Friday, April 11, 2014

Lent

My family never participated in the observance of Lent. It wasn't part of our religion, but a lot of my friends honored it in different ways. I ate chocolate, used the internet and snacked on chips while my classmates abstained. Nowadays, I get to see the Catholic Lent traditions as practiced by the family that I nanny for. They are abstaining from meat for several weeks, which means that the kids have been eating a bit differently. Both four-year-old Merlin and six-year-old Peter Pan are pretty picky kid eaters. They would be perfectly happy living off of a diet of chicken nuggets, macaroni and ramen soup. Recently, though, they have both been branching out into new options, including other types of meat and fish. Lent has kind of put a halt to their food exploration, so they have been eating primarily shrimp (shrimpies as Merlin says), which just ain't cuttin' it anymore for Peter Pan. My six-year-old friend goes to a catholic school where he is assigned spelling words each week. And the irony of all ironies is in his spelling homework for this week:



Yep, Bacon! This is his depiction of the bacon that he wants to eat as soon as Easter hits! So, if you aren't participating in Lent, eat up!

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Yummy Brains

My job as a nanny is, above all, to keep the kids safe. That may make me a bit of drag because I don't let the kids partake in some of the most thrilling aspects of life, like walking backwards up and down the stairs, swinging sideways towards each other and running around the house with a toothbrush in their mouths. I'm such a buzz kill, I know. So, when My four-year-old friend, Merlin, decides to throw blocks up in the air next to his baby brother or reach for the hot stove, I gently remind him that our goal is safety.

Being safe has other benefits, too, like not having to answer the question, "how did you get that boo boo?" 528 times. It can also help protect you for zombies. When Merlin decided to stand on the handrails of the jungle gym at the park, I quickly asked him to get down. And then this happened:

"Why, Ms. Enay?" He asked.

"Because I don't want you to fall and crack your head open," I replied honestly.

"Because then you will eat my brain juice?" He said, as if that would obviously be the course of action if he fell. Babysitter status elevated! I reassured him that if he did crack his head open, I would call an ambulance and cry my eyes out, so falling is not an option.

And that brings us to the moral of the story: I may be an overly cautious nanny, but I am most certainly not a zombie.