Our new au pair, Celina, started a blog so she could share her year in the U.S. with her friends family and boyfriend back home. I was super excited and immediately asked if I could read it, you know, as a fellow blogger. As soon as the words left my mouth though, it occurred to me that she perhaps wouldn't want her host mother reading her blog. It's hard enough to live with your employer and perhaps she'd want some semblance of separation between us and her private life. And then I panicked when I wondered what she'd have to say about our family. I know we're not perfect, but to read about our imperfectness is another thing.
However, when Celina shared the web address with me, curiosity got the best of me and I immediately started to read. And I loved it! Of course I was relieved (and flattered) that she had nice things to say about her experience living with our family, but what I most appreciated was reading about her perspective on things, like what she finds cool and interesting and what she thinks of all her new experiences in our city and our country overall. I like hearing her side of the story of shared experiences, such as when I had her drive the minivan for the first time. I could tell she was nervous, but she did great. Not until I read her blog did I understand just how nervous she was! After I read her account of the differences in driving laws and customs between the U.S. and Germany and how she affectionately referred to our minivan as "the boat", I had a greater appreciation for her driving skills.
I also enjoy Celina's blog because it's in German and it's a fun way for me to practice the language. Although I'm quite rusty speaking German, I was surprised by how few words I needed to look up and how effortlessly I read through her posts. If you also know German or don't mind using an online translator, you can check out her blog as well: ceeelina.wix.com/12months
I hope Celina continues to blog even as her time in Minnesota gets busier and she has less time to write and even after the newness wears off and she doesn't think she has anything cool to write about anymore. I know her words are precious to everyone reading back home and that she will appreciate having written down her thoughts during this life-changing year.
Kiera, Matteo, Oliver and Soren
Monday, August 24, 2015
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Transitions
Transitions are a fact of life when you participate in the au pair program. The au pair contract is for one year (they can extend six to 12 months) and then it's time to say goodbye and welcome someone new.
Families hosting au pairs have different preferences for handling the transition from the outgoing au pair to the incoming au pair. Some purposefully schedule an overlap by contracting the new au pair to arrive a couple of days, or even a week or more, before the outgoing au pair departs. Others want no overlap at all, often because they prefer to train the new au pair themselves or want to do things differently with the next au pair, but sometimes because the outgoing au pair wasn't stellar or developed "senioritis" at the end of the year and they don't want the new au pair influenced by bad habits. Host parents with lots of vacation time or alternative childcare will sometimes choose take a week or two break between au pairs so they have more time to say goodbye to the outgoing au pair and prepare for the next arrival.
With a small house and no affordable full-time childcare alternatives, our transition plan was decided for us. We needed as little overlap as possible, without any gap in childcare. Even though we left it up to Marcel to decide when he would leave for his travel month, he had to be out of his room by the morning Celina arrived and sleep on the couch in the basement after that. In the end, we had a one-night overlap. I spent the morning of Celina's arrival furiously cleaning and running last-minute errands while Marcel took the kids to preschool and then to the Children's Museum. Then the entire family and Marcel sprinted to the airport where I'm now 0-2 in being on time for my incoming au pair's flight.
I give both Marcel and Celina a lot of credit for how maturely they handled the transition. Even though they only overlapped one night under the same roof, they've been a presence in each other's lives for longer. Marcel interviewed Celina, and after we matched, was a resource for her as she prepared to come to the U.S. Because Marcel was from the same country and spoke the same language as Celina, he took on more a mentor role than your average outgoing au pair. I was thankful for Marcel's maturity, because it's not unusual for outgoing au pairs to feel jealous of the attention the new au pair is getting or feel like he or she is being replaced. That was never the case with Marcel and not only could I talk openly with him about our plans for Celina's arrival, but he was a resource for me as he clued me in on what Celina must be feeling and what she would want in her room.
Celina was equally as gracious and was comfortable sharing the attention that would have been completely hers if her arrival had not coincided with Marcel's last night. Instead of the welcome dinner I had planned in Celina's honor, we ended up spending her first evening on the lake so Marcel could go waterskiing one last time. She listened with genuine interest to our stories of our year with Marcel and politely tolerated countless comments of Marcel liked doing this/eating that/going there and so on.
As well as our transition went, I don't think I'd want an overlap of more than a night because it was an incredibly emotional time. It was tiring doing all our "lasts" with Marcel while doing all our "firsts" with Celina. It was easy to want to spend time all our time with the au pair who had become a family member, but then I'd feel overwhelmed by all that I had to get done with Celina, who had less than 72 hours before her first day of work.
Two excellent au pairs are what got me through the transition. We had had a great year with Marcel and as sad as we were for him to leave our family, the wonderful memories remain. And then there's Celina, who I'm so excited is finally here and I look forward to getting to know her. No matter how many au pairs have come before, the new au pair deserves a warm welcome and the attention as if she were the first. With that, we proceed through the transition and focus on the joys of welcoming a new person into our family.
Families hosting au pairs have different preferences for handling the transition from the outgoing au pair to the incoming au pair. Some purposefully schedule an overlap by contracting the new au pair to arrive a couple of days, or even a week or more, before the outgoing au pair departs. Others want no overlap at all, often because they prefer to train the new au pair themselves or want to do things differently with the next au pair, but sometimes because the outgoing au pair wasn't stellar or developed "senioritis" at the end of the year and they don't want the new au pair influenced by bad habits. Host parents with lots of vacation time or alternative childcare will sometimes choose take a week or two break between au pairs so they have more time to say goodbye to the outgoing au pair and prepare for the next arrival.
With a small house and no affordable full-time childcare alternatives, our transition plan was decided for us. We needed as little overlap as possible, without any gap in childcare. Even though we left it up to Marcel to decide when he would leave for his travel month, he had to be out of his room by the morning Celina arrived and sleep on the couch in the basement after that. In the end, we had a one-night overlap. I spent the morning of Celina's arrival furiously cleaning and running last-minute errands while Marcel took the kids to preschool and then to the Children's Museum. Then the entire family and Marcel sprinted to the airport where I'm now 0-2 in being on time for my incoming au pair's flight.
I give both Marcel and Celina a lot of credit for how maturely they handled the transition. Even though they only overlapped one night under the same roof, they've been a presence in each other's lives for longer. Marcel interviewed Celina, and after we matched, was a resource for her as she prepared to come to the U.S. Because Marcel was from the same country and spoke the same language as Celina, he took on more a mentor role than your average outgoing au pair. I was thankful for Marcel's maturity, because it's not unusual for outgoing au pairs to feel jealous of the attention the new au pair is getting or feel like he or she is being replaced. That was never the case with Marcel and not only could I talk openly with him about our plans for Celina's arrival, but he was a resource for me as he clued me in on what Celina must be feeling and what she would want in her room.
Celina was equally as gracious and was comfortable sharing the attention that would have been completely hers if her arrival had not coincided with Marcel's last night. Instead of the welcome dinner I had planned in Celina's honor, we ended up spending her first evening on the lake so Marcel could go waterskiing one last time. She listened with genuine interest to our stories of our year with Marcel and politely tolerated countless comments of Marcel liked doing this/eating that/going there and so on.
As well as our transition went, I don't think I'd want an overlap of more than a night because it was an incredibly emotional time. It was tiring doing all our "lasts" with Marcel while doing all our "firsts" with Celina. It was easy to want to spend time all our time with the au pair who had become a family member, but then I'd feel overwhelmed by all that I had to get done with Celina, who had less than 72 hours before her first day of work.
Two excellent au pairs are what got me through the transition. We had had a great year with Marcel and as sad as we were for him to leave our family, the wonderful memories remain. And then there's Celina, who I'm so excited is finally here and I look forward to getting to know her. No matter how many au pairs have come before, the new au pair deserves a warm welcome and the attention as if she were the first. With that, we proceed through the transition and focus on the joys of welcoming a new person into our family.
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Back-to-School Shopping
Unbeknownst to the other, Chris and I were each obsessively checking the website of Oliver's school for the 2015-2016 school supply list. With our oldest starting kindergarten in the fall, we finally get to relive the excitement of a new school year with rites of passage, like back-to-school shopping. Once the lists were posted, we enlisted Grandma Nan to watch the younger kids so that Chris and I could take Oliver out to dinner and then go buy his school supplies together. He chose Punch Pizza and afterward we headed to Target.
Buying school supplies has changed a lot since I was a kid. In the days before big box stores, I remember shopping at Binkley's 5 & 10 or Rite Aid, where I hoped to score a cool Trapper Keeper. I remember picking out supplies that are still staples today - pencils, pens, folders and notebooks - but I have no idea if we were given a list.
Kids get lists these days. Your local big box store probably even has the list from your kid's school. Oliver's kindergarten supply list contained about $70 worth of supplies, and that was before we bought new shoes, clothes, a lunchbox and a book bag.
We also discovered the lists are very specific. We couldn't just buy any crayons or markers, they had to be Crayola brand. We had to buy a 9" x 12" dry-erase board, but Target only carried 8.5" x 11" or 10" x 14". We decided we'd look on Amazon at home and moved on. Next on the list were "two black, thin-tip, low-odor dry-erase markers", but the only ones we could find came in multi-color packages of four, with only one black marker in each. I relented on the Crayola brand even though the frugal part of me thought the store brand would sufficiently serve the same purpose, but I decided we weren't buying two packages of markers. Oliver would go off to kindergarten with two thin-tip, low-odor dry-erase markers, but one would be black and the other blue. A friend with older children had warned me that we might have to go to multiple stores because the last item on your list will be a yellow, three-ring, two-pocket folder and the only colors left would be green. With the exception of the dry-erase board, we found everything we needed.
Even so, Oliver summed up the school supply shopping experience when he exclaimed, "Why does this school have to be so complicated!"
Buying school supplies has changed a lot since I was a kid. In the days before big box stores, I remember shopping at Binkley's 5 & 10 or Rite Aid, where I hoped to score a cool Trapper Keeper. I remember picking out supplies that are still staples today - pencils, pens, folders and notebooks - but I have no idea if we were given a list.
Kids get lists these days. Your local big box store probably even has the list from your kid's school. Oliver's kindergarten supply list contained about $70 worth of supplies, and that was before we bought new shoes, clothes, a lunchbox and a book bag.
Even so, Oliver summed up the school supply shopping experience when he exclaimed, "Why does this school have to be so complicated!"
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Bis Bald Marcel!
Our family's last night with Marcel was exactly how it should
be, full of fun and laughter and so relaxed, as if the evening was never going to end. The storms that had cancelled Marcel's final water skiing outing the
night before finally cleared and we spent the evening on the water. We ate picnic dinners on the boat and Marcel got a last run on skis in. We anchored at a popular sandbar where shallow water stretches for dozens of feet out into the lake and the kids and Marcel splashed around in the water and tossed a football around with friends. With his skin tanned from a summer spent as much as possible outside and cracking jokes effortlessly with our family, Marcel resembled more an American than the German who constantly needed to look up words on the translator app on his phone when he first arrived.
Early the next morning, the whole family drove Marcel to the airport, waited as he and his girlfriend checked their bags and then hugged him one last time before they walked through security and onto the next adventure in their lives. I'm the really emotional type, yet hate to have people see me cry, so I couldn't bare to turn around for one final wave because I couldn't hold back my tears any longer.
I was sad Marcel's time with us had come to an end, but also so proud of him. He had stepped way out of his comfort zone to move away from home for the first time to a place he had never heard of. He had had to make new friends. He had swapped his lucrative sales job for a year of taking care of four young children. But to see him accomplish his goals was awesome. He could carry on a conversation with anyone and even make them laugh, while speaking a language he had once not considered himself good at when he took English in school. He traveled a lot and got to experience the United States in a way different than if he had come as a tourist. He will someday enter parenthood with much more experience than Chris or I ever had, notably, he knows how to change a diaper.
What was even more special was watching Marcel learn about himself over the course of a year. Like so many au pairs, he had chosen to "take a year off," as if he were putting his life back in Germany on pause. The reality is that living away from home in a new country and speaking another language will change a person. No longer able to rely on his soccer team for his social circle, he learned how to make friends and met people from all over the world. He had left behind his family in Germany, but he discovered he has family in Minnesota. He came here with clear plans of what he was going back to when he returned to his hometown only to decide he wanted to do something different with his life. He had changed, and it was clear before he left that the course of this future had changed as well.
Early the next morning, the whole family drove Marcel to the airport, waited as he and his girlfriend checked their bags and then hugged him one last time before they walked through security and onto the next adventure in their lives. I'm the really emotional type, yet hate to have people see me cry, so I couldn't bare to turn around for one final wave because I couldn't hold back my tears any longer.
I was sad Marcel's time with us had come to an end, but also so proud of him. He had stepped way out of his comfort zone to move away from home for the first time to a place he had never heard of. He had had to make new friends. He had swapped his lucrative sales job for a year of taking care of four young children. But to see him accomplish his goals was awesome. He could carry on a conversation with anyone and even make them laugh, while speaking a language he had once not considered himself good at when he took English in school. He traveled a lot and got to experience the United States in a way different than if he had come as a tourist. He will someday enter parenthood with much more experience than Chris or I ever had, notably, he knows how to change a diaper.
What was even more special was watching Marcel learn about himself over the course of a year. Like so many au pairs, he had chosen to "take a year off," as if he were putting his life back in Germany on pause. The reality is that living away from home in a new country and speaking another language will change a person. No longer able to rely on his soccer team for his social circle, he learned how to make friends and met people from all over the world. He had left behind his family in Germany, but he discovered he has family in Minnesota. He came here with clear plans of what he was going back to when he returned to his hometown only to decide he wanted to do something different with his life. He had changed, and it was clear before he left that the course of this future had changed as well.
Monday, August 10, 2015
Farewell Dinner
Marcel didn't want a big goodbye party and he definitely didn't want anyone to make a fuss over him. Instead he would have preferred to quietly slip away. Of course we couldn't actually let him do that. Even if he didn't need to officially mark the end of his year with a party of sorts, I needed that type of closure. So we did something we rarely do as a household of seven and that is go out to dinner. Chris' mom, brother and sister-in-law were able to join us too, which was special since they've been an integral part of Marcel's extended host family.
While we waited for our dinner to arrive, we surprised Marcel with a video a friend's son made for him. We all watched together in disbelief as Marcel's year flashed before our eyes. Chris for how much Marcel did in just one year, me for how we really were going to have to say goodbye to this guy who's been part of our family for the last year and, and Marcel for how quickly a year could go by.
Marcel even had a surprise for us. He had made a scrapbook of pictures of his year with the kids. In a nod to having taught me how to use Instagram, many of the captions were hashtags. My favorite was a recount of Marcel's first conversation with Chris during a Skype interview. I had conducted all the e-mail correspondence, set up Skype interviews and vetted candidates, and when I had finally found our au pair, I told Chris he couldn't just trust my judgement and needed to at least Skype with the guy I was asking to come live with us for a year and take care of our children. Even when I got Chris in front of the computer to talk to Marcel, he had exactly one question. I had forgotten about this brief exchange until I turned to the page in Marcel's scrapbook with pictures from the winter.
Marcel printed the text in the scrapbook in both German and English. He signed the last page with, Es ist kein tschuess fuer immer, es ist ein bis bald! It's not a goodbye, it's a see you soon!
While we waited for our dinner to arrive, we surprised Marcel with a video a friend's son made for him. We all watched together in disbelief as Marcel's year flashed before our eyes. Chris for how much Marcel did in just one year, me for how we really were going to have to say goodbye to this guy who's been part of our family for the last year and, and Marcel for how quickly a year could go by.
Marcel even had a surprise for us. He had made a scrapbook of pictures of his year with the kids. In a nod to having taught me how to use Instagram, many of the captions were hashtags. My favorite was a recount of Marcel's first conversation with Chris during a Skype interview. I had conducted all the e-mail correspondence, set up Skype interviews and vetted candidates, and when I had finally found our au pair, I told Chris he couldn't just trust my judgement and needed to at least Skype with the guy I was asking to come live with us for a year and take care of our children. Even when I got Chris in front of the computer to talk to Marcel, he had exactly one question. I had forgotten about this brief exchange until I turned to the page in Marcel's scrapbook with pictures from the winter.
Chris: Do you care about a cold winter?
Marcel: Of course not! We also have a cold winter. #IhadnoideaThe funny memories didn't end there. Chris had given me the book Reasons My Kid is Crying for Christmas and while I got a kick out of it, the book had clearly resonated with Marcel. Three whole pages of the scrapbook were dedicated to reasons my kids were crying! Although Marcel had consulted the moms at the playground to make sure I would think something like this was funny, he had nothing to worry about, because I laughed so hard I had tears streaming down my face.
Marcel printed the text in the scrapbook in both German and English. He signed the last page with, Es ist kein tschuess fuer immer, es ist ein bis bald! It's not a goodbye, it's a see you soon!
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