Job ID: 5597
Location: Lafayette, CO
Please describe your family:
We are are first time parents in our early 30\'s with an infant daughter, and a rescue Chihuahua named Chalupa Batman. We both grew up on the east coast and are only children, who had very little experience with babies and kids before our daughter was born earlier this year. Husband is an executive with a large retailer and wife is program director with an IT consulting firm. Wife\'s parents live nearby in Broomfield and visit often, but the rest of our families live back east. We have been in Colorado for about 10 years and love to travel, ski, and hike when we are not enjoying time at home, having dinner with friends, or exploring our new neighborhood in Old Town Lafayette. We are flexible and easy to work with but are also very organized and on top of things in both our personal and professional lives. In addition to our day jobs, we manage a large vacation rental property in Maine, where we employ several vendors to take care of the house throughout the year. We are looking to expand our network of childcare professionals to cover evenings, weekends, or other times when we need backup care or just an extra set of hands.
Please describe why you are looking for a nanny:
We have very little family here in Colorado, and our main goal is to find a reliable, experienced support person we can trust to care for our daughter and help us fill the gaps in our current child care schedule. We are busy professionals who need an extra set of hands to care for our daughter and potentially manage basic household chores.
Husband's work is incredibly demanding and requires extensive travel. Wife travels to local clients or works out of her company's office in Boulder some weeks, but she primarily works from home. We would like to avoid a pre-school setting until our daughter is a bit older, but wife needs to be able to focus and take conference calls without interruption during the week, and needs some hands free time to run errands during evenings and weekends. Would also like to make time for occaisonal date nights.
Currently we are planning on working with a sleep consultant on sleep schedules and nap schedules and need someone with experience adhering to a nap schedule and/or sleep training plan and who will commit to sticking by whatever strategy we outline.
Note: This would be a great position for someone looking for extra hours in between a full time nanny position or someone with a family they know they will be ending work with in the next 6 months. Our current full time nanny will be leaving us to start her own family in the near future, and we will be looking for someone to take her place. We would love to spend some time getting to know someone in the interim to ensure a smooth transition, but we also would just love to have more wonderful, reliable caregivers to call on as needed.
Describe the child(ren) you need a nanny for:
Happy, healthy, 6 month old girl.
Describe your home setting: We live in a single-family home in Old Town Lafayette and have lived here about a year. Our house is a small but comfortable 3 bed 2 bath ranch that has been completely updated with a large finished basement and a huge backyard. We are walking distance to the shops and restaurants in downtown Lafayette and live on a nice, quiet street.
We are interested in the following:
Babysitter
Full-Time/Part-Time?
Part-time
How long do you need a Nanny?
1 Year
Live-in/Live-out?
Nanny, live-out
What tasks/errands do you expect your nanny to perform?
Any House Manager related tasks are negotiable: Baby care (ex. feeding, changing, washing bottles, play etc. Baby laundry, Family laundry, Light cleaning (ex. wiping down counters, taking out trash, occasional vacuuming, sweeping, and dusting as needed,Light cooking / Meal prep,Occasional Errands (ex. grocery/pharmacy shopping)etc.
See above - if interested in a future full time position or more of a set night and weekend schedule, these are the household management tasks we like to have done. For an occasional babysitting position, this is all negotiable depending on rate/what you are comfortable with etc.
What activities do you want your nanny to do with your child?
We are mainly looking for someone to keep our daughter engaged as much as possible during the day with developmentally appropriate play, reading, music, daily walks, and fresh air. Any special skills or prior experience with Montessori or other similar educational approaches, foreign languages, music, or anything else that can contribute to helping her stimulation and growth is highly desirable, and we would love if we could learn some techniques or ideas from you as well.
What special certifications/requirements are you looking for?
College educated, specific background in early childhood education or similar preferred, but not required. Minimum 3 years working with infants in some capacity. Reliable transportation and clean driving record. Infant CPR certification required. Familiarity with paced bottle feeding and handling breastmilk.
Does this position require a valid driver's license?
Yes
Does this position require a car?
Yes
When will this position be available?
Immediately
How many hours do you need a nanny for?
5-15 per week. Ongoing. Need will fluctuate based on our schedules, which are always changing.
How much are you willing to pay? Do you offer benefits?
We offer benefits for 40+ hours. For on call babysitting willing to pay $25 depending on experience, scope of work etc.
Do you have any pets or animals in your home?
YES Please Read additional comments below. For occasional nights and weekends, we can keep dog locked up, but will give preference or guarantee more hours if willing to spend time getting to know dog.
What else are you looking for in a nanny?
Flexibility, professionalism, and communication.
Additional comments:
PLEASE READ: Yes, our dog Chalupa Batman is a 6-year-old chihuahua we fostered and ended up adopting through a local rescue 5 years ago after he was found abandoned on the highway. He is incredibly challenging and will probably be one of the biggest considerations in whether a nanny will ultimately be a good fit for our family. Note this would only apply if you were interested in being full time in the future, or if you ended up sitting for us frequently and were in the house a lot/had guaranteed hours per month etc.
The bad:
Chalupa is an amazing pet and companion and is 100% a part of our family, but likely due to his past, he is fearful and VERY aggressive towards strangers. He is pack oriented and is highly protective of his family members and anyone he considers his "people" particularly his mom and his new little sister. We have attempted training using a few different methods, but we have gotten to the point where we simply keep him separated from visitors by keeping him in a playpen or a separate room. This works for short visits, contractors being in the house etc., but it would not be practical or very nice to keep him locked up for 8-hour days all week long, so we need a nanny who is willing to put in some time to get to know him, so everyone can co-exist peacefully.
The good:
Once he is familiar with someone and has anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks to get to know them, he is really a joy to be around. He is affectionate, playful, loveable, and very smart. He is also relatively low energy most of the time, and primarily likes to hang out on the couch or on a lap. He is not a big barker or shedder and is quite easy going once he knows you are an ok person he can trust. We have successfully introduced him to a few select friends who were willing to work with him. Our current nanny was able to befriend him in less than 2 weeks, and they now spend pretty much all day together with no issues. We have found he generally does better with women and with people who are comfortable with dogs and know how to hold their ground, be firm, and not let him scare them off at their first meeting.
What we are looking for:
Someone who is very comfortable around dogs, is incredibly patient, and is willing to put in some time and effort to try a few techniques to befriend Chalupa and work through his aggression to the point where he can have free reign of the house during working hours without issue. We do not need pet care (walks, feeding, etc) as part of our nanny’s scope of work, and the dog will likely hang out with Jessica in her basement office most of the day. Our goal is just to have everyone be in the same house without a lot of tension or chaos. We are happy to discuss this in more detail and to pay you for time spent doing intros with Chalupa (coming over to take a walk with the family, sitting on the couch giving treats for part of an hour..things like that)