Our nanny search

So far our search for a nanny has been less than promising. There are a few new criteria learning from our experience with our current nanny

1. The nanny must speak good english, else none at all - we don't want our kids to pick up broken english since they will be spending more time at home with her than us.  Hubs gets mad each time he hears H speaking with 'lahs' and 'mahs', and we get worried over L's pronunciation and grammar since she's still at the impressionable age of 2. It was difficult telling our current nanny not to speak english to the kids as we didn't want to hurt her feelings. We tried the roundabout way of telling her we wanted the kids to learn cantonese, etc. but this didn't quite work. Finally hubs had to be straight forward with her. Not sure if she really understood him but after some failed attempt of speaking to the kids in cantonese, she reverted back to using her limited english. This time round, we figured it will be much easier if we tell the non-english speaking nanny upfront during the interview that she is NOT to speak english to the kids
2. The nanny must like to cook and can cook up decent meals - this is high on hubs list of requirements, not such a big deal for me since I don't care much for food. But I do agree that the nanny should at least put in some effort when she cooks. We've been practically eating the same food every day for a year, and they are rather simply whipped together. Zero effort! Some nights I would have to teman hubs out to grab dinner cos he can't bear eating the same food over and over again. Really defeats the purpose of having home cooked meals if you have to go out and get your own dinner. We're not expecting 5-star michelin quality dinner, but some effort into cooking would be nice.

I've spoken to 24 candidates over the phone, interviewed 3 (out of which 1 is on my 'maybe' list), about to interview another 1 this weekend (I have quite high hopes on her since she's the only one who speaks english, hopefully she doesn't disappoint), and another 2 more hopefuls whom I have yet to set up interviews with. So the search goes on...