Mary Poppins wannabe

Can you believe that there are people in this world that are paying me to watch their kids five days a week, all day long? Is that not one of the most absurd things you've heard? I don't think so, but there are many people that come to mind whose jaws would drop upon hearing that information.

It's only two kids. They're pretty chill, for the most part, if not a little over-dramatic; but that's to be expected of all ten and seven year-olds.

Today is day number four. Monday we went to the library and got them signed up for the county's summer reading program. Tuesday we attempted to go to their friend's pool in Herndon, but because of crappy directions (ahem, a misunderstanding) we ended up in Old Town Leesburg. And yesterday we went to the National Air and Space Museum and Ben's Chili Bowl. Today they cleaned their rooms and are playing Monopoly as I type this. We've had reading time every day. Amazing isn't it? It's lasted for at least an hour and fifteen minutes, today it lasted about two hours. My sister didn't believe me when I told her, but, and excuse my bragging, my kids are better (not that I've met the kids she nannies).

On the Metro yesterday, mine weren't the loud annoying kids asking stupid questions, they were reading, with the occasional comment. And walking around the city, they were wonderful - no complaints at all! We're going to try and go at least once a week, I hope. Yesterday we didn't spend nearly as much time in the city as I would have liked, and we had to get back so they could go to their Karate class, by Dulles Expo Center.

Luckily it's not my car that's doing all this driving (though it does get plenty of driving around) they've provided a Mazda Protege, that gets great mileage to boot!

The parents and I are still working things out as far as how much money they're going to leave me and the kids each week, and I'm still learning my way around this end of the county (Manassas is confusing, hence the reason I've stayed away from it in the past), but I can navigate DC, and if I have anything to do with it these kids will be city-savvy by the end of the summer.

These past few days have also got me to thinking about my babysitters growing up, and what I thought about them. I didn't like them for the most part. One in particular had the dirties car known to man and used plastic tablecloths. Her kids also would end up breaking my things, and they never replaced them, so I eventually had to resort to playing with their crappy toys (because she was wicked cheap!) that she found in other peoples trash. We would drive around sometimes just to see what people were throwing out. She was unfortunately exposed to this brand of frugality by my mom (my mom has since learned better).

Anyway, I always thought my babysitters were kind of stupid and I'm hoping that the kids I watch don't grow up to think badly of me. I'm going to try to give them the best summer they could have locally, and do things that would have been awesome, but alas I didn't have awesome, young, intelligent, city-smart babysitters - so I think I've got a good start.

When I take them to Karate, there is another nanny who I've talked to a bit. And let me just say, she doesn't have half the stuff planned that I do for this summer.

Amanda 2398473298432794, the rest of babysitters/nannies everywhere except for Mary Poppins 0.