Nanny Annie

A few months ago a friend, who's daughter was born in May, was was telling me about their struggle to find child care. It appears that many of the good day care centers in our area have waiting lists! I was shocked and instantly stressed. Even thought our baby was months away at that point, I began looking into child care for our little one, and didn't like what I was finding.

Josh and I both grew up going to in home day care. His "Granny" and my "Nanny" were not actual family members but older women who took care of their own grand kids plus a few extras in their homes. This was very common in the small town where we grew up and I don't think there even were any day care centers. Most people stayed with family members or people that were like family. Sadly, all of our family is far away.

Around here it seems like there are very few options other than large day care centers or turning your baby over to a unregulated stranger (which is scary). We briefly discussed having Josh's mom help out, but they live too far away and have no plans of moving, so that really wasn't practical. As we began looking into this further, Josh and I both felt strongly that there had to be another option.

One night as we were discussing this our friend Annie came to mind. Annie is an amazing mom of two school age kids. Her schedule is somewhat flexible and we knew she would be an awesome nanny. We tossed the idea around in our heads for a wondering if there was a chance that she would want to take care of our baby? We both thought probably not...but how amazing would that be. It is sort of a tricky subject and we didn't know how to broach it. We certainly didn't want her to feel pressured.

One morning a few weeks later, as we had brunch with Annie and her kids, Josh, semi-jokingly, asked "Hey Annie, would you want to take care of our baby?" We were both pretty sure she would laugh it off, but, to our surprise, she looked thoughtful for a minute and then asked if we were serious. As it turns out, she was considering a career change and had sort of been hoping for something just like this! Is that a God thing or what?

Of course we had some details to work out, but now everything is set to begin in January when I have to return to work. Our little girl is the luckiest girl in the world. Josh and I both feel relief that our baby won't just be a number at a day care and confident in Annie's ability to take great care of our daughter (after all, her own daughter is an amazing teenager, which is quite an anomaly!). How special is it that our daughter will have someone caring for her who has cared about her and prayed for her before she was even conceived!?!