Hiring a Nanny

Our Doctor's, along with other Mother's of multiples have been telling George and I that we will definitely need some help during the last few months of my pregnancy and also after the twins are born. So...with me slowing down and already not able to keep up, it was time to start looking and interviewing. We started by joining a web-site called Care.com where people can post their profiles, experience, references, and background checks for child care, and other home services such as elderly care, housekeeping services, pet and house sitting. It's a pretty good site and you can refine your search to be pretty specific and even post your own ad. We looked through 100 profiles and narrowed it to 15 and then interviewed about half of them. We also placed an ad in an Amish newspaper called the People's Exchange and were completely overwhelmed by the responses!! I received well over 100 calls and tried my best to return most of them, but by the end, I just gave up. We did end up interviewing quite a few Amish girls and we learned a lot about their culture and community. We paid for their drivers to bring them to the interviews and they usually brought there parents along with them. In essence, we were being interviewed also. It was actually great to see such strong family ties and the respect that these young women had for their parents. One family invited us to dinner in Topeka so that we could meet their family and interview their daughter. It was a great dinner and the family was very nice and made us feel right at home. In the end, we ended up hiring someone from the Care.com web-site mostly due to the difficulties of getting an Amish girl to our house everyday. We first hired a teacher from Grand Rapids that was moving here for a boyfriend. However, after a week of her boyfriend causing all sorts of problems we moved on to our second pick and she accepted. Our new nanny is Crystal Thomas and started on October 19th and will work for us up through the beginning of spring. So far, things are going pretty well and I'm getting the rest and the help that I need, and Ava seems to like her. Glad the process of hiring is over!!