Our daughter is seven months old and completely obsessed with other people. She babbles at you, stops, and stares until you babble back. Then she does it again. She also loves when people smile at her, and when they do she typically returns the favor!
She wants company for everything:
books, tummy time, banging two objects together to see what happens, following our dog Luna around the room. She's not a baby who entertains herself for twenty minutes while you fold something, and we've candidly stopped expecting her to. If that sounds fun instead of exhausting, keep reading. Days are 9 to 5, three days a week. Floor time, books, walks when it isn't raining, naps, diapers, bottles, and prepping and feeding her solids. She started on real food recently, so meals are messy/slow and pretty entertaining. Supporting her is the entire job. We're not asking for errands, house cleaning, or cooking for the adults. Rinse a bottle if you feel like it, throw her laundry in if it's sitting there, but we're not counting on any of that. We want your day to go to her.
A few honest things:
My husband works from home. He's in his office with the door shut (with the occasional trip to the kitchen) and he isn't going to hover or correct you, but the house is never empty. Some people find that comforting and some find it annoying. Better to know now. We have a friendly medium-size dog who's around all day, every day. You need to actually like dogs, not just put up with them. We'd love for the person we hire to speak fluent Spanish with her. All day, not lessons, just normal talking. She's at the age where she'll just absorb it, and we'll pay the top of our range for someone fluent who's genuinely up for that. If you don't speak Spanish, apply anyway. Finding the right person for her matters more to us than the language does. What we care about most is showing up. We both have full time jobs, and our whole week falls apart when childcare doesn't happen. It's the one thing we're strict about. It also goes both ways, which is why your hours are guaranteed: 3 weekdays/week, 9am to 5pm. 24 hours a week, starting in August. We have some flexibility on which three weekdays, but Tues/Weds/Thurs are preferred. $25 to $28 an hour, so $600 to $672 a week. Top of the range for daily Spanish. You get paid for all 24 hours, every week. If we travel, take a day off, or the baby's sick, you're still paid. If you need to cancel, that day is unpaid. Anything over 24 hours is paid on top. W-2. Taxes withheld, we pay the employer's share. Real pay stubs you can hand a landlord, and no surprise tax bill in April. A paid trial day at full rate before either of us commits to anything. Infant CPR and First Aid before your first day. If you need to take the class, we'll reimburse you for it. No paid time off We're planning on more kids, so we're hoping to find someone who wants to stay for years rather than for a season. We're easy to talk to. If something isn't working, we want to hear about it in week two, not find out in month six. If you're still reading, tell us about the babies under a year you've cared for and what you actually did with them all day. Let us know which days you're free starting in August, and whether you speak Spanish.
