In a previous chapter of her career, Laura V., a classically trained French chef, spent hours serving up decadent dishes. But the long hours working as the Chef and Operations Manager for a Los Angeles catering company didn’t mix easily with the arrival of motherhood.
“I was working full-time and I was pregnant and my water broke at work,” Laura says. “The demands of managing a catering company and working 80 hours a week would not allow for me to focus on motherhood in the way I desired.”
After the birth of her first child, Laura took a step back from work and started babysitting for her friends, who were mostly chefs or in the restaurant industry, too. The 31-year-old from Denver, Colorado, would have anywhere from two to four kids with her at a time, and she quickly fell in love with caregiving and working with families. In fact, she soon extended her purview to include not only child care but household management, organizational duties and meal prep, as well.
“It’s just really nice to have open, honest and great relationships with the people I work with,” she says. “They know my strengths, and I know where I can really step up and help their families. It’s a career I created for myself, and I feel very blessed to have it.”
Between running several loads of laundry, making muffins from scratch, shuttling kids to sports practice and serving up dinner to boot, we asked Laura 10 questions about her tricks of the trade — and how she creates a little magic every day.
1. What’s your go-to kids’ snack?
I actually love taking rice cakes and either doing like a nut butter or a jelly or something like that, and then giving kids a bunch of different fruits and veggies and nuts to be able to make a face. A red bell pepper slice becomes a smile on their cat, they love it!
2. What’s your absolute favorite kids’ book?
“Goodnight Moon.” I could recite it from memory!
3. When all else fails…
…sing some outlandish song! Belt out some opera. Kids will pay attention real quick!
4. What’s your favorite activity to do with kids in the fall?
Nature walks! Getting outside and enjoying the beauty of fall. There’s so much variety to see. “Oh my gosh, look at that tree — it’s all green, it’s an evergreen. And this one is an Aspen, so the leaves are changing.” The weather is so perfect as well, so you can go on these longer hikes without the kids suffering from heat exhaustion.
5. Guiltiest pleasure?
McDonald’s. I eat super-strict and healthy. I always eat really whole foods, scratch-made everything. But every once in a while some chicken nuggets and fries with so much sweet and sour sauce that it’s obnoxious sounds so good at like 9 p.m.
6. What’s always in your bag?
Books — and Legos!
7. What’s one thing about kids you wish every adult knew?
They are so smart, they are so observant and they are so able to see the world in such an optimistic and beautiful way, but with so much truth, as well. I love their unjaded, unskewed, completely naive way of looking at the world. That’s what I love about my job. I literally get paid to slow down and enjoy life through a 5-year-old’s eyes. It’s so awesome.
8. Is it OK to wake a sleeping baby — or never?
I think it’s OK. My son was a preemie, so he could sleep for 15 hours. But I also think real life happens, so if we need to pick up your brother from school, Sorry, little Joey, we gotta go pick him up! So, I would definitely say I think it’s OK.
9. What’s a surprising aspect of your work that you love?
I love when my clients message me and send me a picture and are like, “Hey, I really need a place for all these backpacks to go, help me,” and they have like 8,000 shoes and 14 backpacks in their entry way. I had this kind of text come through two weeks ago, and we sat down and organized it all, and my client’s going to rip out a hall closet and make a mud room and I get to design the whole thing.
10. What’s your magical superpower that always seems to do the trick?
Remember that scene from “Mary Poppins” where they’re cleaning up the room, and she makes this game or experience out of it? Kids are so easily swayed if something is fun or it becomes an experience or adventure, they are so willing to do anything! So, anytime we’re going anywhere — to the grocery store or to run errands — I always call everything an adventure. Sometimes the first couple times I hang out with kids, they’ll say, “That’s not adventure,” and I say, “Oh, watch, it will be.”
For example, if a kid says they love apples, I say, “Great, I love apples. Let’s try this one.” And before you know it, you have six apples a kid has never tried before, and then you go home, and you cut into all the apples, and all you’re doing is eating an apple, but it has become this two-hour long learning experience and adventure that, one day, a kid will remember that their crazy nanny got 14 apples and they got to try them all.
It’s finding little simple moments that you have to do anyway and flipping them and turning them in a way that they can understand and that’s fun for everyone.
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