Our next au pair has just emailed to say that she can't make the start date of early July due to exams (which she previously thought would be over by July) and can't come til mid-July. Current au pair is due to leave end of June. I was expecting to have to cover 1 week maybe, but now it'll be at least 3
Next au pair is a bit of a gamble anyway because she is actually a Uni student from an EU country who is having the last year of her degree in the UK so wants to AP whilst doing her final year degree.
When she first contacted me she said her course would involve one day a week at Uni (30 min drive away) and study at home for the rest of the week, since then she has emailed to say - might be two days and then...might be 3!
At the moment I have some flexibility at work and get home in time for school run 2 days a week but we are having a shake-up at work and I may be asked to work fulltime in order to keep a job (redundancies are threatened).
So, Good points of next AP...
Has got over a year of previous AP experience and good/excellent references from 2 former host families.
Will be tied to this area for a year (although might still leave us for someone nearer the bright lights -we are in the sticks)
Has excellent english.
Worries :-
Have no idea what days/hours her Uni course will need until mid-Sept
Has been a bit flakey with start date
Is now asking a lot about how much vacation she can get and if she can go away for long weekends (her friends are planning trips)
Both my former/current APs have chatted to her by email and both raised concerns about how sociable she is and pointed out that we live in a village (is a train service to the town but then a dark walk to get to the house) and they both think (although our AP job is pretty minimal, about 15 hours a week) that she will have problems doing it and a full-time course.
So, Choices.
Keep going with this AP and find a temp AP for July only.
Keep going with this AP and put kids into after school club for July (problem with that is that my dd has a medical problem which I think they would not be happy about and there are no boys of ds's age in the club at the moment)
Look for other childcarer-type for July.
Umm....have a surprise baby and persuade dh that we need a proper live-in nanny from July (drawback with that one is that although I am pretty circular, I am also pretty sure that I'm not 6 months pregnant).
Oh I don't know - just want to get my thoughts together before I email her back!!