When my husband and I moved our family from Brooklyn to the wilds of the Long Island suburbs
eight months ago, our chief concern was securing great childcare for
our twin toddlers. In Brooklyn, from the time they were 3 months old,
Avi and Maya had been cared for part-time by Charlotte, a superhero
dressed as a 25-year-old aspiring opera singer. Charlotte (Sha-Sha, to
everyone in our family who loved her, which was everyone) could do
anything our two babies needed, including arrive at our apartment at 8
a.m. so that I could hop the subway to Manhattan while the girls
splatter-painted the walls with oatmeal. Charlotte glided into our lives
and made it infinitely better. Alas, Sha-Sha wasn’t interested in
moving to the ‘burbs with us. Go figure.And so, when we landed on the (north) shores of this island, we weighed our options. I would still be working part-time, but really, it was more like three quarters when you considered the longer commute. We didn’t know many people in our new town and worried that a nanny wouldn’t have much to do with the girls, what with the whole everyone-needs-a-car-to-get-anywhere culture. We didn’t like the idea of the girls sitting in the house all day. In addition, at 18 months, Avi and Maya were starting to pick things up, and it seemed like they might just benefit from being in a Jewish environment.
Ideally, we wanted to enroll the girls in a synagogue preschool program. We liked the idea that through nursery school, we’d find a relatively organic and low-stress opportunity to meet other young families in our town. And we liked the idea that Avi and Maya would begin experiencing Shabbat, Hebrew, and the Jewish holidays, in a structured, accessible way.
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