Pocono ski suggestions
 

Years ago I went to a teeny ski place somewhere in the Poconos - not a big hill there. I had a good ski school instructor but you'd be bored at that place with kids. I don't know if Camelback is in the Poconos - sort of I guess and that place is small but nice for a few days. I don't think it has too many kids activities. Take them to Steamboat! Ski in Cowboy hats! Cute men in wrangler jeans! (If you're La Deal Toy and not Le Deal Toy that is."

Pocono ski suggestions
 

I went to windhgam last year with a 9 year old. His instructor was good. Mine was a chinese guy who spoke 0 english. This year we will try okemo VT. Supposedly good beginner program. Maybe we go for 2 days.

Pocono ski suggestions
 

If you're going to VT, consider Killington. Maybe I'm showing my age, but when I learned their lessons had two advantages: 1) graduated ski method (which everyone uses now--but it's a lot better to start on really short ski) and 2) tons of people, meaning they can divide up better by ability (once you're past complete beginner).

Nanny benefits Q
 

My new nanny (with whom we are very happy) has raised the question of sick days and paid vacation time. Which we didn't really discuss (or think about, honestly) when hiring her. What is standard? We are in NYC, and are paying her $12/hour (but are more or less treating it like we have her on weekly salary at that rate, so if she comes in late or we get home late we don't bother counting minutes).

Is it customary to pay her for a certain number of sick-days a year? If so, how many? Is paid vacation even heard of? (Is $12 per hour exhorbinant for a CPR trained nanny with experience?)

I'm really OK with giving her 2 weeks paid vacation and 2 weeks worth of sick days per year (maybe only because I don't want to be a nasty, rich cheapskate extorting the labor of the lower classes, or whatever) but she already makes more than my husband brings home after taxes, so ....

Nanny benefits Q
 

In Boston, we've always paid for the period we were on vacation, but not for a separate vacation to be taken when she wants. We have never been strict in counting sick days, but have dealt with it individually - either paying the time or having it made up based on the situation (so when a caregiver was very sick for a week and a half, no questions asked, we paid her and sent chicken soup, but with someone else where at one point when it was looking like sunny Fridays were designated sick days we dialed back). Our attitude is that there is not a number of sick days someone "gets", but that people get sick and we deal with it without disruption to anyone's budget.

Nanny benefits Q
 

We pay two weeks paid vacation, as well as a hefty bonus at Xmas time (two weeks salary). We don't pay sick days, but if my babysitter has called in sick once, I don't remember it. She's amazing. I pay $10/hour, and $15/hour for OT -- which is usually about 6 hours a week.

The second babysitter gets $10/hour.

We think we're a little on the cheap side, but neither babysitter speaks much English, so it's not like they could be getting many other jobs. Both are US citizens, but don't speak English -- I know, strange...


ETA -- We do have a "rule" however, which is she's got to take the vacation when we take our "go-away" vacation in the winter. Our summer vacations, which we spend in the area, the two of them split up the week and come stay with us. We also pay for legal holidays if both my husband and I have the day off.

Nanny benefits Q
 

My sister and her husband pay their nanny a salary of $35,000 per year. In Minnesota. Is she waaaayyyy overpaying her nanny? The nanny does do a lot of educational things with my nephew but she only works four days a week, though for probably more than 8 hours per day.

Nanny benefits Q
 

I am too am shocked at how little the NYers pay for nannies. I used to make upwards of $6/hr fifteen years ago in the boonies for babysitting, and I provided no education.

Nanny benefits Q
 

Excellent - timing of vacations was something we were wondering about: it's fine if it is in the summer months, when my husband gets time off and can cover as primary caregiver, but at other times during the year we could be totally screwed.

We don't pay an overtime rate, but our agreement is that there really isn't overtime and, if in some emergency no one gets home in time (train derails, struck by lightening, whatever) everyone will just deal with it (she'll stay until we can get someone there, and we'll figure out how to get someone there ASAP).

I was also planning on about 2 weeks pay for a Christmas bonus.

Nanny benefits Q
 

Not neccessarily. There may be an unusual local market, or your sister may have needs that increase costs. For example, if they live in a suburban enclave that isn't supported by public transportation, they aren't going to be able to hire someone who takes the bus. If they expect the nanny to haul the kids around to various things in her own car, and don't want their kids to be caught in a broken down '83 Caprice Classic inthe middle of a snowstorm, they better pay enough she can afford a moderately new Outback. There are plenty of reasons to pay that much.

I also think $12 an hour is pretty decent, especially for the East Coast. Our nanny/babysitter is very, very part time, so the vacation thing hasn't come up, but paying two weeks vacation seems reasonable. I'd just make sure that if you reduce the obligation to writing, you have the time off accrue per pay period, instead of per year. Otherwise, one can end up paying a departing nanny 2 weeks vacation in mid-January.

Nanny benefits Q
 

Holy shit. I don't know if that's overpaid or not, but my stomach feels queasy just thinking about it. That's close to $19/hour assuming a 9 hour day.

Nanny benefits Q
 

Your kid is spending more time with this person than with anyone else. You think that's worth less than $25k/year? In NY? I'm assuming we're not talking about Rochester, here.

Nanny benefits Q
 

Yep -- very spendy. But my sister is an ObGyn and her husband is an orthopedic surgeon so they can afford it.

Nanny benefits Q
 

Exactly. It is expensive, but I agree worth it.

Nanny benefits Q
 

My husband has 20 kids spending more time with him than with their own parents and he's not getting paid $25K/year. But I'm still paying it so ... yeah, I guess.

If child care were costing me $35K/year, though, I'd tell my husband to quit and either stay home with the baby or get a real job that would make him miserable in exchange for money, just like everyone else. He'd probably decide that himself - he's already freaked out that the nanny makes more than him.

Nanny benefits Q
 

I often wonder why people have kids if they are going to pay other people to raise them.

Nanny benefits Q
 

Because if they didn't, it would - one way or another - tank the American economy. In just about every case where it happens, it's economicly efficient (trepidation mom appears to be one of the few exceptions). There are two alternatives: a) half of every couple with kids drops out of the workforce, causing an immediate drop in the nation's productivity, or b) people don't reproduce, in which case the nation kills itself. Of course, there could be a combination of the two, but it's still less efficient.

It's also a survival mechanism that predates society and is commonly found among animals that survive in packs, including dogs, lions, and most social apes. Some will protect the young while others find food, which they share with those protecting the young. Each particpant in the scheme does better than if there were no caretaking.

But this raises a question in my mind: I often wonder why people without children who don't know what the %&$# they're talking about write stupid crap on the lawyers with kids board.

Nanny benefits Q
 

Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? Should dad stay home too, or just mom? BTW, thanks for setting us back 50 years there. And at what point can mom go back to work? Never? After 5-10 years when her experience and degree are now rendered practically worthless (which brings us back to never)? And when dad can't make the rent on his own - like the overwhelming majority of the working families out there, what's your solution to that? Sell the kid on Ebay to give it a chance at a better life? Or do you think only moms who marry guys with good jobs should be the only ones who get to have kids? Maybe well-off people should be the only ones who get to breed - that would solve a lot of the world's problems, eh? Except many of us wouldn't be here, if that were the case. What about single parent families? Strap the kid to your back while you work? You think Vietmom's baby girl would be better off in some nasty foreign orphanage? I can think of plenty of people who shouldn't have kids, but it's certainly not because the child will spend time with a sitter or in daycare. Maybe rude people should be banned from reproducing - that would at least cut you out of the gene pool.

Nanny benefits Q
 

Balty:

Ahahahahahaha! It finally worked! I've finally done it! I've made you respond to my Not Me sock! It only took me 12 months, several thousand regrettable posts and countless hours to create and set up my devilishly over-the-top sock, but it has all been worth it. I finally got your attention. Who knew that it would be on the Mommy Board. If I had known that earlier, I could have saved about 1500 posts on Politics. Oh well, live and learn.

Nanny benefits Q
 

I am not not not defending anyone, but it hacks me off when people (a) live in an incredibly expensive area, (b) insist on having private care for their kid (because Junior can't go to day care? wtf?) AND (c) bitch that the amount they are paying their caretaker, which is not close to enough to live on in the area -- let alone support a family -- is too much and is almost as much as their own pay. Jesus. They have a lot of choices. (a) move someplace cheaper, (b) send the kid to daycare instead of having the expensive nanny or (c) have the lower-paid spouse stay home for a while to stop the cash hemmorage. If the lower-paid spouse does not want to stay home (because of career path requirements or personal satisfaction issues), you aren't willing to move and you insist on having expensive nanny care, then suck it up and accept that you have to make a financial sacrifice to have it all.

This is not an attack on trepadation mom or anyone else, either, it's just that there's no conversation on the FB and I'm kinda bored.

Nanny benefits Q
 

I don't really disagree with you, but let me throw in a couple of extra data points to consider.

Private care, as you put it, is often less expensive than day care, especially if one is talking about more than one kid. With two infants or three kids of mixed ages (day care costs decrease as a kid gets older), the numbers favor a nanny.

I'm not sure how the housing costs really comes into play. Either the lower earning spouse nets more after taxes than the cost of care, or not. The cost of the house could be $500 a month or $5000. Perhaps it's really more of the irony issue. Clearly, there are many people who could afford to pay a nanny AND not have a spouse work, but for the cost of their house. I'm not sure such people would be held in any higher regard, however.

I think bitching about how expensive anything is - from dry cleaning to legal services to child care - is an American way of life. People will get the best care they can afford, which is almost always going to be just slightly more than they want to spend.

Nanny benefits Q
 

FWIW, the day care I've found that is acceptable in this city isn't significantly cheaper than the nanny, and the nanny isn't living off what I pay her - she wants a low-stress job with regular hours for pocket money and likes kids, but her husband, a contractor, probably makes more than I do.
If by cheaper you mean "leave the city and environs entirely," which is what pretty much what we'd have to do, we've considered it but it is sort of an extreme step, don't you think? People bitch and moan about how all sorts of things where they live are expensive (or otherwise unpleasant - Minnesotans complain about crazy-cold winters and Texans complain about the heat); moving is always an option but I can't see getting hacked off about people not doing it. Re: (b) see above and (c), we've considered it, but don't dismiss the "personal satisfaction" issues of having some outside employment - particularly for a man in this society, it is a pretty serious concern. In any event, I reserve my god given right to bitch and moan about stuff I can't change without radically disrupting my life. Or just to bitch and moan, for that matter!

Of course not - :)

Nanny benefits Q
 

I don't recall ever mentioning housing costs. I was referring more to the cost of living for the caregiver -- whether the caregiver can afford to live on what he/she is being paid. $25,000 goes a lot farther in San Antonio than it does in NYC. It's probably even a living wage in San Antonio.

Nanny benefits Q
 

I see what you mean now, although your first post was a little ambiguous. Since I posted much the same thing yesterday (that people who live in expensive areas not reachable by public transportation have to pay a premium), I completely agree with you.

Nanny Benefits Q
 

One of the benefits to a well paid and benefitted nanny is that she is more likely to stick with the job.

At the end of her 10 year stint in my employment (the kids are now too old for a full-time nanny) my nanny was getting about $45K when social security and health insurance were figured in. Enough to buy a town house in Silicon Valley, in one of the less expensive East Bay towns. We paid 2 weeks vacation time, but with the agreement that it would be taken when we were away in the summer.

But she loved the kids and was reliable and steady for 10 years, so I can't say that I regretted the money. In the end, saving a few dollars on child care was not that important.

Nanny Stuff
 

Here's my input:

I'm single, but I still work part time so I can be with Viet Babe more. I wanted a Nanny for the Babe's young years and even though I do not live in a big city, I was paying way over market rate for Nannies in the area AND I was paying her portion of state taxes as well as mine, AND an estimate of what her fed taxes would be. No matter how good the hours and money were, and no matter the fancy agency I used with the $2,600 fee, our Nanny took off with nary a word after 6 months. It turns out she took the job knowing she'd be leaving the country in 6 months (to live in style on her Nanny salary in a country where it goes a long way) and then she'd come back six months later, find a new set of parents and work for 6 months, etc. etc. I have not had good luck with Nannies. I have not found that the more you pay means the more reliable they are.

I paid over $600 a week for the Nanny. Now that I'm in daycare (a real good one - Kindercare) it is only $258 a week, and that buys me a significant amount more hours than the Nanny worked (6 am to 6 pm, although I would never need to use all those hours). And the care she gets there is so far superior to the Nanny care. There's arts and crafts, music and "wacky gym" programs that come to the center once a week, little "parades" around the place, and a huge outdoor playground, and two hot meals a day, and they arrange for a photographer to come to the center so you have professional photos once or twice a year and....oh, and they are ALWAYS open and they don't quit or call in sick. A nurse there. I could go on but I'll stop there. It is crazy to think that I paid double for Nanny care, and then also paid for "Music Together" and Gymboree apart from that whereas we get all of that together in a safe fun environment with other kids.

I think Nanny care at home is good when the kid is still a "blob" and half asleep and/or can't hold his/her head up. Good to keep them home when they're in such a sorry state. After that -- for us it was 18 months -- day care should at least be considered.

Vietmom

Nanny Stuff
 

We have had our kids in day care and/or pre-school since a very early age, and much prefer it to having a nanny for many of these reasons. They're social, and we'd rather have them around other kids than alone with a nanny. To be sure, it would be easier logistically to deal with a nanny, but all in, that's a trade-off we can take.

Nanny benefits Q
 

OMG quite the upper crust bunch we have here.

Where can I find the . . .
 

lyrics to O' Canada?

Where can I find the . . .
 

Where can I find the . . .
 

Because I'm nice:

O Canada
Our home and native land
true patriot love
in all thy sons command

with glowing hearts
we see thee rise
the true north strong and free
from far and wide
O Canada
we stand on guard for thee

God keep our land
Glorious and free
O Canada we stand on guard for thee
O Canada we stand on guard for thee

The french lyrics are way better. All about carrying the cross and sword and glorious heroicism. What people think of when they think "Canada".

Where can I find the . . .
 

French Canada, at least.

Where can I find the . . .
 

Right.

Sorry in advance for the SAPPINESS
 

But my son's kindergarten class came up with the following list of "What Makes a Good Friend", and I thought it was worth sharing:

A friend is someone who...

• says nice things to everyone.
  plays with you.
  shares toys and other things with you.
  is patient and polite.
  always listens.
  tells the truth.
  uses his words and not his body.
  includes people in his games.
  reads with you.
  has sleepovers.
  takes a walk with you.
  plays safely with others.
  pays attention to what you are saying.
  cares about you and takes care of you.
  has playdates with you.
  makes you feel good and happy.
  draws with you.
  helps you with your problems.
  always makes up with you.
  after a disagreement, always gives a handshake or a hug and says, "I'm sorry".

I think I would like to have one of these "friends"!

NYC Holiday Advice
 

Looking for help from the NY'ers and anybody else who has spent time in TCOTU with kids around Christmas. Mid-December, I'll be heading to NYC with the Mrs., 4-year old Ruth Bader Ramone, and 2-month old Sandra Day Ramone, visiting the s-i-l and taking in the sights. Looking for input on the following:

1. Must-sees/must-dos with a 4 year old in TCOTU around Christmas;

2. Hotel recommendations. We're in town for 4 nights total. We'll probably spend 2 nights in my s-i-l's place in Brooklyn, and look to spend a couple of nights in a hotel. Looking for someplace cool, well-located, kid-friendly, and not super-duper expensive.

3. Restaurants: 2 categories. 1, cool and kid friendly; 2. a good place to go with Mrs. Ramone while s-i-l watches the kids.

Any advice much appreciated. Post or pm if you don't want to bore everybody else.

NYC Holiday Advice
 

You are either very brave or very stupid. Good luck either way.


ETA - Congrats on the arrival of little Sandy

Where can I find the . . .
 

Wait, if I marry you then my kid doesn't have to get drafted to guard Halliburton guys in Iraq?

NYC Holiday Advice
 

While it's undergoing renovations that will undoubtably make it much less cheap and much less cool (but definitely more chic), I think the Gramercy Park Hotel (www.gramercyparkhotel.com)is a great choice with kids. The rooms are huge, relatively speaking, and access to the park is nice for the kids. It's not "kid friendly" in the sense of having a pool or Disney characters or whatever. It's just in a great location. Downside is that it's needed a renovation for about 30 years. It's about a block and a half from the subway.

Try to get a king size suite overlooking the park on the back side elevators.

Cheap is, of course, relative. You can probably get a suite there for about $250 a night (maybe a little more around Christmas), but that gets you a living room with a fold out couch and a seperate bedroom. Anyplace in midtown is going to run that for a 100 sq.ft. single.

NYC Holiday Advice
 

I think I'm just sleep deprived, and thus not thinking straight. But I've paid for the plane tickets, so I'm committed (or, perhaps, should be committed). We've got the sister-in-law to act as nanny and guide once we get there, so assuming we can survive the flights (direct, thankfully), I think we'll be okay.

And thanks.

NYC Holiday Advice
 

I would also endorse the High Bar which is the rooftop of the Gramercy Park Hotel. It has a very good outdoor patio but it is heated so you can sit out there in the winter. People say it is scene-y, but I disagree. Mostly low-key crowd except for the occasional celebrity who goes there in the winter because you can smoke on the patio year-round. Also the hotel bar (on the first floor) is very comfortable.