If you don’t feel like reading this entire post, I’ll give you the short version right up front.

I have gone and hired a nanny. She starts the last week of April.

It was a very quick and neat process. It happened very quickly and was presented to me all wrapped up with a nice little bow. In other words, we got lucky. We will be sponsoring her on the Live-in Caregiver program, a great, great program in Canada that allows nannies to come from overseas and work here for 24 months, after which they can apply for permanent resident status. It really is a wonderful program. We had two nannies who were part of our family and who are now landed immigrants in Canada. They are both such wonderful, wonderful women. We still see them both, and the kids still love them to bits.

(There was a three-month stint when we had MICHELLE. She was the one who got snatched up in the park by a family with fewer kids and more money.)

(Disgusting.)

(Note to anyone reading this who might be a nanny: Don’t do that to your employer. It’s a really crappy thing to do.)

(Note to anyone reading this who might have a nanny: Don’t think that NANNY STEALING doesn’t happen. It does. It’s really crappy.)

I have interviewed about 35 nannies in my time and I have to say, you can have your list of canned questions

“If you were going to the park with the kids, what would you pack in the diaper bag?”

“What do you like best about kids?”

“Why do you want to be a nanny?”

but at the end of the day, it comes down to your gut.

I mean, most of the time, my gut is all, “OOOH! Cheetos!”

But when it comes to hiring nannies, you just get a good feeling about someone. You see how they interact with the kids. You see how eager they are to come and be a part of your family and not just a vehicle towards citizenship. You see how comfortable they are talking to you. You see that their first question is not about $$. You see that they ask smart questions about your disciplining style.

You just know.

And with our new nanny, I just knew.

And truthfully, my kids are older now. They are gone every single day from 8:30am until 4:15pm. It’s less about diapers and feeding and bathing and playing and reading to and more about overseeing homework and making sure they don’t kill each other and doing laundry and cooking and general housekeeping. It’s different. My kids are vocal and smart…they will tell me exactly what’s going on in the few hours that I’m not with them.

I’m ready to start this new chapter in our lives.

And I can’t wait to see what Nanny has inside her carpetbag. A spoonful of sugar, perhaps?