Super Nanny? We think not!

Through our attempt to find a nanny for Avery, we stumbled upon a veteran nanny who was looking for weekend babysitting work. She has been a nanny for 10 years, and she is currently a nanny for a 16-month old little boy. The majority of her experience is with infants - sounds perfect! Avery, Roger, and I interviewed her for potential weekend work, and we thought that she was great.

Nanny girl gave us a list of references, and I started calling them the next day. The responses were amazing - everyone raved about nanny girl! One lady told me that she had four kids under the age of four (lady must be crazy), and nanny girl was excellent at handling all four of them at once. They were so comfortable with nanny girl that this lady and her husband took long weekend trips and left all four kids with nanny girl. There was another lady that I called and left a message with. Later that afternoon, this lady called me back. She had just given birth to another baby that MORNING, but when she heard my message asking about nanny girl, she felt like she needed to call me back immediately because she had so many positive things to say about her. How crazy is that? I barely spoke with my own sister (with whom I am extremely close!) the day I gave birth, nevermind some stranger calling about a nanny reference.

After all of the wonderful reviews, Roger and I thought we had stumbled upon Super Nanny! We were disappointed that she couldn't be our nanny, but we were so thankful to find a great babysitter for the weekends. So we booked her for Saturday, the 24th, and Roger and I made dinner reservations to celebrate my birthday.

I felt a mixture of excitement and nervousness all day on Saturday. This would be our first time to leave Avery. We had 7:30 reservations, and nanny girl was supposed to be at our house at 6:30 pm. I started peeking out the window at 6:15. By 6:45 I was irritated that she was late. Roger called her cell to make sure that she wasn't lost, but her phone went straight to voicemail. By 7:30 we realized that she wasn't coming. She never showed up, and she never called!

At 8:00 pm I was back in my sweats, the pizza was ordered, and Avery and I cuddled on the couch to watch the Miss America pageant. It wasn't until Monday that we heard from nanny girl through email. She had a family emergency on Saturday, and she said that she was on the phone for hours dealing with things. I understand that people have things come up, but there is no excuse for her not calling Saturday or even Sunday. The Monday afternoon email just doesn't cut it. I can tell you that we won't be calling her again!