Male Au Pairs

Our au pair, Marcel, gets a lot of strange looks and questions when he's out with our four kids.  Strangers recognize that he's not the kids' father, because that would be a lot of children for a guy only in his early 20s.  But if he's not their dad, then they can come up with no other explanation for why he would have four children in his care.  Given how close in age my kids are, I'm often asked whether I'm running a daycare.  Marcel thought it was odd that no one has ever asked him this and that's when I explained that the reason is probably because so few people think of men as caregivers.  The male caregiver concept is literally not among the array of possibilities in strangers' minds. 

Having a male au pair solicits a lot of intrigue and questions.  Male au pairs are admittedly in the minority, with only one in ten au pairs through our agency being men. Not many people even know what an au pair is, let alone know one who happens to be a guy, so I get that it's a new concept for people. When others learn that we have an au pair, one of their first questions is to ask where she is from and I correct them that the she is actually a he.  Some admit they didn't realize that men are allowed to be au pairs, some think it's really awesome and others, in an attempt to rationalize why anyone would choose a male au pairs, say they're probably a good option if you have only boys.  And as curious as everyone is about having a male au pair, many end the conversation with a declaration they could still never have a male au pair. 

Sadly male au pairs receive not only a lot of unwanted attention, but they face A LOT of bias.  People think they're all gay, or if not, then they must be cold and not capable of being affectionate with kids.  Even that being affectionate part raises suspicions because in my conversations with other parents, worries about pedophiles comes up every single time. 

This worry comes from parents whose female au pairs have crashed the family car with their children in it, driven without their children in car seats, dated sketchy men, had those sketchy men around their children without the host parents' knowledge, lost their temper with their children and hit them. Of course those are the horror stories.  But my host family community is full of stories of au pairs who clearly do not like children or have no idea what to do with them, who spend the majority of their time on their phones, while ignoring the children, or nap on the job or who have left their young charges unattended in an unfenced-in backyard.  Women who can't cook, who are slobs, who lack common sense, who arrive back to their host family's house falling down drunk. Women with eating disorders or insecurities who have body image issues they are displaying in front of their host children.  The host parents complain to other host parents, and we all cry "Rematch!" and yet some host parents still give second, third or infinity chances. 

As awful as the thought of sexual abuse is, what's even more awful is when you think about all the other ways your children can be neglected, abused, ignored or have their lives put in danger.  I know that sexual abuse is most likely perpetrated by someone known to your children, but I also know it's still rare.  It's all this other stuff I worry about, the exact things host parents who have said they could never have a male au pair because they don't trust a person with a penis around their children, (yup, one host mom told me that) have reported their female au pairs having done to their children. 

Whoever you decide to have watch your children, there's so much trust you put in them.  You trust they'll keep them safe by properly buckling them into their car seats, holding their hands when they cross the street, never taking their eyes off them when swimming, not letting people you've never met into your house, not hanging out with people you wouldn't want around your children and the list goes on.  Thankfully, I've never had once iota of concern about my children's safety in Marcel's care.  

I don't know if I ever explicitly told Marcel that for anyone he meets, he becomes the poster child for all male au pairs, but he's probably figured it out given how often I tell him how often people ask me what it's like to have a male au pair.  He probably doesn't realize how much I sing his praises from the rooftops.  I brag about how he active he is with the kids and how he gets four kids packed up and picnic lunches made to spend the day outside somewhere.  In the winter when others were complaining their au pairs were spending too much time at home cooped up in the house, Marcel got my kids out of the house every single day, whether it was just to drive down the street to tot time at the local rec center or to really spend time outside with them by taking them sledding.  I talk about how calm and flexible he is.  No matter how often our plans change at the last minute, he cheerfully changes course.  I've never heard Marcel yell or lose his temper with my children, despite how I as the parent have not modeled the behavior I expect out of him.  He can be affectionate and silly with the kids, but will also discipline the kids according to how we taught him. 

My praises are preaching to the choir though.  So often friends report back to the positive encounters they had with Marcel, like how they saw him and the kids at the park and that he was playing with the kids the entire time.  These stories make my heart swell.

Marcel has been excellent as a childcare provider, but when you have an au pair, that's only half the equation.  Because au pairs live with you, they need to be good roommates as well.  I also sing Marcel's praises as an au pair with zero drama.  I attribute that to his personality rather than his sex, but either way, we have never heard a single complaint from him about how he doesn't like this or that or how another au pair has a better situation.  We have not heard one peep about a romantic relationship gone bad or a tiff with a friend.  He greets us with a cheerful good morning and makes a point of saying goodbye to us before he heads out the door to meet friends.  He's always been respectful of our home and our car and our rules. 

As we went through the matching process again this spring, I secretly hoped we would match with another guy.  Since our one and only au pair has been a guy, that's all I know.  I'm honestly just a creature of habit.  But we go into the matching process looking for the best match - male or female - and this time around, that person happens to be a woman. We are incredibly excited about welcoming our next au pair, but will always be thankful to Marcel who made our first au pair experience a great one, and who might possibly have changed the hearts of countless parents he met this year. 

Shared List Stats

A China adoption advocacy blog, Red Thread Advocates, recently wrote a blog post about the make-up of the Shared List.  The CCCWA maintains what is called a "shared list" of children available for adoption who have not been matched through orphanage partnerships, from an agency's designated list (made up of files agencies pull from the Shared List) or on release night when all the files newly prepared are released to the Shared List.  Under all three scenarios, young minor needs children (especially girls) are matched almost instantly.  Over 2,000 children at any one time wait on the list to be chosen. Many wait years to be matched and some turn 14 and age out.  Since it's become a personal mission of mine to change the public perception that the only children available for adoption from China are girls, I want to mention that almost three-fourths of the children on the Shared List are boys. 

Six-Month Post-Adoption Report

What a difference a couple of months makes.  Back in February when our social worker visited us to complete our one-month post-adoption report, we were still adjusting to our new normal, just embarking on a never-ending series of doctors appointments and not sleeping much thanks to a someone who preferred sharing our bed over sleeping on his own.  And yet we were doing so well that I assumed that things couldn't get any better. 

Fast forward a couple of months and so much has changed.  I've gone back to work, Kiera started preschool, Matteo had his palate repair and got cool new glasses, both kids stopped napping, everyone goes to bed in their own beds, and things are going even better.  Our normal doesn't feel new anymore, it just feels, well, normal.

Our social worker asked if we had any questions for her, but we really didn't.  It's not that everything is perfect - I don't feel like we're 100% there with attachment, both kids need speech therapy and we won't know for another couple of months whether Matteo needs a follow-up surgery on his palate.  But we feel like we have a plan in place and are managing these issues just fine.

The only question I had was whether the agency ever hears back from the CCCWA regarding the post-adoption reports the social workers submit.  Even though our social worker dutifully schedules the post-adoption visits, writes thorough reports and submits them on time, she never hears anything once she submits the reports.  I like to think of the required post-adoption reports as a way of relaying information on the well-being of our children to all the people who cared for them before we met them, but I know the reality is that most likely no one but CCCWA officials has access to the reports.  For all I know, they're never even read and collect dust on a shelf.  Nonetheless I hope someone is reading all these reports and is comforted knowing that for China's children scattered across the world, they are so loved and well-cared by their new families. 

Adoption Video

A fellow adoptive mom leaves for China TOMORROW and still found the time to put the finishing touches on the video she made of our journey to Kiera and Matteo.  I'm thrilled to be able to share our story in pictures since I was unable to post pictures of our trip to my blog while in China.  The video is super long - 37 minutes - but when I took 1,400 pictures in China alone, it was difficult to whittle down the photos of the kids' early lives, our trip and then their first five months home. 

Our Journey to Kiera and Matteo

The video starts with the first pictures we ever saw or Kiera and Matteo, their "referral" pictures, and then shows pictures from earlier in their life.  We actually got very few updates prior to meeting Kiera and Matteo, and most of the pictures we received after they returned home.

We left for China on January 21, 2015.  The beginning of our trip included a couple of sightseeing days in Beijing and a chance to explore our children's birth country.  Even if you haven't been to Beijing, you might recognize the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and of course the Great Wall. 

From Beijing we flew south to Hefei the capital of Anhui province.  We met Matteo on Monday, January 26, 2015 and finalized his adoption the following morning.  We stayed the week in Hefei and had the opportunity to visit his foster family in Fuyang and the Anhui Healing Home, where Matteo stayed before and after his cleft lip surgery.  The home is operated by the organization Love Without Boundaries. 

At the end of the week we flew with Matteo to Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong, Kiera's birth province.  Just like with Matteo, Kiera was driven in from her birth city and we met her in a civil affairs office on Monday, February 2, 2015 and finalized her adoption the following day.  We spent a week and a half in Guangzhou, where we attended to official adoption business and did some sightseeing.  We also traveled twice to Shenzhen to visit Kiera's foster family, orphanage and the hospital where she was born.

All adoptions are finalized by the American government in Guangzhou, so we were able to stay put for the final steps of the adoption process.  This included our appointment at the U.S. consulate.  Two days after our appointment, we flew out of Hong Kong back to the United States.  Kiera and Matteo became U.S. citizens when we landed in Seattle and forever part of our family when we landed in Minnesota on February 12, 2015.  

Adoption stories never end at the airport and so final pictures show their first five months home. 

Family Trip, Not a Vacation

I stumbled across a link to the blog post "A Vacation or Trip: A Helpful Guide for Parents" on another blog I read that talks about the au pair program.  The commenter thought the post would be helpful for those of us host families taking au pairs on vacation with us.  How timely given that we'll be traveling with our new au pair first to the North Shore for a wedding and then to North Dakota for an all-American family vacation.

Even though I laughed out loud at the post, I should probably have cried, because you guessed it, according to the guide, our family vacation in August is definitely a trip.  We will be four young children, a new au pair we first met two weeks prior and two stressed out parents packed in a minivan for what Google Maps assures me is only an eight-hour-and-nine-minute drive, one way.  Even before we set out on our trip, I will have packed for at least four other people before I have a chance to pack for myself, cooked and frozen hotdishes so I have less to cook on my "vacation" (who are we kidding, even on vacation I will be responsible for making sure seven people are fed three square meals a day), and gotten everything ready for Oliver's first day of kindergarten, which occurs two days after we get home from said trip.

So why do we do this to ourselves?  The reality is we don't have much choice at this stage in our lives.  Chris and I do like to travel, but with four young children, the only way we can make a trip happen is if we bring them with us on a kid-friendly trip.  Teddy Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota may sound like an odd vacation destination for those outside the Upper Midwest, but it was a strategic pick.  It's somewhere at least one of us hasn't been (Chris), is less than a day's drive (so no extra expense and hassle of unloading four children into a hotel room for the night), we could rent a place with multiple bedrooms and a kitchen (since eating out with a family of seven is expensive) and the national park is beautiful and appeals to all ages.  We won't be able to do extensive hiking (or maybe even minimal hiking) with young children and we'll probably end up at the local pool on at least one occasion because that will carry more appeal to our children than the petrified forest a nature-loving friend raved about, but such is life for us now.

My hope is that despite how much not a vacation this trip will be for Chris and me, that our kids will grow up to love travel and our new au pair will appreciate seeing a part of the United States she never would have otherwise seen.  And of course, after we've put in our time in a minivan criss-crossing the country on our own little version of National Lampoon's Vacation, Chris and I still hope we will take a real vacation. 

Second Shift

There are days I leave work not relieved my work day is over.  Because it technically isn't.  Once I leave my office, I'm preparing to start my second shift at home.  As any parent knows, work is never really over. 

I love my family, but being a parent is hard work.  Relentless hard work.  I'm tired a lot of the time because there are never enough hours in the day to do everything I need to do, let alone what I want to do.  My second shift at home is faster-paced than any day at the office.  I feel the pressure to simultaneously greet my children and hear about their day, make dinner, clean up the day's mess so we can eat at a clean dining room table, set the table and comfort my children, who inevitably start squabbling while I'm trying to make dinner. And that's all before dinner!

The rare nights that dinner is peaceful, meaning the kids have no complaints about what's for dinner and happily eat it, is really just like being in the eye of a hurricane.  It's a brief respite from the craziness where I maybe sit in my chair for ten minutes and actually eat.  Often well before I've eaten my last bite of dinner, the kids are finished and I'm directing them to clear their plates and clean-up begins.  There are plates to scrape, a dishwasher to load (thank goodness for this modern invention!), pots and pans to scrub, a filthy dining room table and chairs to wipe down, a floor to sweep and trash to take out.

The third hurdle of the evening is bedtime.  Four children who need to change into their pajamas, go to the bathroom and brush their teeth. As we settle into my bed to read four bedtime stories, I'm assessing their likeliness of falling asleep quickly and how many trips back into their rooms I'll need to make to ask them to settle down or refill a water bottle or give another hug.  That's because post-kid-bedtime and pre-my-bedtime is my sacred time to finish cleaning up and maybe have some time to myself to decompress.

This is what my second shift is like night after night.  

The hardest part for me as a parent is to not stress out over the chaos of being pulled in too many directions. It's hard to ignore the guilt for what I don't have time to do or what I feel I should be doing when all I want to do is relax.  I know this is just a phase when my kids are so little and need me to do so much for them and that one day, sooner than I can possibly imagine at this point in my life, the house will be quiet and there will be no more second shift.

Cleft Palate Repair Follow-Up

If you had asked me a month ago how Matteo has been doing since his cleft palate repair in March, I would have told you we were expecting another surgery in the fall.  While much of his palate did heal like the doctor said it would, even after it looked like it was falling apart a week after surgery, his palate still has a sizable hole and any time he sneezed, lots of food shot out of his nose.  Then one day I realized I couldn't remember the last time I had wiped his nose and I began to have a glimmer of hope that another surgery wasn't necessarily a given. 

Last week Matteo had an appointment with the craniofacial surgeon and a craniofacial speech language pathologist at Gillette's.  The pathologist sat on the floor of her office and using toys, books, pictures and games, enticed Matteo through a series of exercises to evaluate what sounds he can and can't make.  He was a model patient in that he was eager to please and very curious.  He loved the attention and had no idea he was at therapy. 

The surgeon believed that the hole I could see in the hard palate is a fistula, which means it goes through both the oral and nasal palates, because the pathologist had observed moderate hypernasality in Matteo when he talked.  Ideally there would be no fistula, but the presentation of one isn't necessarily a problem if nothing is coming out of a child's nose and a child can speak clearly.  The fact that we have seen a significant decrease in anything coming of Matteo's nose is a very promising sign.  Of course we don't know yet how his speech will progress until we've given speech therapy some time.  Thus the surgeon wants Matteo to continue speech therapy for six months and reassess his degree of hypernasality.  If there isn't enough improvement, he will probably need the fistula repaired this winter. 

Starting Speech Therapy

This week starts speech therapy for both Kiera and Matteo.  I'm relieved they have finally been evaluated and recommended for therapy because I know they need the extra support.  Too many people have made excuses for them because "they're still learning the language." I think everyone who has interacted with my kids has really low expectations because they can't wrap their minds around these children moving around the world to a new family, language and culture.  And then they see two happy, well-adjusted kids and probably think, what more could I want from them?  

We underestimate being able to communicate, especially in young children who've gotten by so far with a lot of pointing and smiles.  Whether you're deaf and communicate with sign language or are hearing and communicate with spoken language, having the ability to communicate with other human beings impacts our happiness, our friendships and our learning.

While I never lost hope that Kiera and Matteo would experience an English-language explosion, my gut told me ignoring the problem wasn't going to help.  I know that if my children were speaking Chinese, they'd have the ability to learn English, and that they should be able to pick up words in a new language quickly, even if it takes up to two years to catch up to native-speakers.  The reality is that my children spoke no more than five words in Chinese when an almost-three-year-old like Kiera should have been jabbering away.  Some children leave China already speaking a couple words in English, whereas as at five months home, my children don't use more than five words in English to communicate.  We have recently heard them imitate words or randomly say a word, but not in context to communicate a need or want.  

For awhile I tried to stay patient.  Matteo needed surgery on his palate and wasn't physically able to say most sounds without a repaired palate.  Both children were diagnosed with conductive hearing loss, which we addressed through surgery and they passed their repeat audiology test one month later.  It was in the weeks following their surgeries that I really had hope that just any day now their language would come together, but it never did.  

I contacted Help Me Grow, a state-funded program that provides free therapy services for children from birth to age five.  Matteo easily qualified, and starts his first session this week, but since Kiera is over age three, it's harder to qualify for services and we'll need to wait until the fall to have her reevaluated. 

I also asked a fellow China adoptive mom in my area where her boys with cleft lip and palate go for speech therapy, and in addition to working with Help Me Grow, she recommended doubling up on therapy by also working with Gillette Children's Hospital, where Matteo had his palate surgery.  Kiera started her first session this week and we're in the process of scheduling Matteo with a therapist who works specifically with kids with cleft lip and palate.  

Therapists with both programs cautioned me that they're not miracle workers and that speech therapy takes commitment and time.  This is especially true for Matteo since kids with cleft lip and palate typically need years of speech therapy.  But we're now doing something proactive to support their speech development and that makes me feel better than if we were doing nothing at all. 

And that my children are able to attend their recommended appointments I owe all to my mother-in-law, Nan.  Each child will have one to two appointments through Help Me Grow and Gillette's each week, which means there could be some weeks in the fall when we have a total of eight therapy appointments scheduled.  Without Nan's offer to take them, the reality for our two-working-parent household is that we would not be able to pull off that level of therapy.  And that's even though I work ten minutes from home and five minutes from the hospital and have an incredibly flexible workplace.  

In addition to bringing Kiera and Matteo to their appointments, my mother-in-law takes incredible notes.  The evening of Kiera's first appointment, Nan e-mailed Chris, me and our au pair a summary of the session, the ten words in sign language we need to learn and practice with Kiera and links to a website to learn the signs.  (Sign language foster language development by giving non-verbal children a way to communicate.)  Chris and I may not have been able to make the appointment, but Nan made sure we didn't miss a thing.  

Now let's see if we can teach Kiera one more sign before her next appointment. 

Summer in Minnesota

With summer here, we don't see much of our au pair Marcel anymore.  He's got a close group of friends, a new girlfriend, and just a few weeks left.  I chat with him for a few minutes in the morning as I hand the kids off to him for the day and Chris sees him at the end of the day, but by the time I get home, Marcel is already on his way out the door to the gym or to hang out with friends at the lake. We're left to communicate in the best way one can with a 23-year-old and that's through texting. I'll occasionally check in and let him know where we are or when we're going to be home and he respectfully does the same. 

One weekend with particularly gorgeous weather, we didn't see him between the end of his shift on Friday afternoon and until Monday morning when I headed out the door to work.  We had heard him, but he was like a ship passing in the night.  We had just settled into bed one of those nights when we heard our front door open and then the downstairs shower go on, and we'd know he was home, but for just long enough to clean up and head out again for the night. The next morning there was  no sign of him and we assumed he had slept at a friend's house.

I texted him later in the day to check whether he would be home for dinner.  He wouldn't, he replied.  He and his friends were still at the lake, enjoying the sunshine.  Then he texted again.  "To be honest, I love Minnesota.  I have never enjoyed summer so much. :)"

That text made me so proud of my state.  Not surprisingly, Marcel had never heard of Minnesota when we first interviewed him.  A lot of au pairs hold out for California, New York or maybe Florida while interviewing.  Or at least a state they've heard of.  But Marcel had taken the advice that the family is better than location to heart, even if he admitted to us later that he kept having to repeat "family over location" to himself while interviewing with us.  He kept an open mind though and agreed to make Minnesota his home for a year.

I am thrilled Marcel has discovered what makes this state tick and appreciates Minnesota for what it is.  Yes, we have cold winters, but that just means you'll appreciate those hot summers that much more.  Like the rest of the population, he spends as much time as he can outside, with his favorite location being anywhere lakeside.  He takes every opportunity he has to go water skiing and has used our grill to make an alfresco dinner more often than we have.  Although Minnesota isn't a hot tourist destination or doesn't have the California or New York cool factor, Marcel understands why people like to live here and why Chris and I are happy to raise our children here. 

4th of July Weekend

With Chris up at the cabin for his brother's bachelor party, and our au pair, Marcel, away camping, the kids and I had a low-key Fourth of July weekend.  We had just enough on our calendars to not make a three-day weekend alone with the kids feel daunting, but also plenty of downtime to enjoy the lazy days of summer.

I was most excited about taking Kiera and Matteo strawberry-picking for the first time.  I wanted them to experience what is possibly my favorite part of summer - that first taste of a juicy Minnesotan-grown, freshly-picked strawberry warmed by the sun.

Strawberry-picking has become my Fourth of July tradition to do with my children. I love being able to set them loose in a field of strawberries and let them pick and eat as many berries as their hearts desire.  Just like with Oliver and Soren, it took some time for Kiera and Matteo to get the hang of picking berries, but eventually I didn't need to help them look under the leaves for the berries or instruct them to only pick the red ones.  They quietly and happily searched for berries to pick and munched as they went.

Thankfully the weather was not hot, so even though we were out in the sun all morning with no shade, it was still pleasant.  And that means we weren't spent before the afternoon rolled around, because our neighbors were hosting one of their epic barbecues later in the afternoon.

You may think that "epic" is an overkill description for a barbecue, but when they host, you're guaranteed excellent food served with a side of shenanigans.  They're reasonably quiet and unassuming people, but then they do things like rent a dunk tank for a barbecue.  Clearly these Yooper transplants know how to have a good time. 

When Chris heard about the dunk tank, he told the kids that they could try to dunk me.  Somehow this rumor that I would willingly sit on a spring-loaded board above a tank of cold water spread among party guests and I wondered how long I could hold off everyone's "encouragement" to be the next volunteer.  To my surprise, Oliver wanted to give the dunk tank a try.

My once shy and timid Oliver loved it!  This is just one of many recent example of how adventurous he has gotten in the last year.

Some of the other kids were curious enough about the dunk tank to climb in it, but no one else actually wanted to be dunked, so the tank turned into a glorified kiddie pool until the adults had had enough to drink to the point where they also thought the dunk tank was a good idea.

My neighbor is very "thorough".  Why light sparklers with a match when you have a propane torch?

Eventually it got way too late for my four to be still awake and they were so disappointed they had to leave before the S'mores (but, for the record, well after they'd gotten plenty of other dessert). Soren kept screaming at me, "I'M NOT TIRED!!!," which as any parent knows, means he was really tired.  I've never seen him glare so hard at me when I put him to bed. I went next door to get Oliver and found neighbor gathering firewood for the bonfire and Oliver rallying everyone with, "Let's get this fire started!"  Again, my once shy little boy is coming out of his shell!

Although the barbecue went into the wee hours of the morning, I had to call it a night once the kids were in bed. I needed my energy to finish the weekend strong.

My mother-in-law came the following morning to take the kids to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.  She even packed lunches for the kids so when she showed up, all I had to do was hand her the keys to our minivan and off she went.  While the kids the very non-traditional garden exhibit of giant Lego sculptures, I had hours to myself alone in my own house.  That time went by way too quickly.



We didn't actually take part in any traditional 4th of July activities that day, like a barbecue or fireworks.  The sun doesn't even set until 9:00 p.m. at this time of year and there's no way the kids could stay awake that late. Plus the noise would terrify them.  Long after the kids had fallen asleep, I lay in my bed and could see fireworks from my window, a window that didn't exist this time last year since our renovation had yet to begin.  I watched the last of the fireworks explode above the trees and finally fell asleep. 

On Sunday morning we packed up and went to the Tamarack Nature Center, where we spent hours digging in the sand and water at the natural play area.  I love this place as much as the kids to.  It's full of sand to dig in, water to fill your pails with and boulders to climb on.  Presumably it would have been busier if it weren't a holiday weekend, because we mostly had the place to ourselves.

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 I wish we could have stayed longer, but we had only packed a picnic lunch and not a picnic dinner. Plus we had to get home for the women's World Cup Final!

My sister-in-law came over and made us a yummy Mexican dinner.  I rushed through baths while she started dinner.  I sent the kids down to the basement while Danielle and I cleaned up.  In a 90-minute game, chances of something happening the first few minutes is not likely, especially in a game of this importance where teams will probably start off playing conservatively.  I came downstairs at minute nine and anyone who follows soccer will know that I had missed the beginning of World Cup history.

Thankfully Carli put a third ball in the net so that I could see at least one of her goals live.

I had a wonderful weekend, but my gosh, by the time Monday morning rolled around, I was exhausted!