Another daft lassie question.... would really appreciate views and wondering what other families do about this.
Ok, so our Nanny looks after one 3 yr old, 30 hours over 3 days, and her contract states she gets 5 bank holidays and 4 weeks hols (2 we pick and 2 she picks). The contract is just the standard one from Nanny tax - but assume this is what most nannies get?
Anyway, we tend to end up spending a lot more than 4 weeks away from home. I don't want to take a nanny with us on hols - so always end up giving more like 6 weeks plus BHs.. (on full pay obviously!)...
When DD was younger, if I was at home (i.e. not working) I would tend to get nanny to come to work, as this would give me some time to get on with other stuff while she played with the baby/fed her etc. However, now that DD is nearly 4, she is so self-sufficient, that it doesn't really seem necessary, and having our nanny there in fact feels more of an invasion on family time than anything.
On occasion, I do use the odd day to have an adult day with my H or a friend, but if I'm off, I don't really want to spend all the time away from DD. So I just ended up telling nanny not to bother coming in - so she got an xtra week off this xmas - so we are now heading towards 7 weeks leave for the year and mounting.
A nanny is quite an expense, so this doesn't feel like great value (esp as she then went on to take snow days immediately after xmas, which I also paid) - but it did seem a bit petty to say, come in and do half an hour of ironing, and make some spag bol sauce to freeze...
One thing I would find useful would be some evening babysitting - would it be fair to swap xtra days off for babysitting?
What do other people do? So far I've just racked it up as one of those things of having a nanny....