Ok. I literally JUST POSTED yesterday about how it was our nanny's birthday and what to get her. And today we're having major issues.

This will be long, so bear with me... I don't know what to do but I'm upset.

Our nanny watches LO (12 months next week) 3 days a week. Next week it is supposed to go up to 4 days a week. She is pretty good. Not perfect but pretty good. We have a home security system which has a camera in our main living/dining space downstairs. We (DH and I) can watch this on our phones away from home. No sound. She knows we have this - or at least we mentioned it when she started in January, we haven't mentioned since then.

When she first started, we checked in on the camera periodically, everything seemed ok. I guess we just got out of the habit of doing it. The camera was actually broken for a while. Anyway, today I decided to look at it since I was missing LO.

She is basically ignoring him. He's not walking (but is cruising). She's sitting on our couch, watching TV and reading her phone while he plays on the floor and cruises around the furniture. That is okay for a while, I know there's only so much you can do with a 12 month old. But literally the WHOLE TIME I was watching... she was ignoring him.

And then she went into the kitchen for a while (separate room, no line of sight) while he played in the living room alone. Probably 5 minutes. He could have pulled the TV down on himself or something (or maybe I am overreacting!). I don't leave him unsupervised and uncontained like that because he is fast and could easily hurt himself.

Then later in the day, she was still sitting on the couch on her phone. My LO crawled out of the living room into the kitchen (you cannot see into the kitchen from the living room). Nanny had left our pantry door open. We keep our recycling in a tub on the floor of the pantry. We keep the door closed so LO doesn't get into the recycling (i.e. sharp stuff like cans!) and pull stuff off the pantry shelves. Well, she's in the living room on her phone, and I can see him on the camera in the pantry, digging in the recycling!!! This probably went on for 3-4 minutes before she got up and went in the kitchen and closed the door.

She did feed him his lunch and milk and everything, I saw her change his diaper, and keep in mind there is no sound, so she may have been talking to him a lot, I don't know. But from what I saw, I am very very worried and unhappy.

I took screenshots of the camera (with time stamps) on my phone. Here's the other thing - this nanny is through an agency. We go through the agency to confirm her schedule every week and we pay the agency directly, not our nanny.

We are using her while waiting for a spot to open up in a very good daycare on the university campus where my husband teaches. The daycare director just emailed me today and told me it is going to be "at least another few months, if not longer" before the spot is available.

So... do we (1) fire the nanny, (2) give her another chance? Would you confront her? My husband goes back to full time teaching next week and I work full time and we are in the lurch without childcare. My husband wants to start calling daycares and put him in there where at least it's more supervised.

I am literally sick over all of this. Am I overreacting?! Someone talk me down!