u/Small-Art5304

My baby's first birthday is coming up and I want to continue the tradition from my childhood of baking our birthday cakes. I'm a gluten eater but my spouse has celiac, so we have a GF kitchen. So if we're baking at home, it's gotta be gluten-free. I don't want to risk a from scratch recipe as my past GF baking attempts have not been super successful.

What's the best GF box cake mix out there? Preferable chocolate but definitely open to other flavors if something else is better.

Context: We are parents to a 10-month-old and our nanny has been with us for about 2.5 months. This is their first nanny job, but they have previous experience with babies and toddlers in a daycare setting as well as lots of babysitting. We WFH, with our office door closed, and don't come out unless we absolutely have to during nanny hours. (Edit to add: I used to be a nanny with a WFH parent so I'm sensitive to Nanny's needs and experience with us.)

Where we're stuck is that Nanny is a great babysitter but doesn't seem to know how to shift into being a nanny. We would like to see Nanny take more initiative in things like getting Baby outside (stroller available, walkable neighborhood, park just down the street, small backyard), feeding solids (right now I'm telling Nanny exactly what to feed and sometimes prepping it; I'd love for Nanny to decide what to serve and take care of it), etc.

We also expected that having a nanny would mean hearing lots of happy, playful sounds. Nanny is a gentle, quiet person and we don't want to change their personality, but we'd love for them to sing, be silly, and generally bring more energy to their care.

We do not want to let Nanny go if we can help them up their game here.

I would love any and all suggestions, especially from career nannies, about how we could approach this conversation so that it will feel constructive rather than critical and any specific advice we could give to help with these goals. Thanks!!

Looking for advice! I'm a former nanny now nanny employer with an 8-month-old. I have been their primary caretaker up until a few weeks ago, when our part time nanny started. The first couple days were great, but on we'll two, my baby started crying hysterically when I handed them over to the nanny and basically has spent every hour of care crying.

It's heartbreaking to listen to, it makes it really hard for my spouse and I to work (we both WFH), and I feel terrible for our nanny! He is doing everything right and trying his hardest to soothe our kid, but our kid is just not having it.

Does anyone have tips for easing this transition? I just don't know what to do.

As a former nanny, I thought I'd know what to do when it came time to be on the other side. We've already listed the job and have some promising candidates, but I'm stumped on what to ask them. Any suggestions?

Also, how does one go about getting a background check for a potential employee?