I recently found myself in the position of looking for a nanny  for my son. While I reached out to my local mother’s club, I wasn’t really able to get a good recommendation for a nanny so I turned to the web to search for a nanny. I visited several sites for my search.

Traffic:

Search Capabliities

Summary:
I found that Care.com was the easiest to use and my job post garnered the most applicants, probably because it is highly trafficked and has more visitors than all the other sites by far (see stats above). I liked the My Care.com interface, and it is the only site that allowed me to refine my search based on a schedule. This is very important and useful feature because often a candidate ends up being eliminated based on the schedule not being a good fit. For a 1-month search, this was the more affordable option.

Care.com also has this nice feature where Care.com checks out the references and the post the recording for you to listen to. That was pretty neat and a nice feature for care providers’ profile.

Sittercity.com is also a good option and its search uses a filter method instead. You search by zip code first, and then select your filters. Each filter has a number next to it, showing you the number of candidates that choosing that filter will refine your results to. I think it is the most useful if you are looking for special care as it has an extensive list of special needs to select from. he one-month usage cost is higher because of the $39.99 set up fee.

The references, if the provided listed it, has contact info right on the profile, whereas Care.com does not show the reference contact info. My job posting did not get quite as many responses compared to Care.com, and while there are some overlaps in terms of the candidates on the sites, but there is enough new candidates that I thought it was worth a look.

Nannies4hire.com was easy to use, and it was also the most expensive. They got a lot of fodder from Dr. Phil so I took a look at it. The feature that sets it apart is the more detailed background check, but the detailed background check is really not available unless you pay for the 99-day plan, which was $199 (which I did not want to pay for) ! I wished that I was able to choose a plan that was 30 days with the detailed background check but that is not an option. They also did not have a free trial, which I did not like. I was able to get get a coupon from doing an internet search and chose their most basic 30-day plan.

I thought it was interesting that they are the only one of the 5 sites that has height and weight information in their care provider profiles. Their customer service people were nice and I had no trouble reaching a rep and didn’t have to wait at all. I called them to complain about their lack of candidates in my area and they tweaked my profile a bit to help me get some more responses and gave me a few pointers as well.

I heard about Enannysource.com from my local mother’s club but I didn’t even bother subscribing at all because my free trial search yielded only 20 candidates within 25 miles of where I live, and many of them have not logged in within the last month. That’s the thing about these sites, a lot of times you won’t find too many people who have logged in recently for it to even be worth your while to pay for a subscription.

Sitters.com looks a lot like a lesser featured Care.com. I also did not subscribe to this site beyond the 7-day trial because it did not seem to have enough recently logged in candidates for me. The reason that the recently logged in candidates is important is because it means that people who are not recently logged in are not likely to be actively looking and available. Sitters.com does feature an “All Mom Editorial Team” that vets all the profiles submitted on their site.

Sometimes it seems like modern motherhood is about keeping the mother insecure and feeling guilty. No matter what you choose, you are wrong, selfish, and abusing your child. Some things women are told are based on complete myths, but they persist as wisdom anyway.

During pregnancy you are selfish and abusing your unborn baby if you:

Eat deli meat, hot dog, sushi, raw oysters, ceviche, salad, soft cheese, fresh-squeezed juice, or anything not thoroughly cooked — You are risking Listeriosis and you can kill your baby!

Drink coffee, or anything with caffeine in it — You are risking miscarriage, premature birth, low birth weight, and withdrawal symptoms in infants.

Being in vicinity of cigarette smoke, pesticides, paint fumes, nail polish, or hair dye — they are all dangerous to your developing baby!

Drink tapwater — It can increase your chances of miscarriage.

Use an electric blanket — electric blankets give off low-level electromagnetic fields which may be harmful to a developing baby.

Use a microwave — You are exposing your unborn baby to harmful radiation.

Eat fish — You are going to ingest too much mercury and mess up the development of your baby’s brain.

Don’t eat fish — You should eat fish because it is a good source of omega-3 and good for your baby’s brain development.

Going on nature hikes — you can get a tick bite, get lyme disease, and kill your baby.

Eat peanut butter, or anything with peanuts — You are going to give your child allergies.

Have any amount of alcohol — Your child will be born with fetal alcohol syndrome and retardation.

Don’t swallow that horsepill prenatal vitamin faithfully without fail everyday — Your developing baby need the extra vitamins to develop properly or else might develop diabetes or birth defect; but don’t take too much vitamin A!

Take any OTC drugs for headaches, cold and flu, or any other condition — Drugs are not safe for the baby! But then, is there anything that has been tested on pregnant women and proven safe?

Choose to have drugs/epidural — You are drugging your baby!

Have natural birth at home — You are putting your baby at risk.

Give birth by cesarean section — Why would you choose to have a baby if you don’t want to ‘have’  one?

Exercise — You are going to raise your body temperature, shake that baby right out of you, and miscarry.

Don’t exercise — You are going to get fat and give your kid diabetes.

Take hot baths — Raising your body temperature is a no-no. Better stick to showers, but not too hot! And not too cold either!

Once the baby comes, then you are really in for it. You are a bad mother/gross/inappropriate/etc. if you:

Feeding your baby formula — Bottle-feeding is so EVIL, and formula companies are killing babies for profit. We have a moral obligation to inform every bottle-feeding mother in America that she is wrong, she is selfish, she is somehow less human because she couldn’t or wouldn’t breast feed, and she is making her baby suffer for her failure as a mammal.

Use breast pump — Pumping breast milk is no substitute for real breastfeeding! Your baby is not getting the benefit of being held close to you and feeding on demand.

Breastfeed your baby anywhere but in your bedroom at home away from the sight of others — That is gross and you make everyone around you uncomfortable. Breastfeeding should be done in private and not be seen in public! You choose not to stay home? Then you better do it in a car or a bathroom because people don’t want to see it!

Nurse your child too long — Your are creating an unhealthy relationship with your child and he/she will be a freak.

Wean your child too early — Your child will develop gastrointestinal problems.

Wear your baby — Your child will be too attached.

Don’t wear your baby — Your baby is not meant to be in car seat or a stroller. Why are you not cuddling with him/her?

Stay at home — Your child will be poorly socialized, will lack verbal skills, and will become horribly ill during kindergarten because he or she has never been exposed to germs. You are setting a terrible example by perpetuating an old-fashioned gender role and wasting your education and opportunities.

Work full time — Your child will have an attachment disorder, behavior problems, and you are missing the best years of his or her life.

Use daycare — Your child will get sick a lot and not get the attention they need to develop properly.

Use a babysitter — You should not be a parent if you wanted to have fun and go out.

Put your baby to sleep in a crib — Why would you let your child sleep in a cage all by themselves?

Sleep train your baby — Letting your child cry is child abuse. Crying it out leads to damage of trust, brain development, and emotional well-being. It only looks like it works because your child becomes depressed and learn to not trust you for comfort.

Co-sleep with your baby — How could you risk rolling onto your child and smothering him/her?

Don’t have your baby on regularly scheduled naps — If your baby is a poor sleeper, it is evidence you are a bad mom.

Let your child sleep on his/her tummy or side — You are risking sudden infant death syndrome! The cause of SIDS is actually unknown, but there are so many things that could be the cause of SIDS!

Use a pacifier — Your baby will get more ear infections, addicted, and have terrible teeth.

Don’t use a pacifier — Pacifiers lower the risk of SIDS and help to sooth the baby. If your baby suck on his/her thumb they will become addicted and have bad teeth.

Vaccinate your baby — How could you allow your baby be experimented on by the public health system?

Don’t vaccinate your baby — How can you take the risk of serious childhood diseases and not protect your baby?

Circumcise your baby boy — You’re cruelly subjecting the poor baby to pain and trauma of genital mutilation and exposing him to risks of unnecessary surgery and there is a chance that his surgery may be botched and he can die.

Don’t circumcise your baby boy — Your boy will be made fun of by other boys in the locker room, sexually rejected by women, grow up to be ill-adjusted, and get penis cancer.

Schedule activities — Your child is over-scheduled and will suffer a breakdown due to the stress.

Don’t schedule activities — Your child will fall behind his or her peers and never catch up.

Let your child watch TV, play videogames, or expose them to media — Your child will be violent, mouthy, and unpleasant. He or she will whine for every candy and toy they see the next time you go to the store.

Don’t let your child watch TV — Why are you trying to raise your child as if we are in the stone age? Your child will lack reading skills and will have nothing to talk with other children about.

There are probably more, but this is what I have learned so far as a new mom. What I have learned is that there are plenty of people in the world ready to tell you how to be and ready to judge you based on the minute details. The reality is, you have to be a mother your own way, and define your own motherhood.

After over 15 years of using ishen-at-mail-dot-com as my email address, I have decided to stop using the mail forwarding service. The original reason for me to keep this email address was for continuity — I used to change ISPs a lot and having a forwarding email address meant that I didn’t have to update my email address all the time just because I changed ISPs.  Also, ishen-at-mail-dot-com is a nice and short, domain that is easy to say and for people to remember. As for my reasons now for ceasing to use mail.com, (I struggled with this decision for a few months) there are quite a few.

In spite of a redesign, mail.com has bad support.
I had tried to actually update my payment information a couple of months back but the site sent me in loops. Unable to update my payment information, I wrote customer support and got the run around. I couldn’t get any answers but the mailbot still sends me email asking for payment. I checked recently and it looks like they finally fixed the problem with payment update, but by now I am not sure I want to pay for a company with bad support.

$19.99 is too much to pay just for mail forwarding.
It used to be a reasonable price, but these days, email forwarding is a default and free feature. Unless one is really attached emotionally to a particular email address, there is no real reason to pay $20 a year for this feature alone.

Mail.com has been rejected by a few sites as a spam domain. I often register on new web applications to test them out and the mail.com domain has been rejected  few times as a spam account. I certainly do not want to be associated with a spam domain.

Too much email.
I get too much email as is, so I am determined to completely restructuring the way I manage email. With Twitter, Facebook, and various tools I have little need to be so dependent on a forwarding address.

I am saying goodbye to ishen-at-mail-dot-com, though it will still work for a bit longer. I am not going to reveal my new email address on this blog post, though. You will either hear from me or you will have to contact me for it.

Oh nostalgia! The first computer that was mine to use was a Tandy 1000. I moved to the United States to live permanently when I was in the sixth grade and my father decided to go into the Radio Shack (one of my favorite stores) in the Puente Hill Mall and buy me a personal desktop computer.

Along with the big ass computer with two floppy disk drives, I also got a very noisy dot matrix printer that required special paper. I wrote a lot of documents, played a lot of text-based games, and generally spent a lot of time by myself in front of that computer. It’s amazing to look at the specs on that thing and see how far things have progressed.

What happens when a corporation designs a stop sign?

This little parody really illustrates how design by committee works.

It’s about time! I have been wanting to watch Hulu on our Plasma TV for a while now.

I have previously posted about using Freecycle when I was moving my husband and I out of our apartment, but now that I am springcleaning, I am finding myself using Freecycle more and more. Freecycle a movement that is multifaceted: I find it useful in getting rid of clutter, saving money, living green, and even advancing a sense of community.

When you go to Freecycle.org, you will see this following description posted on the homepage:

The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,793 groups with 7,208,000 members across the globe. It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them’s good people). Membership is free.

For the most part, Freecyle is set up on Yahoo! Groups, so you will need to have a Yahoo! membership ID in order to participate. There are some communities, like Oakland, CA,  that have stopped using Yahoo! Groups and expanded out to using the My Freecycle platform instead. Before 2009, Yahoo! Groups worked well, but since March 2009, I have noticed that Yahoo! Group has been having problem associated with its search functionality that has not been fixed.

Tips for using Freecycle:

1. People like pictures. Even though you cannot post pictures on Yahoo Group, you can include a link of an image. Most of the time, you will be asked for a picture anyway, so I always include a link to what I am giving away.

2. Remember there is a email digest. Some people get email immediately anytime any one posts, but there are also members who receive a digest or access the postings via the web only. It is generally good practice to post a TAKEN notice after you have successfully given away your item(s), but realize that people might be contacting you after the fact. You will likely get inquiries days, maybe even weeks after your initial post.

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• One Person’s Trash Is Another’s Technology: Recycling or Donating Discarded Electronic Equipment Help Reduce E-Waste Pollution (scientificamerican.com)
• Frustrating Freecycle (billbennett.co.nz)