Our Slovakian-French-Spanish nanny has arrived

On Saturday Greta and I picked up our new summer au pair (nanny) from the airport.  Her name is Radka.  She's originally from Slovakia (complete with living memory of Russian occupancy!) and has spent several years in each of France and Spain.  She speaks more languages than I have fingers.

For those who don't already know, Greta and I have been searching for a while now for an au pair (similar to a nanny, but often with less responsibility).  The offer is that we will provide room and board in exchange for 24 hours per week of child care for Max.  I like the idea because it relieves some of the pressure of constant child-care while simultaneously extracting some value from the half of our house that has gone unused since our tenants left.

First, we found an au pair who has agreed to live with us for the eight-month stretch from September to May.  (I'll write more about her when the time comes.)  Then we found Radka to pick up the slack from now until September.

It's only been four days but thus far I'm quite happy with Radka and with our arrangement.  It was a little overwhelming at first because a lot of time went into preparing for her arrival and helping her get oriented.  Today was officially her third day on the job.  She's taken care of Max for us for 4-6-hour stretches every day this week.  She even does dishes.

Now that she's had a chance to settle into our home she's been a godsend.  Already I feel like I'm slowly getting my life back under control.  So far, I've spent my new-found Max-free time on two very important tasks:

• research (yes, I'm foolish enough to work while on parental leave)
• destuffifying, sorting, and cleaning the house

Other than destuffifying I have several house projects that I plan to accomplish during future Radka-Max times, most notably the retaining wall in our front yard, which is currently nothing but two piles of gravel and an ugly wall of dirt on top of which stands my neighbour tapping his foot and waiting impatiently for me to resume construction.

Unfortunately, Greta has not yet benefited from Radka as much as I.  Greta's day is still filled with the usual tasks of occupying Max in the morning, working hard during the day, and cooking us food in the evening.  Today I cooked dinner to help relieve some of the pressure.  Tomorrow I'll go shop for food at the market instead of Greta.  Hopefully with enough ad hoc measures such as these we can make it so that the benefits of Radka are more equally distributed between us.

Alas, our digital camera is MIA so I cannot post a picture of Radka today.  Rest assured, we'll catch her on camera sooner or later.