I'm a nanny to 2 children, ages 9 and 14. The teenager is a girl who has an extremely busy schedule so I don't always see her as much as we would like. The 9 year old is a boy with whom I have a very close bond. I have been with the family since he was in preschool so we've been together most of his life.
This week I'm with the kids full time. Full time means at least 60 hours, but it never feels like work. We do fun things and are able to have fun doing completely random things that don't always seem like they would be fun. Our local library has a summer game program where you win prizes and badges for completing activities. One of the activities is going to each branch of the library (there are 5) and finding a code and entering it into your game site. So we had a "library crawl". We also discovered you get more points if you rate items that are in your check out history. Well the 9 year old doesn't have a check out history, so he checked out 11 books at one of the libraries yesterday and we returned them at the next stop. He had fun doing it. They were books that he's already read so it wasn't a scam. But that single activity has provided us with hours of entertainment.
Yesterday morning we went to Panera for breakfast (their oatmeal is amazingly good!). We then took a carrot cake cupcake to their mom's office and left it on her desk. She called and had to talk to all 3 of us to say thank you. Later in the afternoon we cleaned the first floor of their house (dishes, vacuuming and sweeping, dishes, trash and recycle taken out, straightening up) which thrilled both of their parents. All the cleaning only took us about 30 minutes with us working together. The kids felt a great sense of accomplishment in themselves which made me happy that the kids are able to do things that teaches them life skills and makes their family life easier.
Today I'm taking the 9 year old and his friend to a local carnival while the 14 year old runs a jewelry making camp in her attic for a couple of 7-8 year old girls. It will be a fun day.
My brain is a little sluggish because of my pain pills but we're doing okay so far. I hope you have a good day too.