Once more unto the breech

We have a new au pair starting on Sunday. As you may recall, the last one just up and disappeared on us essentially saying it wasn't what she expected. A number of interviews later and, to cut a long story short, we've a 20 year old Italian lass coming to live with us on Sunday. Which is good, since we're kind of at the breaking point on being able to get work done.

It's been 3 weeks since the last au pair left. We started the search for someone new. Of the lot, three really stood out. The first was a charming male au pair from UK (a maux pair?). After a Skype interview we made an offer, but he turned us down – in the end, he needed more money than an au pair job could pay. The promise of free accommodation doesn't help if you already live with your parents.

Another potential looked good until the end of the call. Well, first off she'd not be able to stay the entire time we needed, but we could have lived with that id the rest was good. But then she ended the call with Oh, can I bring a friend?

She dodged all the questions of Who? and Can you give us a CV or some details of who this person is that you want to live rent free in our house and have access to all our stuff?
All the while she found it odd that we'd object, like we wouldn't find it at the limits of our space living with three adults in this flat, and having a fourth couldn't possibly make any difference.

There we other potentials, but the one we settled on was already in London doing a class. She'd be available for 6 weeks when the class ended, but she was happy to come over for lunch to meet us all. It went well. Much better than her Skype call (which wasn't the best connection anyway).

So this whole time since the last au pair left, the nursery – now the au pair's room – has sat empty and unused. Which is a bit of a pain since we're short on space as it is in our house. but it felt like giving up if we started putting stuff in it again. It will be nice to get it used again and not feel wasted. I'm still hoping that at some point we start to see some benefit of having an au pair, and it'll take some the burden off and let us get some work done.

In summary – less terrified than last time, but more cynical.

Well *that* was disappointing

I'm still a bit shocked at how badly that au pair worked out.

When I last posted here, I mentioned we'd just hired a 24 year old austrian girl to look after our daughter while we get work done. She started last sunday, and on Monday, after a weekend visiting friends in Brighton, she declared she'd quit and was packed up and gone in under half an hour.

All this a day before my daughter's second birthday, which just adds to the awkward

Here's the story as far as I can tell…

This was our first time doing anything of this sort, so we went into it with a few reservations. We didn't want to leave the au pair alone with the girl until we knew we could trust her. So the first few days had her looking after the girl in the house (nicely coinciding with some well-needed rain), where we'd be on hand, but working, in case we were needed, or with L going with the au pair and the girl to one of the many nearby parks, partly to show the au pair around, and partly to see how she'd treat the girl outside of the house.

By the 3rd day we felt comfortable enough for her to take the girl for walks alone. We seemed to get along well, I even cooked with her, and it all felt quite comfortable. In her off time, we'd share meals together and spend time with her to make her comfortable with us and in her new home.

The only problem I'd had with her is when she was supposed to join me at a park. Due to a confusion with bus stop names she foudn herself in the wrong park and ended up not being able to meet up with me before I left. Admittedly, she did try calling, but the local (o2) networking was dropping our calls, and the one which could have gotten through I ignored because it arrived at the same time as the girl face planting off a swing into a patch of mud (causing me to try to comfort her and find out of she was hurt or just messy and find somewhere toy clean her up (air dryers in a loo don't help clean up messes)). All in all, it's a pretty minor problem to have, but she did end up missing an entire morning's work.

On Friday, day 5, we asked her to join us for a friend's birthday lunch. After which she'd head off to her friends in Brighton for the weekend. She was supposed to come back Sunday night for dinner with us, and work again on Monday. I cut short lunch, skipping the pub part, to head home and get some work done. That was pretty much the last time I saw the her, or at least the her I thought I knew.

On Sunday we exchanged a few text messaged which amounted to just this:

Are you joining us for dinner

No, I'll be back Monday at noon

Eh? We kinda need you here for morning

I won't be able to make it before then, I'll explain later

We were a bit annoyed at that, but we assumed she was having a life complication and it'd just be a bump we'd get past.

Monday noon comes and goes with not a sign or peep for the au pair. In the end we declare the day a waste and start to consider if we dock her wages or ask her to work on the weekend. I finally give up waiting and decide to pack up the girl and get out to the shops to buy some food for the girl's birthday lunch the next day. As I'm waking out the au pair comes in, bringing a friend of hers with. I'm a bit dubious about the stranger in my house, but, as the place is her home too, I couldn't complain. So I just say Hi. I'm off to the shops. I'll see you in a bit. L is upstairs. To be honest, after her being so rude to just show up hours late like that, I didn't want to talk to her.

I get the next bus out and 3 minutes later I get a call from L saying the au pair has just quit. I'm shocked. I get off the bus and get the first bus back home. When I get there, the au pair is in her room, with her friend, behind the closed door. L is working in the office and just tells me that the au pair had said that she was working far more hours than she was willing to do, and she would quit immediately and move out. The friend she brought was there for support, but as far as L could tell, was just there to be rude to us.

L brings me up to date for a few minutes then I go to talk to the now ex au pair. I catch her just as she's leaving, and bring up the fact that we had a contract and she could not just walk away with no notice. To cut an unpleasant interaction short, I'll suffice to say voices were raised and doors were slammed and that's it she was gone. She never even said goodbye (or anything for that matter) to the girl before she left.

The whole thing left me feeling just betrayed. I mean, I felt I could trust her and she goes and throws this in our face. I'm still puzzled about her claim she was working 12 hour days. Unless she counted time spent conversing or eating together as work, or the time she spent exploring the neighbourhood as work… I can't see how she's arrived at anything like that figure. A number of her final complaints, like how we were working from home, we told her about in her Skype interview. She never complained once about anything the entire week she was working. One of her references warned me about her taking on too much work and letting it get to her. Turns out, that was spot on, but I didn't expect it to come to a head so quickly.

It come across as her quietly seething against us the whole time, which doesn't strike me as true, since she did honestly seem to be having fun with us.

The only thing which seems to fit all the evidence I see is that when she visited her friends, they just talked about the parts she didn't like which spiralled out of control. Kind of like how when you explain the problems you have in a relationship to someone who doesn't know your partner they just quip Leave his sorry arse without knowing anything really about the situation. And given how rude the friend who came with her came across, this seems credible. So after a couple of days of egging her into it, she's turned the whole thing in her own mind into to a lost cause.

It's all supposition regardless. It doesn't really matter.

Anyways, this all means we're back at square zero. Desperately trying to find another au pair or childcare solution and still get the work done we need. All in all, over that one week we got maybe 3 hours of work in the same room the whole week and we generally wasted that on catching up on stuff that accrued while getting the house ready for the au pair. And now we have the added bonus of the girl asking where the au pair is. We've had houseguests before, so we're hoping the girl treats it like that and not anything traumatic. So we just explain that she went home and is not coming back. L and I try to not mention the au pair's name to avoid reminding the girl, though she still says go home on random occasions which we think is a reference to the au pair.

What I've been doing the past 7 months

This story will be long, so please pack a bag lunch and make yourself comfortable. We'll make a pit stop part-way through in case you need the loo.

I don't talk about work much here, but it's relevant now, so bear with me. I left my job back in October. I got a bit of cash from the redundancy so the wife and I decided to throw caution to the wind and start our own business.

Now for the last four years I was working there I'd been at risk of redundancy something like 4 or 5 times. I lost count, it happened so often. Each time I considered if I were better off leaving or better off staying. Usually it was met with We're buying a flat, we kind of need the income, or We're planning on having a baby, the security of a job, even if I don't like it is a good thing.

It's hard trying to make major life changes when work is in turmoil. It all boils down to Can I afford to do this, and when the source of income is in doubt, everything else which seems clear becomes more dubious. And you end up holding on to maxims like I've a kid on the way, I can't leave, when you should be focussing on things like There's never a good time to have a chid, just get on with it. Jobs come and go and people find ways to get by. If you can't plan beyond the next big unknown you're not going to plan very far.

So… When the redundancy fairy visited me I came up with three options.

1. I'd just move on to another job somewhere else. With luck, I'd find something I'd like
2. L would get a job and I'd stay at home being a full-time father. I liked this idea a lot. It was really tempting.
3. Start a company with L and we'd both work from home, splitting the child care 50%.

We settled on the last one. Which clearly was the hardest of the lot. But, when else would we ever be able to do this? I felt I could not use the baby as an excuse. L and I had been talking for years about going into business together – our skills are nicely complementary and we both have Visions of how to make things Better. And when else would we get the opportunity? Between the redundancy pay and a small business grant I got, it was now or never.

The grant specifically stipulated the money could be used for most any business expense, but Not childcare. So the one real barrier we have to getting the company off the ground, the grant would not support. I cannot stress how annoying this is.

And, besides, no other option would let us both have such an active role in the girl's early life. We'd both be there, even if one of us was locked in an office, the other would be around, and we'd switch the next day.

Since then we've been trying lots of approaches to work. First we tried shifts. In each shift, one of us would work while the other would look after the girl, and when she'd nap or be down for the night, we'd work together. I'd do 4 hours, then L'd do 4, then I'd do 4. Then next day we'd switch.

That didn't really work. If the girl had trouble getting to sleep, it'd bugger the whole schedule. Plus I personally found it was time to switch every time I'd get on a roll. I guess it's the way I work – start off with something simple to get me in the mood, then get to something really hard which requires hours of thought and effort. Which usually would begin around hour 3.

We tried a few other failed options till we settled on switching days. One of us would work 3 days in a workweek and other works 2. Weekends are up for grabs, depending on what we'd planned. Whoever was not working would look after the girl. Except for breastfeeds which all required L. And by this time the girl stopped being able to be settled by anything other than breastfeeding. Which meant that even if L was working she'd lose about 3 or more hours of productivity a day. So all the time we'd planned to be able to work together would just be spent me working instead of her.

Time when we could work together was really productive, but got really rare. We'd occasionally get a sitter in to look after the girl for half a day while we'd work. Which gets expensive after a while, especially since the grant would not cover it as a business expense. This was especially troublesome with client meetings. The girl was young enough at the first few to come along with us without getting in the way, but now she's far too active to sit still for that long without taking one of our full attention. Now, either one us stays at home with her (which is not ideal since L and I sell ourselves best when we can tag team), or we have to arrange childcare.

That carried on for a while until L got a hard deadline for her thesis corrections. After waiting for like a year for comments she finally got the details she needed to do the corrections. This came with a two month deadline. there's no way she could do that, raise a child and run a business. So we panicked and decided this was a problem we could throw money at, despite not having any income yet. We'd put the girl into childcare.

Daycare is impressively expensive. It'd be a huge chunk of money over just the two months we needed. L discovered that getting an au pair would be much cheaper and more convenient. L had been an au pair for a bit once upon a time, so she was more comfortable with the idea than I. Over the space of the next few days we searched for and found a decent match. So we'd committed ourselves to a couple of months of feeding and housing (and paying) a 24-year-old from Austria in exchange for her looking after our daughter.

What followed was a couple of weeks mad clearing out the nursery and turning it something fit for being a grown-up's bedroom. Plus there was the moving the girl and her cot into our room, and tidying the whole flat so we'd not embarrass ourselves.

The au pair arrived on Sunday. We met her at a train station and took her home. She's settled in pretty well so far. I was initially anxious… well… terrified, but it's working out ok. I feels a lot like having a house guest. Except one I never met before that I don't mind asking to look after my child. It's a situation I never expected to find myself in and I guess I'm just taking it in my usual whatever happens happens, get on with it manner.

Bunny X

On our street is house with what appears to be like some kind of vent on the side. The girl has decided to call it "Bunny X" because it looks like bunny ears and it's in the shape of an X.

She is right. And since she says Bunny X every time we pass the house, I'm always reminded of her ... facsinating insight into the world.

Favourite book

Her favourite book is Boiloi gorl. She'll ask us to read it to her over and over again. This is what she calls Blueberry Girl, a poem Neil Gaiman wrote for a friend's soon-to-be-born daughter. The fact that my daughter loves this book pleases me greatly since I read excerpts of it at her naming ceremony.

I'll read the book to her, and she'll point to the animals in the book, saying their names. Sometimes she'll point to the baby in the book and say her own name, and point to the mother and say mamma. Sometimes she'll repeat lines back to me in her mostly-decent attempts at English Lady light, Lady dark or say lines I'm about to say instead of me Gifts boiloi gorl.

This is the first book she's gone to the efforts to memorise parts of and ask for by name. Daily. Or more often. It's got the point where we can calm down a crying fit by reciting parts to her (L and I pretty much have the whole thing memorised). This morning, she was hungry, tired and a bit ill, I only managed to stop a long crying fit by playing a video of Neil Gaiman reading the poem. Which I then put on repeat for half an hour to get her to eat breakfast.

What's that?

She's been playing the What's that? game for about 3 or 4 days now. She'll point to something and ask What's that? – sometimes it'll be something she knows, but usually she actually does want to know what it is.

I really like this game. It's fun to explain easy things. That's a chicken, and that's a duckling which is a baby duck. Sometimes it's really hard, like when she asks sequentially about two of the same thing and I try to figure out what is the difference between them that she's noticed, or do I just say That's also a xxx?

I suppose I'll get sick of it over time. Then again, I'm sure she will too. Until then I enjoy the curiosity and the sharing. It makes me both feel needed and proud that she's taking such an interest in knowing what's around her.

Today we were walking with a friend through a cemetery. All the graves were different, so the girl pointed to nearly all of them asking What's that? and we sort of took turns trying to explain what a grave is, how some are above ground, some below, some in a small building called a mausoleum, some have pots built in for people to put flowers in, how to pronounce these new long words, and so on. It was a long walk, so there was a lot of explaining.

The last time the girl and I walked through a cemetery was a fortnight ago and she didn't do What's that? yet. Instead she pointed at the first several headstones and said Locked door for each one. I found this somewhere in the realm between creepy, disturbingly profound and "what do you know that I don't?"

Near names and far names

Apparently L and I both have a pairs of names, according to the little girl. When we are near she calls us dada and mama. When we are far away she calls us by our first names.

A perfect example of this was the other day when L made me a coffee. She asked the girl to call downstairs to me and tell me the coffee was ready. The girl came over to the top of the stairs and called out Bob! Toffee. Bob! When I came in view she said Dada!

I can only guess this is because L and I, tend to only use each other's first names when calling to each other across the flat. Regardless, it's led to a rather cute side-effect.