Mr. Mom

We moved into my parents house in January 2007. We settled in and got used to the new conditions. Our au pair, Fernanda, was scheduled to leave in May so shortly after we arrived in the house we began discussing child care options again. Living in such a small space with an extra person, and a stranger no less is equally as challenging as living with family. However, the money we saved going through the au pair program was too good to pass up. We decided to get another au pair.



The interview process for an au pair is pretty interesting. We get to view his/her application (yes, there are male au pairs) and if we want to, contact them directly. A host family can have an au pair candidate for up to 48 hours without anyone else having access to that candidate. You are required by program guidelines to have 2 phone conversations with your potential au pair before inviting them to match with your family and come stay with you for a year.



We started interviewing candidates and hoped to find a Christian young woman to watch our children. We found a young lady from Russia who was very dedicated to her relationship with Jesus. We spoke with her and emailed a few times. We invited her to become our au pair.



When Julia arrived, we quickly found out how tough this was going to be living in a small space with no real kitchen. We also started having discipline issues with the kids that really got to us. We started to discuss what our options were and if an au pair was the best idea at this time in our lives. If we decided to leave the au pair program within the first 10 weeks, we could get the majority of our agency fee back.



Problem was that our options were limited. We had already had problems with the 2 older boys getting sick at daycare and making either my husband or I miss many days of work. So trying to put three of them there was just asking to get fired. It didn't even cross my mind to look for someone locally to come to the house, so we started discussing having my husband stay home with the kids.



In hindsight, I have no idea what we were thinking. If our long term goal was to have me at home, taking my husband out of the workforce was not going to get us any further quickly. Regardless, we moved forward and made plans to live on one income... mine.



My husband was thrilled the day he put in his two week notice. Who wouldn't be? It was August and the weather was still great. The kids were very excited to have daddy at home too.