My life, narrated

So, we had our au pair with us for a month now.  She is great with children.  Girls love her.  She is now part of every family picture Rebekah draws.  I am wondering how they ever lived with out Alla. 

I must say that I do really like her.  She is very pleasant and helpful.  She manages to get girls to eat things that I was never able to. They have had soup for dinner every single day this past month.  In the past, it was practically impossible to get to eat soup.  They started drinking a lot more milk and eat vegetables.  Alla has managed to make herself an authority figure with girls and they actually listen to her. 

In the old apartment in Brooklyn, girls used to watch about 5 hours of TV everyday after school.  The old nanny was not able (or did not want to) limit the TV.  On occasion, she used to take them to the park, but as soon as they came back home, the TV was back on.

Now, girls get LESS THEN ONE HOUR of TV per day before bad after they are done with their showers.  They each get to pick and watch one show that we record on the DVR.  Each of these kids shows is about 22 minutes when recorded and commercials skipped.  So, they watch 44 minutes of TV a day max.  This is such a big deal to Adam and I as we are not home during the day, so we cannot control the TV watching and have to rely on Alla to limit it.

We have taken Alla to the Bronx Zoo (one of the largest zoos in the world).  Unbelievable, but she has never seen a real camel, giraffe, polar bear, gorilla, and a bunch of other animals before.  Before we went to the zoo, she was telling us about a zoon in Moscow that she’s been to that is so great and so nice and so wonderful.  Once at the Bronx Zoo, she was stunned.  She was like a kid in the candy store.  As we make family trips to the zoo about once every two month, she will have plenty of opportunity to explore.

Alla has been commenting to me how wonderful Adam is with girls.  Apparently, she is not used a father being so involved with kids.  This really gave me some pause.  I know that Adam is very involved, and I know that not every father (and some mothers too) as this involved, but she is absolutely in awe about it.  She said that she does not know a single man with children of any age or generation back in Ukraine who has been an involved parent.  Not that these men do not love their children, but that they do not play with them, talk to them, spend time with them.  This is so interesting.

For me, all of our family friends are very involved parents.  I suppose now that it is a process of self selection. We instinctively become friends with couples who have similar parenting views as us.  Therefore, they have involved fathers.   I did not realize this before.  I have a couple female friends who are just my friends.  We do not do family things with them.  And interestingly enough, their husbands are either not involved with kids or involved very little.  Now that I think about it, it would be weird to do a family event with them.  Because if we were to take kids to the park, for example, Adam would be on the jungle gym helping Hannah master the fireman’s pole, while my friends husband would be somewhere off to the side taking a business phone call. 

Another interesting observation.  Alla seems to have issues understanding the concept of unlimited internet.  She has access to one of our computers that we set us just for her and girls.  Girls play their games on it and Alla can do whatever she wants, brows internet, email, etc.  She was afraid to use it for first 2-3 weeks.  In Ukraine, they pay for the internet use either by minutes used or by the amount date uploaded/downloaded when you open a page or send an email.  So she thought that every time she uses the internet it is costing us extra money.  I literally took me 3 weeks to convince her that it is not the case.  Same thing is with the cell phone.  We added another phone to Adam’s family plan.  So now, Alla and Adam share 700 minutes per months.  She is afraid to use the phone because she thinks it is costing us extra when she makes a call.  She has used 17 minutes last month.  Same with the house phone which is part of our internet/TV/phone bundle and includes unlimited long distance (not international though).  Somehow, back in Ukraine, the cell phones charge separately for minutes and also based on the number you are calling.  She said that calling from cell to cell is not bad, but calling from cell to a regular phone is insanely expensive.  I am shocked.  Why would that make a difference? 

I am also surprised how little she calls her family overall.  The calling cards a so cheep to call Ukraine.  You can get cards for $5 that give you almost 2 hours of talk time.  I think she is still on her second card.  She says that long distance calls are so expensive that since she lived away from her family for 5 years now while in college, she barely talked to them and now is just used to it. 

Overall, so far it is mostly good and I am happy with our choice of au pairs considering that I was against Russian speaking au pair to begin with.