Au Pair of the Year Nominee:

Cindy - Belgium

Our Most Perfect Au Pair

We are the most lucky family this year!   Cindy, our au pair from Belgium , arrived in mid-November and things have been great since.   She is the epitome of what an au pair ought to be.   She loves the children, helps around the house and adds a wonderful memory to our family vacations.   Her love from the children is her greatest reward, so she is continually being rewarded, which makes her a genuinely happy person.  

Cindy is our third au pair and we are loving her!   Her best attribute is her wonderful upbeat personality.   This really makes a difference in day to day living.   The mood of the people in the house affects every aspect of living.   When the au pair is having a bad day, the children have a rough day.   And vice versa, when the au pair is happy and playful, the children thrive!   Our children are thriving!

We are a very busy, active family (and we know we are hard to keep up with).   We have four children, 10 years, 3.5 years, 2 years and 4 months.   We work and play a lot and are always on the go.   We have taken her to Las Vegas where she shared a bed with two of our children without a single complaint of missed sleep, only gratitude for the experience.   We just returned from a ski trip to Mammoth where she learned to ski.   She was so happy for any time we could give her on the slopes and thankful for us teaching her.

Christmas was a difficult time for her.   Christmas is her family's most important holiday and it was her first time away from them.   She spent Christmas Eve on MSN talking live with her family while they celebrated since we celebrate on Christmas day.   We had a "Belgian" Christmas exchanging our gifts with her on Christmas Eve, then the next day showed her our tradition.   Even though she was missing her family, she tried not to show the children that she was sad or bring them down.   We had a wonderful holiday and she loved our Christmas day.  

The nicest part is that she is not materially inclined.   She has not come to live a "rich" life.   At Christmas we gave her some more expensive gifts, but her favorite was a certificate making her the god-mother for our newest infant.   She had tears of joy over this gift which made us sure of her appointment.

Day to day, she is so great.   Keeping up with the active little children is hard enough, but she also helps out around the house cooking and cleaning.   She has learned to cook the vegetables we make for the children despite her preference against them.   She is open to new experiences and is learning to potty train our 2 year old with good success.   I have come home to work to find the house cleaner than I left it which is so pleasing!   In her free time, she incorporates herself into the family and helps out like a big sister or family member, unloading the car after a trip, eating dinner with the family, etc.   We have to be very conscientious not to allow her to overwork herself and make sure she has her free time to recover.  

Cindy has been such a blessing to our family and we can't be thankful enough!   She has started teaching us French and we plan to take the family to visit her in Belgium to see where she is from.   What an incredible exchange this year has been and will be for our family!   This is what an au pair year is supposed to be and we hope this will be THE BEST YEAR EVER for our family and for Cindy!!