About me

I am originally from Ames, Iowa a small college city in the Midwest. My father was a composer and my mother worked in healthcare, and at home. I grew up surrounded by a great deal of classical music while living on the edge of a lovely forest with a river and fields behind it where I spent much of my imaginative youth. The fond memories of playing with my sister, my friends, and the other neighborhood kids still influences the way that I interact with children. Also, for one year, I went to kindergarten in a small town in Germany near Hannover while my father was translating a book. So I am fluent in German and English. In the past, I played piano and clarinet, and still love making up stories and inventing new games and activities. In late elementary school through high school I babysat for many families. It always seemed to be a fun way to earn extra money.

My first full time sitting experience was as an au pair in a small town near Munich for some family friends who had a lovely two-year old boy and five-year old girl. I came back to the US to study painting at an art institute and then attended graduate school for Sculpture in Philadelphia. I'm currently finishing up editing a documentary film on the history of my hometown’s secret involvement in the Manhattan Project.

When I finished graduate school, I moved to New York and found a position caring for a little boy whose mother was an artist. During that first year, I also watched a six-month-old girl who lived in the Bronx. Then the position with the little boy became full-time, and because the Bronx was quite far, I worked for the little boy full-time for two years as both a nanny to him and an assistant to his mother. Since then, for the past two and half years I have been watching a four-year-old boy for about thirty hours per week, but he is now moving to LA.

I have loved the relationships that I’ve formed with the children I have watched, and love to see how they grow and change and learn to develop their unique senses of self.