on the news, my heart sinks into my stomach.My inner voice screams over and over again:

This shouldn’t be happening to our kids.

My outer voice is united with every parent: HOW DO WE MAKE THIS STOP?!

Washington is no stranger to school shootings.  It was only four years ago when a Marysville-Pilchuck High School student killed four of his peers with his father’s handgun. And just this week, an observant grandmother foiled her grandson’s plot to kill classmates at ACES High School in Everett.

Many people have ideas about how to end school shootings, yet our government does nothing.

I write this today as a parent at my wits end, unsure of what the right answer is, but with a strong desire to do something.  Without a doubt, policy change is coming.  It has to. But how many more young lives will be lost before our elected leaders end the debate and act?

Continue reading “School Shootings: How to Keep Your Kids Safe” →

Why is Part Time Care So Hard to Find?

Here’s the reality: our area is growing and FAST. According to the Puget Sound Business Journal, more than 1,000 people are moving to the Seattle area EVERY WEEK! The vast majority of people moving to our area are doing so because they were hired by Amazon, Microsoft, the University of Washington or one of dozens of other organizations that are currently on a hiring spree. These people sometimes come to Seattle with their families or with plans to start a family here.

Rarely have I met a nanny who moved to our area to….be a nanny.

Continue reading “How to Find a Part Time Nanny” →

With the new year, comes a host of new laws and regulations that affect us in the child care world. There has been much discussion and back and forth within the community about minimum wage laws, paid sick leave, and mileage reimbursement. I put this article together to help clarify for all of us (including myself) how to best navigate these changes.

(Thank you to Nanny Parent Connection members Becki Brack (who is a CPA) and Cara Nina (one of our marvelous nannies) for granting permission to share some of the below information.)

New minimum wage and sick leave laws went into effect in King County on January 1, 2018.  Sick leave is now accrued at one hour per 40 hours worked.  The new minimum wage in Washington State is now $11.50 per hour and $14.00 per hour in the city of Seattle.   Another change employers should be aware of is the new IRS mileage reimbursement rate of 54.5 cents per mile.  If you employ a nanny, these new laws and changes apply to you!

Continue reading “2018 Law Changes You Need to Know About” →

Big thank you to The Nanny Counsel (Brooke Weglarz) for sharing this great article with us! You can learn more about Brooke’s business by clicking here. Thanks Brooke!

I want to start this article with a question for parents: Would you ever ask your house cleaner to change your child’s diaper, or take your child to the park, or prepare and feed your child lunch, or pick your child up from school, or assist your child with homework, or take your child to the doctor, or research and plan a developmentally appropriate sensory activity, or set up and host a play date, or sleep train your baby?

I bet your answer is a resounding “No”.

Why then, do parents often ask and expect nannies to take on house cleaner roles? If you wouldn’t do the reverse and have your weekly cleaning person take care of your child, why then is it okay to expect your nanny clean your home? A nanny and a house cleaner are two VERY different jobs and generally speaking, most nannies don’t decide to become a nanny so they can clean houses — they decide to be a nanny because they love children and are passionate about investing in them.

Continue reading “I am a Nanny, Not a Housekeeper” →

Happy New Year!  I hope you all had an enjoyable holiday season!

Goals

For me (and many others), the New Year is a time of reflection.  I look back over the last year and see what worked well and what didn’t for me and my family.  I think about what I would like to accomplish in the year ahead.  I don’t think in terms of resolutions necessarily, but rather in terms of goals to work on or things I can do differently. 

Perhaps my biggest work in progress is to be more organized because:

1) I just need to be to keep things running smoothly in a household with four children,

2) My husband is one of the most organized people I know and he needs organization in his life.  In our home organization = peace and happiness, but it’s a constant work in progress! 

Another goal of mine is to embrace a spirit of flexibility.  I feel that I am already a fairly flexible person.  However, I feel like the more flexible I can be, the less I will be setting myself up for stress if something does not go as planned. 

My original thought for this post was to do the year in review.  Enter a whopper of a migraine on New Year’s Eve and that plan was quickly out the window!  Falling asleep on the couch well before midnight wasn’t how I had envisioned saying goodbye to 2017 and hello to 2018.  Sometimes life happens and you just roll with it.  If anything will make a person more flexible, it’s got to be life with kids, right? 

Continue reading “Laura’s New Year Musings” →

Looking for easy and effective ways to to save $500 a month on childcare? You’ve found it!

Last week, I received a message from one of our new members that recently moved to Seattle from the midwest. In all caps she wrote:

HOW DO PEOPLE AFFORD CHILDCARE HERE?

She went on to write that her family recently moved here because of a job change and were unprepared for the childcare costs in our little corner of America. She then stated: 

CHILDCARE IS ALMOST TWICE AS MUCH HERE YET OUR TAKE HOME PAY IS NOT

She’s not alone. This topic is one of the top three concerns I hear about on a regular basis. In fact, it was the top vote by a wide margin in a poll we recently conducted on what childcare issues keep parents up at night.

This got me thinking about my family, our budget, and what simple ways families can save on childcare costs. I specifically left out suggestions like changing work schedules, hiring an au-pair, etc. because those aren’t simple nor necessarily easy to set up.

If you have other ideas that work for your family, please share in the comments below or send me an email and I will add to this post.

Note: The cost savings below are based on one child and an average childcare cost of $20.00 per hour.

Continue reading “4 Simple Ways to Save $500 a Month on Childcare” →