June 2013 – A Caring Nanny

June 29, 2013 Blog By admin No Comments

4 Ways to Have A Great 4th of July With Your Family

How to have a Great 4th of July with Your Family. Make plans today to not let this July 4th be just another day. Create a memorable celebration for your family.

1. Plan a 4th of July party. Invite another family over or a bigger crowd. We found some fun crafts and simple desert recipes online.

Find a patriotic movie to watch together.

2. Share your feelings of gratitude for living in the USA, like many families do at Thanksgiving. Go around the table and ask each person to share two reasons why they’re grateful for America.

3. Find a story from history to share with the children, or if they’re older, give each one an assignment and ask them to share a picture and some facts about their hero for your Independence Day celebration.

4. Use what you have on hand, like hands and feet, to create this 4th of July flag as a team effort.

The favorite traditions for our family of six kids growing up for the 4th were homemade ice cream, watermelon seed spitting contests, and sitting on the roof to watch the fireworks. From our home in North Tempe, we could see the big fireworks from ASU, SRP Pera Club, and three to four other locations.

Have a wonderful Independence Day and family day!
Beth

Tags: 4th of July, America, American history, ASU, bonding, cake, celebration, children, crafts, Dads, desert, Family, family bonding, Family Fun, fireworks, flags, fun, gratitude, history, homemade ice cream, Independence Day, moms, parents, party, patriotism, patriots, Pera club, SRP, Tempe, USA, watermelon

June 20, 2013 News By admin No Comments

Friday, June 21 – Batman Character Dinner at PlayFactory at Desert Ridge

A fun Batman Character Dinner at the PlayFactory at Desert Ridge is Friday June 21 at 5:15 PM. Boys and girls are invited to come dressed in their favorite Batman or superhero costume. The dinner will include pizza and drinks for the whole family. The Play Factory features a giant climbing play structure, bounce houses with slides, rock climbing walls, a video game playing and more. Socks are required to play. Our own nanny recruiter Ashley Zehring will be there helping kids create their own batman masks!

Where: PlayFactory at Desert Ridge

21001 N. Tatum Blvd., Phoenix

When: 5:15 PM – 6:45 PM

Who: Public Welcome

How: Advanced registration required. 602-473-7529

Cost: $29 per family. Limit 2 adults and 3 kids per family. $10 charge for any additional child or adult.

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Tags: Batman, Batman Night, Character Dinner, Family Fun night, masks, Nanny, Nanny Recruiter, Play Factory

June 15, 2013 Blog, Uncategorized By admin No Comments

READING TO BABIES AND TODDLERS: OUR FAMILY’S FAVORITE BOOKS

In our family, we started reading to our children from the time they were babies. It created strong bonds, sped them towards academic excellence, accelerated their speech and communications skills, logical thinking, and increased concentration and discipline. NPR recently reported that high school student’s reading levels are stuck in 5th and 6th grade levels and older students are not tackling more difficult material. Reading to children is by far the best way to help children be successful in school and in life.

Why do some books stay popular for generations? George McDonald, the 19th Century Scottish storyteller, said that the best children’s books are the ones where parents are looking over their kids shoulders.

When your toddler is at the stage when they want the same book read 12 times a day, it had better be fun for you to read!

Here are a few of our all time family favorites that met that test.

PAT THE BUNNY

This classic book is so interactive that neither babies nor their parents ever tire of touching the bunny, feeling Daddy’s beard or trying on Mommy’s ring.

GOODNIGHT MOON
This classic book delights every child and they never tire of it’s sparse words at the end of the day. It becomes their cue that it’s bedtime and they settle down and easily slip into sleep and parents enjoy it just as much as the babies.

WHERE IS BABY’S BELLY BUTTON?

This is newer than the books I enjoyed with my own children, but my grandchildren love it.

Babies and toddlers don’t realize that things exist when they’re hidden, so they are surprised every time you uncover a hidden belly button or toes.

THE VERY HUNGRY CATEPILLAR

After finding a huge green hornworm as big as my finger, eating our pepper plants last Spring, I brought him in a jar to show my two year old grandaughter. We made a green catterpillar and fruits and vegetables out of playdoh and re-enacted the story.

GREEN EGGS AND HAM

The wonderful Dr Seuss rhymes and outrageous stories and pictures is one most parents were raised on and continue to enchant toddlers today.

CORDUROY

The lonely teddy bear that had to live in a department store until a young girl was able to save up her allowance and bring him home is endearing to parents and children alike and makes children feel loved and cared for.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

Maurice Sendak died just last year and he left a wonderful legacy of his love for children with this book. We read this book over and over as our children were growing up and they love the wildness of it and that it was all peaceful by the time bedtime came.

THE SNOWY DAY

Great for reading this summer-Kids get out of school for a day of frolicking in the snow. Another Caldecott Award winning treasure.

CARS, TRUCKS AND THINGS THAT GO.

All of Richard Scarey’ books are favorites. Children enjoy the detailed pictures with so many interesting things going on.

THE SNOWY DAY

Great for reading this summer-Kids get out of school for a day of frolicking in the snow. Another Caldecott Award winning treasure.

THE LITTLE HOUSE

This wonderful book is by the same author, Virginia Lee Burton, and shows how a lovely farm home becomes encircled by the big city. The granddaughter finds it and rescues it and moves it out to the country. The detailed pictures show the seasons changing as well and the countryside, families growing up. Another award-winning book.

Our family spent many hours reading books together, and now they are buying these favorites for their children. All five of them have loved reading and are lifetime learners.

Beth

June 15, 2013 Blog, Uncategorized By admin No Comments

ARE YOU FRIENDS WITH YOUR NANNY? TIGHTEN MUSHY BOUNDARIES

Boundaries in the home with a nanny are naturally confusing.There are two basic ways you relate to others: There’s a business relationship with someone or a family relationship. The business relationship is based on: ‘I have something for you”. The basis is performance. You perform for me and I perform for you. The family relationship with someone is based on: “I am something to you. It’s what I am to you. The basis is a commitment. A permanent committed relationship. Here’s an example of how these two relationships work out.

There are two different ways you can live in someone’s house. Generally, you’re either there as a tenant or as a family member. If you’re a tenant, the person who owns the house is your landlord and you rent their house. You can have a pretty good relationship with them as long as you pay the rent and respect the property.

But the relationship has structure and rules that are mechanical.There are rules for the tenant and the landlord also has certain rules he must follow. The landlord has to do maintenence. You can have a pretty good relationship, but the basis of your approach and the interchange is a mechanical one of goods and services. One of the problems is that when you live in a house and you see the boarders every day, the relationship continually tries to move off the business relationship into friendship. You start to not just give goods and services but listen to their problems and and start to move into friendship, and it’s hazardous. What happens when you have to put the screws to somebody when they aren’t paying the rent and they have become your friend and they’re not taking care of the property? A business relationship is a conditional one, but family relationships move towards being unconditional.

The business relationship is based on what you have–performance, and the family relationship is moving towards who you are. One is conditional and one is unconditional. One has to do with your doing and one has to do with your being. You’ve gotta watch out. You can’t become friends with the tenants.

At home, you’re supervising a nanny and you’re both crossing boundaries and she becomes your friend. Now what happens when she’s not towing the line, not coming through on her job description? Or, you start leaving the dishes in the sink on Sunday nights, and soon, it’s every night. It’s very difficult, very dissonant. There are two basic types of relationships and there’s a need to keep the tension between the two.

You can also be living in the home of your parents and you’re not a boarder, you’re a child. The paradigm is different. The business relationship should work like: “If you perform you’ll be accepted. The way the family relationship works, is “that since your’re accepted, you should perform”. It’s two completely different ways of relating.

We’ve recently have had nannies reporting clients breeching boundary lines by asking indiscrete personal questions. When the nannies try to deflect those questions, the clients will as much say, “I feel I can’t trust you, because you’re not being completely open with me.”

We all want someone who will love our children as much as we do and who’s like a member of the family, and yet we need to walk that tightrope, so the relationship stays friendly, but business-like. I’m not saying this is easy, and the longer you’re together, the more you need to work on it.

If the boundaries at your house have gotten soft and mushy, how can you take back ground?

1. On your next Monthly Meeting share your failure to maintain the proper relationship. Nannies can have hurt feelings when Moms go back and forth on boundaries. One Nanny had a Mom who regularly made the nanny her ‘best friend’ and then ‘cut her off’ emotionally. when she realized she’d gone too far. Another Mom kept the nanny as her BFF, but when family came to visit, she became ‘The Help’.

2. Have regular evaluations with your nanny, either quarterly or at six months and a year. We have a Performance Review available. Just reply to this email and we’ll forward it to you.
3. Be award that you may have crossed her boundaries as well, perhaps by regularly coming home late and not expecting to pay extra, or slowly adding to her work load without mentioning any reimbursement, or by sharing marital discord with her.
4. If you’ve never sat down and filled out a Working Agreement, it’s not too late. This agreement delineates her responsibilities, schedule, reimbursement and many other practical guidelines that you decide on together.
5. Keep evaluating if you’re both walking the tightrope. Be friendly, but not BFFs. It just doesn’t work.

June 8, 2013 Blog By admin No Comments

DADS: 8 WAYS TO HAVE MORE FUN WITH YOUR FAMILY FOR FATHER’S DAY

Having fun with our families and creating priceless memories together is one of the best ways to build teamwork, develop closer bonds, and makes us all healthier. Watch this funny video of Chad Morton, a stay at home Dad in Atlanta, that has gone viral with over two million hits.

Here are 8 great ways to get your family to laugh more and have fun together.
1. Be silly. Impersonate a ballerina or Dora the Explorer or their favorite Superhuman cartoon character. Act like a chimpanzee or a silly monster.
Pretend to fall off the couch, onto the coffee table and roll across the floor. Make silly faces, like exaggerated grins.
2. Start a tickle-fight. Wrestle together as a family. Get everyone involved down on the floor.
3. Make up your own silly song. Use familiar lyrics to a children’s song but add your own silly words.

4. Create a silly prank when no one is expecting it. Pretend there’s a bug and you’re scared of it, or a mouse and you’re standing on the chair. Or play hide ‘n seek all over the house.
5. Children love being chased. Clear an area and tell your child you’re going to ‘get her’.
6. Get our your old ‘knock-knock’ jokes and silly riddles.
7. Share a funny story from your childhood. When Dads share self-depreciating humor, stories of how they failed when they were younger, its endearing to children.
8. Watch Mr Bean videos. Dads, have your family watch this funny video of Mr Bean who tries to use the kids slide at the pool and when he gets chased off, he tries the high dive and is too scared to dive.

June 8, 2013 Blog, Uncategorized By admin No Comments

3 VITAL AREAS OF EDUCATION YOUR NANNY MUST SUCCEED AT

Education deeply impacts the personality of a young child and is a much broader subject than we normally realize.

Education affects personality.

Your nanny has enormous influence on the personality and academic achievement of your child by creating the right educational environment for them. The intelligence environment that you and she cultivate will make all the difference in the world for your toddler.

Speaking Broadly About Education

I’m speaking in the broadest sense that goes way beyond workbooks or organized learning or classrooms. Most of her time will be spent educating your toddlers in three vital areas of life until they develop mastery themselves:

1. Morals, health and safety and life skills.
Your child’s personality is greatly shaped by her focused, continual, passionate attention to these goals. She will be teaching your child to be patient, thoughtful, caring, goodhearted, respectful, unselfish, generous and responsible.

2. Healthy Habits
Her second goal is to help her develop healthy habits like washing hands, brushing teeth, picking up toys after playing with them, making his bed, helping with simple chores, like folding clothes, matching socks, putting away the silverware in the dishwasher, clearing the table.

3. How To Think
Along with these skills and mindsets, she must teach the child how to think, how to make sound judgements, how to apply logic and reason to her life.

Encouraging Strengths
Neither you nor your nanny can change your child’s genes or basic makeup, but you can recognize and work with them. You can minimize the negative traits, encourage strengths, and maximize natural gifts.

June 6, 2013 Blog By admin No Comments

HAVING A SUMMER BABY? HOW TO SAVE THOUSANDS ON YOUR TAXES WITH AN FSA

Did you know that in the U.S. there are more babies born during the summer than any other season of the year? It’s one of the reasons that demand for professional childcare reaches a peak during the summer. So, it’s a good time to remind everyone about Flexible Spending Aaccount enrollment. For families who have just given birth – or are about to welcome a new member to their household – this edition of The Legal Review local placement agency,nanny,, Memorial Day, placement counselor, tax and payroll obligations, will share a simple tip worth as much as $1,500.

The Situation
A couple gave birth to their first child on April 19. In early May, they began working with a local placement agency to find a nanny so the mom could go back to work after Memorial Day. With about a week to spare, they found the perfect nanny. As the family worked with the agency to finalize the employment paperwork for their nanny, the family’s placement counselor provided them with information about their tax and payroll obligations as a household employer and shared the good news about tax breaks. The family told her that they had not enrolled in their company’s Flexible Spending Account but would do so in the subsequent year.

Having read through the Expert Advice section of our website, the counselor remembered that there were some special opportunities to enroll in the middle of the year if you just had a baby. So, she advised the family to talk to their HR people as soon as possible.

The Law

Families with childcare expenses are entitled to tax breaks to help offset some of the costs. There is no income restriction on the tax breaks, so all families qualify as long as their children are under age 13 and both spouses are working, looking for work or are full-time students.

The most lucrative tax break is the Dependent Care Account (also referred to as “Flexible Spending Account” or “FSA” as part of a company’s “Cafeteria Plan”). If one of the spouses has access to this benefit, the family will be able to pay for up to $5,000 of childcare expenses using pre-tax dollars. That means the family has no taxes on that portion of their income. This benefit saves most household employers between $2,100 and $2,300 per year, depending on the state they live in and their marginal tax rate.

Enrollment in the FSA is limited to once a year (most companies do open enrollment in the fall for the subsequent tax year). However, there is a 30-day window after “life-changing events” where the family can enroll mid-year and the birth of a child is one of the qualifying events. If families miss that window, they can still take advantage of the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit when they file their federal income tax return. However, this tax break saves a maximum of $600 per year for families with one child or $1,200 per year for families with two or more children.

The Outcome

Upon speaking to the HR person, the family learned more about the 30-day window for life-changing events and they were able to enroll in the FSA program for the current tax year. Given the family’s marginal tax rate, they will be able to take advantage of $2,100 in tax savings for the 2013 tax year.

Without that tip from the counselor, the family would have missed the enrollment window, which would have forced them to settle for the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit’s $600 worth of tax savings. That $1,500 of additional savings will pay for a lot of diapers and baby food!

How to Ensure Your Familily Maximizes Your Tax Savings
Unfortunately, it is extremely common for families to miss out on enrolling in an Flexible Spending Account after the birth of a child. As first-time parents become first-time employers, there is a lot of new information to process and 30 days is not a lot of time to know everything about being a household employer.

That’s why our partnership with Breedlove & Associates offers the families who are working with us a New Employer Orientation free of charge. This 10-minute, no-pressure, no-obligation phone call allows a Breedlove & Associates tax expert to assess the family’s unique situation and provide guidance on all the tax and labor law issues that will come into play for them. Whether they decide to use their comprehensive payroll, tax and HR service or not, this guidance will likely save them thousands of dollars and dozens of hours.

888-BREEDLOVE (888-273-3356)

www.breedlove.com

Tags: 30 day window, Breedlove & Associates, Dependent Care Account, Enrollment in FSA, Flexible Spending Account, FSA enrollment, household employer, New Employer Orientation, Newborn, payroll and tax service, pre-tax dollars, professional childcare, summer baby, tax and payroll obligations, tax breaks, tax expert, taxes

June 1, 2013 Blog By admin No Comments

Time to Go Back to Work After Baby: Five Things to Know Before You Go

Your maternity leave has flown by and no one could have prepared you for the exhilirating and exhausting experiences of these past few months. But how are you feeling about leaving your little one? Guilty? Uncertain? Elated? The exact opposite of how you thought you’d feel?

It’s hard to focus on a new marketing campaign when you’re separated from your little miracle. You’re going to struggle with feelings of doubt, guilt and frustration for the first few weeks. Expect the first month to be a challenge and don’t be too hard on yourself.

Accept that you may have to ‘fake it til you make it’. Half of all new Moms go back to work during their baby’s first year. Moms easily get caught up in guilt over failings in all areas of parenting. In a Working Mother survey, two thirds of all the working moms surveyed felt separation anxiety and guilt. Your baby will be fine, but it may take you a while to adjust. When you return home and see how happy your baby is, your own emotions will calm. If after several months you are still feeling like you’ve made the wrong choice, and you can afford it, ask about moving to part time or having a flexible schedule where you work from home a couple of days a week, or even quit your job.

Here are a few tips to relieve the separation anxiety.
* Put a photo of baby on your desk.
* Ask your caregiver to send you photos and videos and progress reports during the day.
*Don’t call too frequently to check up on baby.
2. Get organized.
* Get yourself to bed no later than 9 pm because you’ll need to get up early.
* Do everything you can the night before, including prepping bottles, showering, laying out clothes, and packing your lunch.
* Practice your routine a few times before the big day, so you’ll be confident and calm.
3. Make it a Team Effort.
* Ask your spouse to take on more duties during this time, or get some extra household help.
* Clearly designate tasks and decide what each of you can handle so you get more sleep and are easier to live with.
* Sleep when the baby sleeps rather than doing an exta set of laundry, or tidying up the kitchen.
* One husband only took off one week when the baby was born and a second week on the first week Mom started back to work. This way all she had to do was get herself to work, and didn’t need to worry about baby. It was also sweet that the two of them had that quality time together.
* Another way to ease back into work is to start mid-week or only work part time the first week.

4. If you’ll be nursing, be committed and protect pumping time by blocking it off on your schedule.
* Buy the best pump you can afford that will pump both sides at once and be hands free so you can study a report while pumping.
* Have one for home and one for work if possible, and at work, get extras of the parts that need washing.
* Keep extra tops, bras and breast pads in your office for leaks.
* If you don’t have an office, ask ahead if there is a lactation room or another room you can use and put a discrete note on the door to prevent interruptions.
* Pump as soon as you get to work because you’ll have more milk then and you’ll be sure to get it done before starting projects.
* Maintain regular pumping times so you don’t get engorged, since it can lead to mastitis. Watch videos or pictures of your baby to stimulate milk production.
5. Be all there at work and at home.
The more you focus on the tasks at hand the quicker the day goes by. When you get home, cuddle with your little one skin to skin in in your darkened bedroom and forget about unfinished tasks at work. Going back to work after a baby is never easy, but as you follow these tips the transition will be smoother.

Tags: back to work, bottles, breast pump, flexible schedule, guilt, hands free breast pump, little miracle, mastitis, Maternity leave, milk production, new baby, Parenting, part time work, separation anxiety, work life balance, Working Moms, Working Mother

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Blog

4 Ways to Have A Great 4th of July With Your Family

Friday, June 21 – Batman Character Dinner at PlayFactory at Desert Ridge

READING TO BABIES AND TODDLERS: OUR FAMILY’S FAVORITE BOOKS

ARE YOU FRIENDS WITH YOUR NANNY? TIGHTEN MUSHY BOUNDARIES

DADS: 8 WAYS TO HAVE MORE FUN WITH YOUR FAMILY FOR FATHER’S DAY

3 VITAL AREAS OF EDUCATION YOUR NANNY MUST SUCCEED AT

HAVING A SUMMER BABY? HOW TO SAVE THOUSANDS ON YOUR TAXES WITH AN FSA

Time to Go Back to Work After Baby: Five Things to Know Before You Go

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