"Onward!"

History may be hard to predict, but babies are even harder! We've been working on getting Sophie and Olivia, the twin girls I take care of during the day, into a regular nap routine. Needless to say, this is easier thought about than done and so far we've only had one or two days where they've both taken early afternoon naps. Most of the time we've been all over the place. Some days they go right back to bed after breakfast, others they fall asleep during the morning walk, and yesterday I finally had to leave Sophie in her crib around noon to cry herself to sleep 'cause she had been acting really tired for four plus hours, but refused to sleep. (That, btw, was really hard. I have trouble leaving them to cry at all, much less for more than a couple of minutes.)

Something I really enjoy about the process of instituting this nap time, however, and nannying generally is what a good lesson in flexibility it is. I like my life to be scheduled out, but life simply isn't that way and the girls remind me daily of my need to just roll with the punches and enjoy the moment instead of thinking about the past and planning out the future. So, as a dear friend of mine who's now a nun used to say, "Onward!" I hear one of the girls now, so I'm off!

"Male Nannies" by G. Roja

I'm posting a link to Genevieve Roja's article on mannies in Metroactive. My training and work experience is far less formal than most of what Roja writes about, but I've definitely gotten the odd looks from people when I tell them I'm a manny. Enjoy!

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog! By way of introduction, I'm a 25-year old male nanny (or manny) in Portland, Oregon, who's just begun an MLIS at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Although nannying and library science are two very different things I thought it would be interesting to track, personally and professionally, my growth in and through my work and my studies on this blog and to see if and where they intersect and overlap both in my life and in life generally.

I've named this blog after a proverb that used to circulate in the USSR. Back in the day the official record of Soviet, Russian, and world history changed so frequently that Soviet citizens found what history actually was hard to predict. I've lived all over the world in a variety of cultures and I feel the proverb in my soul. What is true and unquestioned in one place is complete lunacy in another and I often find myself wondering what in the world is real and what is just someone's perspective.

I hope to maintain this blog until either my nanny job ends or I complete my studies at Wayne State or both. My life is as fluid as Soviet history, so at some point this blog may morph into a study of library science and working in a factory or library science and teaching English, but for the time being we'll leave that to the future. I hope to keep it enjoyable and real whatever I'm writing about! Cheers!