Well, it’s official. Grandma French is now a retired au pair – our Fourth.   Malina flew in Friday and today, joined Nicholas, Dexter and Katie in a trip to the zoo.   She got to experience first hand that Dexter will keep asking the same question over and over and over again, until you ask him that very same question.  Once he answers it (usually the answer you’ve been responding with), the question ceases to hold any interest to him.   Malina also experienced a few of Nicky’s melt downs as he got tired and wanted his nap.   Oh, and how if you turn on the Mickey Mouse Club House, they go into a trance and you can smear sun screen all over their faces.  I love that trick.

She endured a 2+ hour delay in her flight, waiting patiently in her airplane and subsisting on 48 grams of pretzels (1 packet, for the American readers).  Somebody really needs to tell Au Pairs that they won’t be able to buy food on airplanes without a credit card…  I picked her up that night, and brought her to her new/other home.  The next morning the jet lag took its toll on her, but she was up early enough that we could take the boys to the Children’s museum, and have some fun playing around, and only the boys got soaking wet.  She also brought them some very neat gifts – a sand-play set for making sand-cream cones, and a wooden box / color-pencil set.  Later we took her to Fred Meyer, saving the Costco experience until she’s saved up a little more cash.  I was very proud of her – she didn’t buy any clothes!  I might be jaded after Malin, though.  Later I saw the enormous heals she bought in New York, though, so she isn’t exactly a miser.  Katie tried them on, and promptly hit her head on the door frame and got a nose bleed from altitude sickness.

On Sunday we went over to Grandma Marilyn and Grandpa Grump Grump’s house for a fantastic Father’s day dinner (with banana cream pie!)   The process of getting the boys out the door for that one was a little bit on the painful side.  They threw one tantrum after another, and did everything they could to convince Malina that she’d made a terrible mistake.  I told her, in between screaming at the boys, that to the best of our knowledge they only act this badly for us, and they’re usually really good for everyone else.  I said that again in front of Marilyn, and she said, “yeah, that used to be true…”  Dang it, Marilyn, wait until we get a hold of her passport before spilling the sordid details!  We can’t handle another rematch right now.

Today Katie took her to the zoo (the boys got to go, too), and tomorrow I get to stay home and take them to the park and the petting farm.  All told, things are going really well.  She hasn’t threatened to leave yet, and the boys are being really good.  They aren’t telling her to go away, like they did the first few days with poor Annie.  We did a much better job preparing them this time, so they were looking forward to her arrival.  She’s already taking Katie’s side in argument, so this is definitely not going to be the year where my hair grow back.  Oh well.  You can’t win ‘em all.  Oh, and she brought chocolate, doesn’t eat sauerkraut, and as far as I can tell hasn’t brought any disgusting gutter-scrapings mascarading as food stuffs (like Laura with her Vegimite, Malin with her fried fish eggs, and Annie with her coffee).  Welcome, Malina!  We’re very happy you’re here.

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