Saying Goodbye to Our Nanny and Other Updates

I’ve put off writing this post for a few weeks, because I was in denial, but I think it’s finally official. Ruth is no longer our nanny. She’s still our dear friend and will always be part of our family, but she’s not showing up regularly to our home and no longer on the pay roll, obviously.

In reality, we haven’t needed a nanny for quite some time, but because we loved Ruth so much, we found other ways to keep her around. We got especially lucky when friends of ours had a baby and were looking to find someone for four days a week. We introduced them to Ruth, they hired her, and that enabled us to have Ruth come once a week to our place for the last few years. We’d use her talents for things like cooking, cleaning and errands. And she’d help me produce content sometimes too. It’s been like that for the past four years.

But earlier this year, our friends no longer needed a nanny (their kids are now both old enough to be in school most of the day) and so Ruth started looking for something full time again. With our full support, of course. I asked her if she needed me to write her a reference letter and she said, nope. She was just going to use the post I wrote about her earlier this year. Apparently it was very effective. I actually spoke to her new employer before they hired her and said, “You don’t know it yet, but you just got so lucky to have found her. Ruth has been the greatest gift to my kids and our family. It’s the one parenting decision we made that I never questioned.”

After a few weeks at her new job, Ruth came to visit last Friday afternoon. She brought presents for everyone. A new daisy cardigan for Harlow, a pink lucite make-up organizer for Mazzy, a porcelain little jewelry dish for Leah… and then we ordered sushi (because Ruth wasn’t cooking) and ate dinner together, kinda like old times, but also very, very different. She’s our guest now.

Ruth, please know that you have a seat at our dinner table whenever you would like to join us.

In other news…

• Harlow will be starring as Matilda in her school play next week! She has refused to practice any of her songs in front of us, so we have no idea what to expect. Wish her luck! Also, she doesn’t know this, but so far I have turned down a Little Shop of Horrors cast party, a trip to Snapchat headquarters and a watch party of the State of the Union at the freaking White House, because they all conflict with her performance date.

• We took a trip down to Florida over President’s Day weekend and dealt with splitting our time between my mom and my dad (they live 20 minutes away from each other), which was more complicated than I was anticipating. I think four days wasn’t nearly enough time, especially now that my mom is living in Florida full time. Have I mentioned that? After Grammy sold her house (my childhood home) last fall, it was always her intention to get another smaller place on Long Island, but her and Sammy are dealing with the same interest rates and crazy pricing as everyone else in the housing market, so for now, they are full time Floridians.

• Remember when I said that Mazzy was becoming a master of word games? Welp, it was bound to happen but she has surpassed me. Not in Connections or Wordle or the Mini (I still have those), but she is crazy good at the Spelling Bee. At first she was just reaching Genius level on a regular basis, which in my mind was a feat in itself (I’ve gotten Genius a handful of times), but did you know that there is a higher level than Genius? It’s called Queen Bee, it means you have found ALL the possible word combinations and Mazzy has gotten it three times this week. I am in AWE.

• It’s been a very exciting week for Mike, because as of Monday, his biggest dream has come true. Mazzy joined the golf team for her spring sport at school.

• Thanks to all of your donations, Mazzy reached her $5K fundraising goal for the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society (LLS)! If you’d still like to donate, there is one week left.

Lastly, if you are no longer on the socials as much as you used to be (which I totally understand), here’s a few things you might have missed: Harlow’s Koreatown food vlog, this story about chasing the sun rise with Mazzy, meeting Daniel Radcliffe, this ad I made for Olay about getting older, and photos of my kids’ backs in Florida. All links are to Instagram.

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I hope everyone has a great weekend!

xo, Ilana