Au Pair Thoughts

You know you’re either a mom or a nanny when you reach into your purse and before finding your wallet you pull out two mini boxes of skittles, a lego man, and a bouncy ball.

I’m really loving being an au pair. I knew I’d learn a lot coming to Paris, being immersed in a new culture and language, but I didn’t think about how much I’d learn from taking care of kids five days a week. For one, I’ve gained an even greater respect for mothers, who do this day-in and day-out for 20 years or more. Children are exhausting! I’ve always been around them, and I’ve been babysitting since Noah was born when I was 8-years-old; I’m also a natural nurturer, I think, so taking care of kids has always been something I love doing and a piece of cake. But babysitting and having siblings is nothing compared to the responsibility of nurturing them every day. Being an au pair is the closest glimpse you can get to real mommy life without actually having your own kids, but even then it’s only a peak. Moms don’t get weekends off or get paid every month for feeding little mouths and wiping butts and soothing temper tantrums.

My cooking has improved ten-fold, too. I always said I was bad at cooking, but it was never true - I was always just too lazy to cook my own food. But now that I have to cook dinner every week night for two little kids who need nourishment, I’ve had to figure some things out. Laetitia leaves a note of what’s in the fridge that I can cook that day, and it’s always something easy, like chicken or fish with vegetables, but I’ve turned it into a little class for myself where I look up a recipe every night to find a new way of cooking the food. That way I learn, the food tastes better for the kids, and they don’t get bored with plain boiled vegetables. For example, the last two times carrots were on the menu, instead of just boiling them and throwing some butter on, I added dill and pepper and some other random herbs that smelled like they’d taste good with carrots. And the next time I made a simple syrup with brown sugar, boiling water, and salted butter and soaked the carrots in that. One time I made rosemary chicken. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but cooking has actually become fun.

Anyway, I could go on and on about things I’ve cooked and methods I’ve made for helping the kids to stop crying or to to eat or take a nap, but that would be boring and this isn’t a self-help nanny blog. (I am writing one of those now, though.) I will say that my “if you take a nap, I’ll let you sleep wherever you want” method has resulted in some pretty funny pictures.

I haven’t just learned from the difficult parts, though. In fact, most of the time everything goes smoothly. Gabi and Josy are just the sweetest. Every day when I pick up Josy she pounces into my arms and holds her cheek really close to mine and doesn't say anything, like she's just so happy. When Gabi's class comes out he always runs out of the crowd and finds me and Josephine and, after asking if I have a Coca-cola (I only bring them on Wednesdays and Fridays), he kisses me on the hands while I push the stroller. It's so funny. The other day when I picked them up from school, Josy jumped out of my arms when she saw her brother and ran into him so fast for a hug that they both fell to the ground, still hugging. While we were walking home, I had to keep stopping so Gabi could lean down to hug Josy in the stroller because she kept begging him to, and so finally he just held her hand and walked next to the stroller. I almost died from the cuteness.

Also, they are starting to say things in English to me without me asking, which is encouraging. They say, “please” and “thank you” and “hello.” And the other day they were looking at this funny picture on a comic book and saying, “This one is daddy, this one is mommy, this one is Josy, this one is Gabi, and this one is Pelicia,” (Josy says my name with a "P," and it kinda sounds like "policia."), and that made me so happy, that they’re including me in their family already.