We here at the BY universe know a universal truth: three babies to two adults is not a ratio that we enjoy.
As many people have told us, we've just transitioned our defense from man-to-man to zone coverage. And we know we often lose the game with this strategy.
So, we started off by trying to get Morgan (aka Mo) to move into our large gameroom and live gratis while helping out and working her regular job. Needless to say, this went over like a ton of bricks.
The next step was to figure out what kind of childcare we really thought we needed. The Pizz already goes to an awesome daycare that we (and she) love, but we weren't sure if we could continue living in fear that one of our children would be sent home sick (something that is remarkably common). These situations never happen on one of the DQ's days off -- it is almost always the double whammy of me being on call and the DQ working a long day.
Not to mention the night calls and evening shifts, the weekends and random vacation days at day care that make that situation less than ideal for three kids. And how in the world would one adult get two infants and a pre-verbal toddler to school at the same time? It boggles the mind.
So, we decided -- no nanny for us -- we need a live-in.
Luckily, the DQ's boss and his wife had 6 years of experiences with au pairs and convinced us that it was what we needed. We agreed. I mean, after getting over the idea that a girl half our age was going to raise our infants (something we didn't even have confidence in ourselves to do). What could be so hard about it?
Thus begun the painful process of screening foreign applicants for this position. During the first round, we looked at over 50 applications, only to think that 4 were appropriate. And then it turned out that most of the girls themselves didn't really relish the idea of taking on two small infants (after all, they get paid the same for one). The DQ tried to pull out all the stops, enticing them with the proximity to the beach and their own studio-like apartment downstairs.
We did eventually have a taker, a lovely girl from Brazil who was born in Japan. Ironically, although this household already speaks 4 languages, Japanese and Portuguese were not any of them, so we were gearing up for a culturally diverse a situation as possible.
Unfortunately, when our candidate went to apply for her visa, she was denied! We discovered this after getting the twizzles home, and it immediately sent us into a tizzy. Oh sh&$! What are we going to do? It took 4 months and 50+ applications to find this one!
So, the DQ went into find-an-au-pair overdrive. After all, it was her sanity at stake. And so, after a harrowing weekend of application review and middle-of-the-night interviews with girls in China, Australia, and South Africa, we found one -- and honestly with much less fuss than the first time around.
So, at this moment we have been informed that she is arriving next Monday... Hooray! We are super-excited to have some help around the house, and even better that she has 19-year-old energy. We could use a little bit of that right now....
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