I got yer Nanny Diary right here, buddy.
1. Leave house at 6:45am.
2. Enjoy a leisurely one-hour drive to work in bumper to bumper traffic.
3. Stop for coffee.
4. Arrive at charges' house at 8:00. Warmly greeted by both charges.
5. Chitchat with charges' mom about what's going on today.
6. Help get charges' breakfasted and dressed; drop older charge at school and drive over to library to return overdue books.
7. Return home in time to greet younger charge's schoolmate D., who is coming over for a playdate. D. is what we in the biz call "challenging"...(ie. the Devil's spawn). Younger charge adores D., even though he is often treated like shit by him. I spend the next two hours negotiating arguments over trains, coloring implements and everything else while trying to bake a cake from scratch.
8. D. has a shit fit when I serve his snack on an orange plate instead of a green plate. Younger charge diplomatically offers D. his green-ish plate and is heartily rebuffed with "No, dummy." I calmly tell D. he can eat off the orange plate or not eat, which thankfully stuns him into silence. Younger charge and I exchange raised-eyebrow glances.
9. D.'s mom comes to pick him up and says "Was he nice?" and I say "yes..." and she says "Thank you for being so tactful." This kid is such a monster, she's probably running out of people willing to have him come for playdates.
9. Younger charge helps me finish the cake and we play 7 games of "Go Fish" while it bakes.
10. The sun is out...our first nice day in weeks. I tell younger charge we will walk over to get his brother from school and that he needs to put his shoes on. This does not sit well with younger charge, who flings himself on the floor screaming "I'm just not going!". I pick him up, shoeless, wrestle him into a stroller and off we go. Halfway to school he asks for his shoes, and I hand them to him, which sets off a new round of screaming because they are his old shoes, not his new Batman shoes.
11. We get to older charge's school and I am immediately set upon by a mom who has been trying to hire me away for the past four months. I deflect her, get older charge and we start on our walk home.
12. Once home, I create my daily lunchtime masterpiece of apples (skin on for older child, skin off for younger) and grilled cheese sandwiches cut with cookie cutters. The kids are eager to start decorating the house for our little party and can barely sit still long enough to eat.
I'll spare you anymore play-by-play...the rest of the afternoon was taken up with decorating and cooking for the party...older charge created quite the festive streamer display -- by the time he was done it looked like the inside of their house had been t-p'ed.
And...the party was great. The charges were so happy to see that they had once again "surprised" their folks and it was a nice time.
And now, almost 13 hours later, I am finally home and yes, I will be opening a bottle of wine shortly.