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We looked into nannies, but couldn't afford one. All of the ones we talked to said that the nanny would be responsible for all baby laundry, cleaning, driving and cooking. Anything outside of that was the parent's responsibility. Still sounds like such a good deal to me!

We only expected our nanny to read, do music activities, and take her for walks in the park. She's a short-term nanny before we go into our nanny share so we didn't expect playdates. Our nanny washes the bottles & my extra pumping parts, and folds LOs laundry--we never asked her to do these things, she volunteered!

For our nanny share we do expect playdates and more structured play time at the local Y.

I'm a nanny to my nieces (almost 3 and 4) and I pretty much have free reign to do whatever we feel like doing. I take them to the park, grandma's house, out shopping, or to the library. They also LOVE to do crafts and just stay at home, so we do that a lot. In fact, yesterday the older one told me, "Abby, I don't want to go anywhere today" Lol. They like to play in the backyard with the dog and play soccer.

They actually don't have a lot of toys, just a kitchen, some barbies, blocks and books. So we do activities related to the time of year, or just coloring. As we go along, I'll ask the younger one to count, or tell me colors, and we practice going Potty! Lately with the older one, we have been working on our phonics and reading workbooks when the younger one is napping.

When they're babies, they stay home a lot. Just play with toys, read, etc. Once they're about 6 months, I enrolled Charlie and Olive in a music class. When they're a little older than that (9 months), they started going to indoor playspaces (esp in the winter) as we have a year long membership.

In the summer it's a lot of playground time from 6 months up.

Once they're walking, there is a lot more they can do. The zoo, children's museum, Chuck E Cheese, Coney Island....

Also the nanny is responsible for making playdates of comparably aged children. Our nanny is really great at that and both Charlie and Olive have made tons of friends through our nanny's proactive efforts to make friends at the playground and in classes.

Our nanny was very proactive in planning activities, but I also paid for memberships to the children's museum, zoo, playspace, and classes so they had lots to do!