Upper West Side Nanny Fatally Stabs 2 Kids Blocks from Me

I don't normally post here at night, but I don't really know what else to do.

Two-plus hours ago, I left home to head to Middle Girl's Preschool for Curriculum Night. I heard sirens and there were helicopters everywhere. I happened to be on the phone with Mom and she told me that she was watching the news and that there were several people stabbed just a few blocks from where I live. This had all just transpired and there weren't many details.

On the way home from Curriculum Night, a wonderful event where I learned all about my girl and her school day, I read a news story on my iPhone learned that it was a nanny who allegedly stabbed two kids, ages 3 and 5. Per the news report, the mom of these kids came home with her third child and found her two other kids stabbed and in the bathtub. The nanny had also allegedly stabbed herself, but was still alive. I read these things and started to shake. I am a mom on the Upper West Side, I have three kids under 5; It all hit too close to home. My own beloved Nanny and I texted about all of this, both of us very sad and incredulous.

I got out of my taxi on my corner and saw all of the commotion. The news vans, the police, the yellow tape, New Yorkers clustered on the corner in front of my Pinkberry where I get my yogurt usually around this time of night. I walked toward the mayhem and stood there silently and watched. I took the above picture and it's blurry, but kind of reflects how I feel right now: blurry, confused, impossibly sad, sick to my stomach.

I walked home, through our front door. And I chatted with Nanny about all of it, both of us just stunned. I thanked her for taking such wonderful care of my girls, for putting them to bed. And I closed the door behind her, locked up.

And I came straight here. To my screen. To type words. Husband is away on business and here I am, a mom of three, sad and stunned, stunned and sad, feeling suddenly wild with gratitude that my girls are tucked in, sleeping and safe. Now I'm going to order some dinner and watch something very silly on television and try not to think about all of this that happened, and is still happening, yards from me. I will try not to think about those kids and that mom and that family, but it might be hard.

I'm not sure why I am writing these words at 8:42pm, but it's probably for the same reason I write so many of the words I write here: Because I am feeling something, something complex and gritty and gray, and I don't know what else to do but put pen to paper, or rather, fingers to keys.

Update 10:26pm: Per this article in the New York Times, the kids were actually 2 and 6, not 3 and 5. This article includes many more details about the family and the crime.