awesome!! we're planning on breastfeeding as much as possible, but honestly neither of us are quite familiar with what all goes into it obviously im not going to be making any breastfeeding demands as the dude.

8/25/2016 10:12:09 PM

My wife tried breastfeeding, but her nips got pretty raw and she wanted me to do more feedings, so everything was pumped and bottle fed.

bottle every 3 hours means at least 8 bottles a day. We usually had around 5 bottles in the fridge filled with breast milk that were ready to be used. We ran the dishwasher nightly, and it was bottle after bottle after bottle. We did the bags, and different size bottles, and bottles from friends whose kids are too big for bottles, so we had a huge hodgepodge of bottles. More the merrier. I know that we bought more and more especially after we were making 8oz bottles and the little ones couldn't be used any more.

Unless you kid is getting it directly from the source most of the time, you'll need more bottles than 4. But Target is not that far away, so getting more bottles is not a big concern right now.

8/26/2016 8:45:17 AM

If you're going to be bottle feeding as well, I recommend getting a good bottle drying rack and the baskets to put the bottle parts in the dishwasher. Whatever brand bottle you're using, buy their own baskets instead of the universal ones. Might be a couple of bucks more up front but the parts fit better than the generic baskets and will get cleaner.

We used these:

http://www.target.com/p/munchkin-high-capacity-bottle-drying-rack/-/A-13955647

http://www.buybuybaby.com/store/product/dr-brown-39-s-natural-flow-reg-standard-bottle-dishwasher-basket/1015030828?Keyword=bottle+basket

8/26/2016 10:50:47 AM

Reposting for this page

Legally Paying your Nanny
This is a very terse guide. I'll answer questions.

To get set up
You need a Federal and State Tax ID.
You're a household employer which carries special rules
Register with Social Security BSO
Register with NCDHHS
Register with NC DoR
Register with NC Department of Employment Security

To Hire
New nanny has to fill out W4, NC4, and I9.
Report the new hire to NC DHHS

All of our nannies were hired via care.com. Quality of applicants will vary widely and you won't know you've made a good hire for weeks. Our first nanny had a great attitude and worked for cheap but had transportation issues and wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. She quit when she got pregnant. Our next nanny we fired after a week when my wife discovered she left one of our then infant sons asleep on the couch unattended where he could have easily rolled off. Our next Nanny quit after a few months because she felt that a nanny should make at least middle 5-figures a year. We then hired our current nanny who has been great. She's experienced and reliable.

Paying Your Nanny and Withholding
Keep track of gross pay. Withhold Social Security and Medicare (currently a combined 7.65%). Make sure you're setting that money aside for the end of the year when you'll have to give it to the IRS. As a household employer, you don't have to withhold federal income tax or NC income tax. I do for my Nanny because she wants me to so as to reduce what she may owe on her personal tax return. Pay your nanny the net after withholding. See the relevant IRS and NCDoR publications for the current withholding formulas.

Keep excellent records. Keep track of hours, gross pay, withholding amounts, net pay, dates paid, check numbers, etc...

PM me and I'll share my spreadsheets which handle calculating the withholding amounts factoring in exemptions claimed and whatnot.

Quarterly
You don't have to pay the Feds quarterly. Since you're a household employer, you settle up with them when you do your personal taxes by filing a Schedule-H.
File an NC-5 online and, if you're withholding income tax, pay them.
File an NCUI-101 and pay your unemployment tax. (rate changes year to year and based on past payment history)

Yearly
By Jan 31
You need to generate W-2s and W-3s on the Social Security website.
Provide said W-2 to your Nanny.
You need to file and NC-3 which is pretty much the worst process ever.
By April 15
File your taxes with the aforementioned Schedule-H.

References
IRS Publications 15 and 15a
NC-30
http://irouble.blogspot.com/2014/02/how-to-pay-nanny-taxes-in-north-carolina.html
https://iamemilyanne.com/2013/06/05/hiring-a-nanny-what-you-may-need-to-know-for-north-carolina/
https://iamemilyanne.com/2014/02/25/tax-time-torture/

8/26/2016 4:19:04 PM

ssclark

I belong to a local breastfeeding support group. They helped saved my nursing relationship with my son. Let me know if you have any questions, and if you are local she can add me on facebook and I can add her to the group.

8/26/2016 11:11:23 PM

So, my wife and I have a 20-month old son and a second due this week. Any recommendations on double strollers?

We have a Keyfit 30 infant seat so it will need to be something which is compatible. Initially looking at the Chico or Contours in-line double strollers.

8/29/2016 1:59:47 PM

don't waste money on anything other than a bob - we have the single and double after going through a few - nothing else i've used comes close

8/29/2016 2:44:29 PM

We have the single bob and do love it. Honestly I don't really want to put that much $ into a double, though. Also, I'm concerned about my wife's ability to load it in the cars. The bumper of my accord is already scratched up from the single....

8/29/2016 4:15:02 PM

To be fair if you have a kid already you should go ahead and write your car off as ever not getting destroyed over time. You can try all you want but just about every ding and damage to the vehicle was in some way related to him. Just accept that your vehicle is in for a rough time and don't buy anything too nice or expensive and you will be happier I promise haha.

8/30/2016 8:50:05 AM

Haha, fair point. Although I was thinking it would be my kids rather than wife messing it up....

8/30/2016 9:15:08 AM

Quote :

"just about every ding and damage to the vehicle was in some way related to him."

Hence why I phrased it that way. Lot of it is directly done by them and then most of the other is somehow related to them like having to load and unload their stuff or other kids through playing with them hitting it with random objects etc.

8/30/2016 10:17:44 AM

For those with Nanny's, did you provide a schedule or guidance of activities you want her to stick to throughout the day? The only guidance we've provided is that we want them to follow the Sleep, eat, play schedule. Other than that is up to the Nanny's discretion. Obviously, we want the twins to nap 1-2 hours at a time, but the past few days, they have been only napping in 20-45 minute intervals. I know this may be related to the 4 month regression, but I would hope a more regular schedule would help with this.

9/1/2016 1:18:14 PM

^ We provided a basic outline with set nap and meal times. A lot of the play time is at the discretion of our nanny. Some days the boys will just play around the house. Other days the nanny might take them to story time at the library or to Marbles or whatever. Our nanny has a pre-school background so they do a lot of crafts on the nanny's initiative.

We also created a statement of mutual expectations with our nanny that outlines things like vacations (ours and her's), sick time, paid and unpaid leave, scope of duties, etc...

My wife is a real stickler about when the boys eat and nap. They're more flexible these days, but early on keeping to a strict schedule was a big benefit in managing the insanity of twins.

9/7/2016 12:35:33 PM

I would be really interested to see what your statement of mutual expectations looks like. I thought we were pretty clear when we made our offer ($14/hour, 3 weeks vacation). But now she is asking if she is getting paid when we are on vacation next week. So we need to have that difficult discussion to reset expectations. And I really don't want to have this discussion again.

9/7/2016 10:39:13 PM

^sounds like she thinks she's in a salaried position.

9/8/2016 10:23:36 AM

^^ Ours include language on that. For us, we pay our Nanny for work days we cancel with the exception of a limited number of vacation days that we provide lots of notice for. They idea there is basically that we can plan to have our vacation time coincide to make everyone's' lives easier.

Our statement-of-expectations agreement basically outlines:
duties (scope of work, responsibilities, etc...)
hours (work days, work hours, mututal expectations for deviating from these hours, etc...)
pay (hourly rate, witholding details, method(s) of payment), expenses (what we'll reimburse for)
holidays/vacations/sick days/cancellations (holidays and whether or not we're paying for them, vacations for both parties, how we'd like sick leave to work, how cancellations work, etc...).

My suggestion is to talk to any Nanny you hire about how you would like things to work, how they would like things to work, and expect to iterate on these terms.

9/8/2016 1:05:49 PM

will post a picture in just a sec !!

9/24/2016 11:43:54 AM

mister Finn was born yesterday at 230 AM. He was pretty sick unfortunately... after laboring for 6 or 7 hours he started decompensating because of MAS so we had an emergent c section. He was struggling with breathing and currently isn't eating well, but he's doing a lot better today than yesterday. We're keeping our fingers crossed. Gonna try and feed him at 3... hoping

9/24/2016 1:26:35 PM

still working on baby middle names ....

Finn Alexander Clark is the leader in the club house but we can't decide :X

I tried to go for

Again

Asaurus

or Ally

9/24/2016 1:33:38 PM

We got a text Saturday night from the Nanny saying she had to drive down to Florida because her sister and niece were killed in a car accident. It was pretty shocking news to receive. But since that time, we have received some information which would make us question the truthfulness of her text.

Anyway, we had to scramble Sunday to find child care for the week. Fortunately, we found a service called Stellar Sitters who act as a baby sitter placement service. They were great and were able to find a sitter for each day this week. So now we are working through Care to try to find a full time replacement. Where we wanted to get an older Nanny with more experience, we found that just brings a lot of baggage. So we are changing our strategy to identify a couple young part time nannys. In all likeliness, we will probably just hire Stellar Sitters to find the nannys as well.

Thanks for the information provided so far in this thread. We will certainly be using it this time around.

9/28/2016 2:08:36 PM

Congrats ssclark. I hit a fever of 103 that passed to my son so when he was born he had to go straight to nicu for 3 days. It's tough seeing your baby hooked up to everything, I know, I hope he breaks out of there quickly! Cute lil guy!

9/29/2016 2:37:58 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/13/health/mcdonald-conjoined-twins-to-separate/index.html

These kinds of stories never affected me before having children, now reading it is gut-wrenching.

I really hope things turn out well for this family.

10/13/2016 12:10:16 PM

Well. My sons labs came back and they're concerned he has Hyper-IgE syndrome. We have to go to U of M to get some blood work done, I know there's a good chance he's just fine but fuck if it's not hard to freak the fuck out until that lab comes back


If positive it'all mean he'll struggle to fight off bacterial infections and have chronic recurrent pneumonias. Not the worst genetic illness. But not fucking great.

3/30/2017 2:10:33 PM

^

any update ssclark?

4/7/2017 10:35:34 AM

Sadly for now I'm still waiting on test results. They said t days initially but that has come and gone.
So for now he's perfectly normal and we'll cross that that bridge if it comes

4/7/2017 9:30:18 PM

PARENTS WATCH OUT

https://www.facebook.com/amanda.cropseyflorczykowski/posts/963608083731691

Quote :

"My name is Amanda and I'm a Longview, Texas resident. I'm convinced that our daughter was the victim of a potential sex-trafficking scam yesterday. I got in the check-out line at a local store early afternoon. I took my daughter out of the cart and the couple ahead struck up the typical conversation about how "cute your daughter is" and then asked about her age, repeatedly. I initially was understanding of what I assumed was a cultural barrier, but I quickly became uncomfortable with the woman's body language and close proximity to my cart/kids. I picked my daughter up only to have the woman ask if she could hold her. The woman was so close at this point that my toddler reached her arms around the woman before I could really respond. In an instant her proximity finally changed and she backed away. I grabbed back on to my daughter as the woman was saying, "Say bye to mommy" - what an unusual comment to provoke a child to say. The woman resisted returning her when I physically pulled my daughter from her arms. Know their conversation began immediately with me and this all took place over only a few moments. After this couple left, I was really shaken up but still noticed the man a few feet away in my peripheral vision, continuing to stand, by himself, with no groceries, in a closed check-out lane. He faced the opposite direction, but was looking over his shoulder at me; glaring would be an understatement. His eyes did not leave my every move and I confidently matched his stare to show I was aware of his presence. I loudly conversed with the cashier about their security staff and the odd couple that seemed predatory. I'm thankful to Jesus that He alone protected us! I was able to get out and home safely with my family. I've since researched sex-trafficking and some details were precisely my experience. I want to recount those specifics to create awareness in hopes that you can protect your own children. -Abductors often work in groups and position themselves throughout the store. Although it wouldn't appear that these 3 individuals were shopping together, I am certain this man and couple were a team. -This couple were of East Indian descent and the man was white and covered in tattoos - all were mid 30's. Beware no matter the color, appearance, age or sex. -The couple checked out with 2 items of little value. Something they could easily abandon. -The woman had alarming proximity to me at times and twice put her hand on my basket. She created one route for me to place my groceries, thus leaving my attention divided between my kids and my task. (I did not place anything on the belt until they left...FYI ) -I20 is a prominent sex-trafficking route; Longview included. In fact, the U.S. Department of Justice used the following cities to study sex-trafficking data. Notice the first three. Dallas,TX San Antonio, TX Fort Worth, TX Salt Lake City, UT Buffalo, NY Baton Rouge and New Orleans, LA Independence, MO Las Vegas, NV Clearwater, FL The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (U.S. Territory) -Houston is a popular port where these children are sold overseas -Abductors often follow you to your car and snatch the willing child they bonded with moments before; all while you put in groceries. -Abductors can follow you home. -The cashier remarked that she thought I knew these strangers. Their body language conveyed that to onlookers, which would make an exit convenient. -I've heard this is happening at Target, Walmart & Kmart; often in the mornings/before lunch. Completely true of my experience, but it could happen anywhere. -Moms shopping alone with kids are targeted. Also true of my experience. -Although rumor says blonde, fair girls/teen are targets, I've yet to find that in my research & my daughter doesn't fit that description. -Additionally, little girls AND boys of any age are targets. The thought of what could have happened is sickening. I'm just like you; a mom and I hope my experience helps you to be, not fearful, but cautious! 2 Timothy 1:7 "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." Some resources: http://ourrescue.org Http://exoduscry.com (LPD have been contacted with this report.)"

4/13/2017 6:53:54 AM

are you fucking kidding me

4/13/2017 7:21:03 AM

sounds like an ad for those websites.

4/13/2017 6:43:41 PM

Man, okay, so I've been stewing on that shit. Trap, you ought to be ashamed for just believing that shit completely uncritically and spreading that kind of fear-mongering.

It's fucking bullshit stories like that one that make these moronic prayer warrior motherfuckers hate and fear strangers, foreigners, anybody different from them. And I promise you the fuckin' group behind it is just raking in money on the back of that fear.

4/14/2017 10:35:04 AM

Quote :

"Clearwater, FL"

Obviously this was a scientology operation.

4/14/2017 2:25:10 PM

^^It also breeds helicopter parenting.

4/14/2017 3:20:55 PM

don't let this happen to your kids!

http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/watch-sea-lion-grabs-girl-off-dock-pulls-her-into-water/story-dC3l5hltXVpB6YqdqAiIOL.html

5/22/2017 4:32:41 AM

People forget that wild animals are still a thing.

5/23/2017 2:14:41 PM

So my son's labs Finally came back last week negative!

So for the time being he's just allergic to something and we have to figure out what.

5/25/2017 10:53:20 AM

^nice! good luck with the allergen hunt! our oldest daughter has issues with dairy and that took us a while to figure out.

5/31/2017 10:49:44 AM

Car insurance nearly doubled when adding a teen driver

FUCK FUCK FUCK

and I only have 15K saved for her college, again:

FUCK FUCK FUCK


when my parents told me they were broke all the time, and it was us kids' fault, I didn't believe them

6/16/2017 7:39:46 AM

Save that $15k for after college. If they get a bad-ass job and can handle their shit...then use it to get them a car or put a down payment on a house.

If they're struggling and need some help with loan payments...then use the $15k to cover that.

Just my opinion. If you can save a shit ton and pay for their college in one fell swoop...then that's great. If not...I like my suggestion a lot better than just putting a small dent in their initial costs.

6/16/2017 9:59:25 AM

if you live in a state with a 529 tax deduction utilize it - we have the bulk of our kids' 529 plans in utah but utilize georgia's yearly deduction as well

6/16/2017 10:47:48 PM

It's a 529, I get the deduction, but I think you have to be a or to prove it was spent education related to get tax free

6/17/2017 6:04:30 AM

Do you have a daughter? Read this.

https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-biggest-mistake-that-you-made-as-a-parent/answers/65232390

And especially freak out at the "Who is this predator?"

12/13/2017 1:42:28 AM

My daughter is around 3.5 (I only mentioned the half because I feel like those months make a lot of difference with what kids understand when this young) and one of my dogs is about to pass away in the next week or so from cancer. Any advice on how to tell her? I’ve read the basic things like don’t tell them he went to sleep or went away but some advice from those who’ve had to do it first hand would be helpful.

9/5/2018 8:39:09 PM

You can watch All Dogs Go To Heaven with her...


...but srsly, I'd personally use this as a teachable moment to provide a basic explanation of what cancer is and what death is. Luckily we have chickens and those fuckers die all the time so my daughter has been exposed to dead pets early and frequently. I guess "luckily" may not be the appropriate word there...but you know what I mean.

source: I also have a 3.5yo daughter

9/6/2018 11:39:13 AM

Our daughter has been aware of animal deaths since about that age, after she saw a dead raccoon on the road. For whatever reason that made an impression on her and she just started asking questions.

If you're religious you could always kick the can down the road and just say "doggy heaven."

I think we tried our best to describe to our daughter how the raccoons body isn't working anymore, and that it is no longer here. We didn't go the animal heaven route. We have two old dogs and will have to cross this bridge soon, as I'm sure she'll feel different about them than the raccoon. She's 5 now.

We've also had to talk to her about family deaths, as her grandmother passed away a few years ago, and she was wondering where her other grandmother was (my mother) who passed away in 2004.

9/6/2018 11:41:26 AM

Thanks to both of you, I guess I’m just going to have to lay it out there and let it be a learning experience. I have tried to tell her that he is really sick and won’t be around much longer but I could tell it just didn’t register with her. We haven’t ever had to talk about death before so this is new territory. She will be sad when she comprehends it but I will be more of a wreck from him passing so in reality this is probably the easy part.

9/6/2018 1:02:00 PM

oh, almost forgot!!! we found an awesome solution to thumb sucking!

this nail polish works wonders!
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000YUXI0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

just dab a tiny bit on each thumb while they're sleeping every 3-4 days and they won't suck their thumbs again! super effective.

9/6/2018 1:37:03 PM

I had a real hard time getting my boys to get the concept that I couldn't just put new batteries into our cat.

9/6/2018 2:06:54 PM

^^^That will be the hardest part - keeping it together and not looking like a wreck in front of your kids. I don't know what I'm going to do. It is going to kill me when these dogs go.

9/10/2018 2:31:16 PM

Had to put him down last Friday, I held it together in front of her relatively well when I told her but I don’t know if it really sunk in or not. I told her that she needed to tell him goodbye because she wouldn’t get to see him again and when she asked why I told her that he was really sick and his body isn’t working anymore. She got sad and said, “ aww I’m going to miss you” to him and I think that reaction hit me almost as hard as having to put him down.

Timing wise I’m lucky in that I won’t see her for a few days so when I do talk to her about it again I should be more composed than I would have been this weekend. This is the second time I’ve had to put a dog down and it is just the worst, that little guy was in my life for almost exactly ten years and I miss the hell out of him already.

9/10/2018 2:38:17 PM

That sucks man. My 1.5 yr old is in love with our dog. He's a 100 lb beast, 6 year old dog. My son just lays on top of him, gives him big hugs all the time. I run my son to daycare with our dog...my son has a tougher time leaving our dog then he does me. He runs back like 5 times to hug him and say goodbye. I can't imagine how things are going to go when we get to that point. Hope its a long ways away.

9/11/2018 6:06:29 PM

that sucks. sorry for your loss.

9/12/2018 1:13:43 PM