We are going to daycare next week(!!!). LO will be 11.5 months. We've been with our nanny since LO was 4 months.
She was great to begin with, then slowly there are different issues that surfaces. For example, it is very hard to ask her to do anything because she would simply ignore me if she doesn't agree to, or didn't feel like it. I only get maybe 60-70% of what is asked for. Our agreement was she will make food for LO when he gets older, but it ends up I was cooking/prepping food for LO 90% of the time. Sometimes I asked her to boil him some broccoli and carrots, but she just ignores me and takes out a baby food jar if LO finished his food and still wants more. I asked her about it at the end of the day and she'd say, oh, I didn't make the veggies. That happens everyday so I gave up and stopped asking.
She also doesn't play children music anymore (I asked her to play 'em on the iPad via Pandora). She just use our iPad to play her own songs while watching LO, watch movies via YouTube, and Skype her sister (which is fine because she is in Iraq... but still...). She is always on the phone talking to someone. She also doesn't read to LO anymore. When I asked about it, she just said he is not interested. But still.... I still read to him myself! She also negotiated to go out with LO and I agreed to let them go out on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, as long as it is for an activity that gears toward LO (eg. the park, walks, classes, book store, library). However, toward the final weeks/months she just takes him to her apartment while she does her own stuff, or take him to run her own errands. Overall she got too comfortable and lazy. It is getting unbearable but I figured we only have a few weeks left.
There was one time after we got back from the doctor, I asked her if she could give LO a bottle while I was busy taking out LO's lunch and dinner from the freezer (as I didn't get a chance to do that in the morning). After I was done and getting ready to get back to work, I realized they were still chilling in the nursery. I went in and asked if she was still giving him a bottle? She answered, "Oh, I thought you were getting a bottle ready for me." I flipped.
Sometimes I thought maybe it was my problem, maybe I enabled it. Maybe I didn't know how to communicate to her, or manage her (according to DH), or maybe I am too uptight and control-freak (that's what our nanny thinks). I have been tolerating until even our neighbor said something to DH last weekend! She said that our nanny is rubbing off on their au pair (they basically became friends and had play dates together), and how she also does less and less work. She said to my DH how I must be very happy that LO is going to daycare! That's pretty strange considering she had all these great things to say about our nanny when we first hired her. That's a wake up call to me that it is not me who is crazy.
I want to hear about your experience with your nanny - are/were you satisfied or are/were you tolerating like me? Or was it simply unacceptable? Anyone of you fired a nanny?