Nanny Update

Where to begin???

Some of you may recall our disasterous au pair experiement last Fall. In fact, it was just about a year ago (erev Simchat Torah 5767) that it all began…

(read here and here for the gory details)

I never wrote about the rest of the saga because it was too darn upsetting. So now the time has come to share…the rest of the story.

We kept the au pair in our home until her last day…at which point PC drove her up to Glendale. She felt that we should have paid her for her final two weeks. PC pointed out that given we had given her free room and board during her final two weeks and we did not dock her for the damage done to our car, we had been rather generous and no, there would be no more money forthcoming.

And then we started receiving applications. One after another…of completely incompatible matches. A slew of girls whose English skills were minimal. Followed by a girl with better language capacity — but no driver’s license!! A major problem given the amount of driving the job requires. One who wouldn’t live with a family that has dietary restrictions (we keep kosher) and several who wouldn’t work with special needs kids (like our kid with Asperger’s!). My favourite mismatch was one girl who had stated flat out that she was not willing to work with a special needs kid and I was advised to interview her anyway because our son is just “a mild case.” Turns out that she didn’t want to work with a special needs child because her brother has Down’s. The interesting part — she stated on her app that she was an only child! We had applicants put into our account that then suddenly disappeared for odd reasons. Our “match counselor” kept changing.

And then…we made a match..

Or so we thought.

Less than twelve hours after it had been settled, the girl reneged. Decided that upon further reflection, three children was not what she wanted.

This was in June, BTW. A good six months without an au pair. The company then sent us an email saying that in order to continue with them, we would need to pay a registration fee as we were going into a second year with them.

SO — no more au pairs for us!!

In the meantime, we had hired a nanny in January. She lasted one day.

Yep, that’s what I said. One day.

Family crisis and that was the last we heard from her.

Then we hired a lovely girl with tons of experience with autistic kids. She lasted 5 months. Then her school schedule made it impossible for her to continue with us. We started the process again and ended up hiring her friend.

Who lasted 3 and 1/2 weeks…until she sent a “Dear John” letter.

No notice, no nothing.

PC left for Asia this morning and returns in an eternity (two weeks).

Short-term solution: Fly Ace out to assist with the driving and childcare while PC is country-hopping in the Far East. That buys me a little time to find Mary Poppins while the kidlets get quality-time with their uncle.