(just in case the title is too obscure, Laura is not dead, she’s in fine health, and we hope she lives a long time)

Our current Au Pair Extraordinare, Laura, will be returning to her native spider/shark/snake infested homeland in early January.  She has a friends wedding to get back for, and ambitious plans to enter a University program in Midwifery.  She’s become quite a fixture in our home, and it will be very sad to see her go.  On the plus side, she’s already planning a return visit, presumably to coincide with July 4th so she can blow some stuff up, and further teach the boys how to be irresponsible.  Perhaps she’ll be here for their next trip to the Emergency Room?  Her fondest desire is that the boys will grow up with a life long fear of Australian accents.

One of the odd phases is occurring now – with the knowledge that Laura is returning to Australia, we began making plans in August for finding a new Au Pair to take the baton from Laura in January.  It’s so strange, looking at a new Au Pair while Laura is still watching the boys, but there’s no way around it.  We finished our re-application in August, and began the matching process.  We were initially matched with another Australian.  She seemed like a really nice girl, and that she’d do a great job keeping up with the boys, but then we learned she was from near Brisbane, and Laura warned us that anybody from the Gold Coast could not be trusted, especially during Rugby season, so we had to move on (okay, that’s not the real reason, but Laura’s our Australian Au Pair, and that’s the way we wanted it to stay).  That same day we say the application for Malin Persson, from Anderslöv, Sweden.   We spent the next week and a half taking to her through e-mail and Skype, before asking her to join us in January.  And her being from Sweden explains the sudden hits on our blog from that area of the world:

Here’s a photo of her from her application (holding Anton, a boy she babysits, and who is just a few weeks younger than our boys):

Katie really like Malin from the start.  She was excited to see that Malin likes to cook (we’ve been spoiled by Laura’s taking over of our grill – we’ll miss that…), she love camping, and she has the same allergies as Katie!

Oddly enough, Malin had already planned a vacation to visit a friend in San Diego for 12 days in early October.  She asked if it would be okay to come up and visit us, so we had the unique opportunity to meet her in person and introduce her to the boys and our home.  She flew up Sunday morning, October 4th, and stayed for two days, before heading back to San Diego for the next week.  When she came to visit, she brought two wooden-block puzzles for the boys (Dexter was sleeping at the time, and had to open his later):

The first day we took her over to Katie’s parents for the typical (i.e., exquisite) Marilyn dinner.  Notice the lack of a table-cloth – the reign of terror has extended even to Grandpa and Grandma French’s home.  Laura came along as well, I’m sure watching Malin carefully to make sure that Malin would do a good enough job of taking care of her boys.  Fortunately, Laura has told us that we’re allowed to choose Malin, I think after hearing that Malin eats a spread even more disgusting than Vegemite – something about fish eggs…  <shudder>

Afterward, she and Laura were drafted by Carter and taken on a road trip to Lake Wenatchee.  I tried to warn them what they were in for, but no one listens to poor Joel (quite the Cassandra, really).  So off they went, not returning until somewhere around 9pm.

The next day I went off to work, but Malin got to play with the boys and see what a normal day’s routine is like.  We had tried to get Marte (a Norwegian Au Pair who lives 5 minutes away) to bring her twin wards up for a play date, but our boys had a cold.  Fortunately, Laura took Malin over to visit Marte instead, so Malin got to meet another Au Pair who will still be here when she arrives, which will hopefully make the transition a little easier than it was for Laura (we just didn’t know any other Au Pairs at the time, and the first Au Pair event was a hockey game – not exactly a sociable occasion for getting to know one another).

You may have seen a couple of comments by Malin, and her mother, Helen, and her Mother’s boyfriend, Peter.  Her mom and sister, Petra, are hoping to come and visit in the April/May time frame.  We’re excited for Malin to come and join us, even as we’re glad that Laura is here with us for a little while longer and will be here for Christmas with the boys.