Brooklyn Dad on Leave (Week 7/12)

Erez Levin
Sep 3, 2018 · 5 min read
Flying umbrella not a dealbreaker, but pretty much everything else is.

The Nanny Search

For those of you who’ve previously gone through this, you know how difficult it can be not just finding a great nanny, but then also coming to terms with a stranger watching (and in many ways raising) your baby. And it probably doesn’t help if you, like me, watched Mary Poppins roughly 5 times per summer for 12 summers of your life. I could blame my grandparents’ sparse VHS collection for that, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love every single screening and may have watched it annually even if I had grown up in this Netflix age of movie access abundance instead.

Like Baywatch taught a young Erez the idealized version of a woman (Pamela Anderson), Mary Poppins taught me the idealized version of a caretaker — practically perfect in every way. So it’s no wonder that I entered this nanny search with an incredibly high, and perhaps unrealistic bar.

My unsuccessful post on the Park Slope Parents FB group

I do also wonder how true Mary Poppins was back in the 60s? I don’t need to go back more than 30 years to see that childcare decisions were made much more lightly then. I may need to devote a whole post to that subject, but in short it’s hard to imagine a TV-as-babysitter situation these days or putting an 8 year old in charge of himself and a 6 year old, as was often the case with my brother and I.

To add to the challenge, we originally were going to look for a family to share a nanny with. Of course, for them as well I had an idealized version in my head of the family and baby, with as many requirements and preferred attributes as we had for the nanny. When a mom reached out to me in response to a FB post of mine, I got irrationally overexcited as I checked out her profile and quickly saw that they were both Jewish AND Burners! It was like we hit the nanny share jackpot, and naturally everything else was going to align perfectly for us. Though we actually didn’t get to meet this family yet, we ended up deciding for other reasons that we preferred Aviva to have her own nanny.

The good news, however, is that last week we found a nanny that will take over from me when I go back to work in October. After talking to over a dozen nannies and their former employers (all moms, for the record), we were able to narrow down what we were looking for, and then by luck find somebody who fit the bill perfectly and made us (including Aviva) very comfortable with this huge decision.

Though we’re still a month away, it’s impossible to quantify how much easier it was and will be for Arielle to leave Aviva with a nanny after having been back at work for a few months and generally more comfortable leaving her with somebody else, even me. It’s like me taking over got Arielle 25% of the way (mentally & emotionally) towards accepting a caretaker for Aviva that isn’t her, and so she’ll now just need to go the remaining 75%. And thus, I’ve realized that this is another significant, and unexpected, benefit of this paternity leave. Not only did it make Arielle’s initial return to work significantly easier, it will also prove its value when I go back to work and Arielle can potentially not regress to a ball of crying mush again. Now of course, that says nothing about the crying ball of mush I’m going to be when I go back to work… #dadscrytoo

P.S. I really wanted to write this post referring to The Simpsons episode “Shary Bobbins” instead but decided it wasn’t worth losing 99% of my audience in the first sentence.

P.P.S. TV executives take note: I think a nanny search/match reality TV show (a la The Bachelor) would be a sure-fire hit. I’d argue that no other reality show — not Fear Factor, not Naked and Afraid, not Survivor or any other — would have higher stakes, and the drama to unfold would be unparalleled in TV history (excepting of course Real World Seattle 1998 when Stephen slapped Irene).

  1. Feeding Aviva got actually fun this week, as she took a liking (obviously) to the sweetness of sweet potatoes and butternut squash. I’m still not ready to move on to cottage cheese and sardines (together or separate), despite my Russian family’s insistence, but I am excited to open up the floodgates to her palate over the next few weeks with all kinds of new and fun foods. And I assume from there we’ll find out very quickly which side of the family Aviva inherited her digestive system from…
  2. Global warming hit us hard in NYC this past week, so Aviva and I had two consecutive days where we didn’t leave the house except for 20 minute jaunts to Trader Joe’s across the street. Spending one day at home with Aviva is easily manageable, but any more than that and cabin fever can quickly kick in for both of us. With that said, I can’t overstate how much better I have it with Aviva being 6 months old (vs. a newborn when Arielle was home solo with her), as she is way more responsive and provides lots of positive feedback, giving me the desire and energy to keep her entertained even in tight quarters.
  3. This week I also took the plunge and fed Aviva mixed tree nut (almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, etc.) butter — something that would likely kill Arielle within minutes — so I was understandably nervous. To play it safe, I fed her while we were a block away from the doctor’s office, and to play it safer I then immediately and briskly strolled there and spent 15 minutes in the waiting room staring at her looking for any signs of an allergic reaction. Fortunately, the only reaction was from the nurses and receptionist enjoying my doting and overprotective behavior.
  4. Last weekend while at home with my in-laws, Aviva sort of said her first word. Sitting on her grandmother’s lap, Aviva was pulling at the top of her blouse. My mother-in-law playfully responded with a “no, no, no” and showed that she could reciprocate by pulling at the top of Aviva’s shirt. With timing and pitch so perfect it’s hard to call it a fluke, Aviva shouted a clear and unambiguous “No!”. While I’m very proud of Aviva standing her ground and protecting her body, I remain in denial that this was her real first word, especially since I think my 5-times-daily lessons on how to say Aba (Dad in Hebrew) have her right on the cusp of being able to say it.

Erez Levin

Written by

New dad, trying to exceed expectations. Writing about my 12-week paternity leave experience, hoping to inspire future dads to take theirs.

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