10 Sep A week in my life as an Au Pair

Hi everyone,

Thank you for stopping by and taking your time to read this post. I thought you might be interested in how a week in my life as an Au Pair looks like. Of course it’s now my third week here in Ireland, so many things could still change and definitly will, but so far I have developed some kind of routine and thought it could probably be interesting for some of you, to get a little insight.

Starting the day off, I wake up at 6:45 in the morning. Sometimes I wake up earlier, because the kids seem to be especially loving the early hours of the day. Probably they just want to make the best of their day, by waking up as early as possible, so they don’t miss any of the exciting things the day might bring.

When I get down in the kitchen I normally start by making myself a cup of tea and preparing their little lunch-boxes, which by the way have to contain certain things (as one portion of fruit/veggies) and can’t contain others (like sugary stuff).

After breakfast the girls have to get into their schooluniforms, which look absolutly adorable on them, but Lottie always complains about it not being comfy enough for her taste, and I can’t blame her, because I can’t imagine a shirt buttoned to the top with a tie being very pleasant.

When I arrive in the kitchen in the morning with a special hair-style, I can be sure, that the girls will want to have the same one. So before I’ll drop them off at their school, which is about a 10 minutes walk away from our house, it’s hair styling time. 

When I come back home, I’ll do some light house work. I just do the dishes and help with some part of the laundry. This doesn’t take me very long, so I have some time for myself. Last week I did Yoga and went for a run twice, because the weather was so nice in the morning that I just had to get out of the house for a bit. I absolutely enjoy having this kind of routine a lot. Obviously working with children can be tiring, but you don’t get to move your body a lot, so I believe, doing a little bit everyday to keep fit, is very important, to feel good and be your best self.  Speaking of staying fit, my host mum and dad are very good cooks, and I really enjoy eating, so some kind of workout is necessery, if you know what I mean.

At 12:00 I pick up Lottie and we either head straight beack home to play or have a little treat after school. Mostly it’s a baby cino, which is warm frothed milk with marshmallows on top – but as my host dad always says “you can only have a treat, if you are good girls”.

After a little lunch at home and picking up Connie, we play something together or do some arts and crafts. This week I improvised with doing a paper unicorn and let me tell you the girls loved it so much, that we now have a whole army of unicorns with glittery horns and fluffy bangs on the windowsill in the kitchen.

In the evening it’s time for a warm dinner. I really was looking forward to cooking for the girls and if they were interested to maybe integrate them a little in the cooking-process. But who would have thought that they would enjoy helping as much as they do. As I showed them how to do mini-Pizzas, they happily helped me knead the dough and decorated their Pizzas themselves. They loved it so much, that we had to have mini-Pizzas twice last week.

When dinner is finished we head upstairs to watch a bit of telly, which is when my host parents come home most of the time.

My evening programme currently consists of watching a series on my computer, whilst painting or drawing something, which I then use to decorate my room with. Sometimes I  also sit in the kitchen with my host parents with a glass of wine and a second dinner, just to chat for a little while.

This repeats itself nearly every day in my week, until the weekend starts.

This weekend I met with other Au Pairs for the first time. We met for a cup of tea in Dublin and had a very nice chat. The three girls I met on Saturday are all Spanish, but all of them insisted on speaking only English with each other, because our shared goals are to make new friends from all over the world, improving our English skills and reaching our personal goals. Moreover it didn’t matter at all, that we all were of different ages and that I was the youngest with a difference of nine years to two of the girls, because we all shared being new in another country, minding someone elses children and simply wanting to get to know someone new. It was absolutely nice walking through Dublins streets with someone else and sharing your admiration for a street artist with someone. I also went into my first Irish Pub in Ireland, which was amazing, because we chose one, where so many locals hung out and where we could listen to quality live music, which every Pub in Ireland has, which by the way is still something that keeps amazing me over and over again.

On Sunday we decided to meet again to visit Dun Laoghair’s Sunday food market, which was a fabulous decision. So many people met there to enjoy the amazing weather and amazing food from all over the world together. We just sat in the grass and copied the locals and relaxed in the sun whilst eating.

It was a very nice afternoon with the girls, enjoying the perfect Sunday weather, good conversations and being surrounded by positivity.

In the evening I got to meat my host dads family, who where here to visit. We had Paella and cake in the garden, whilst the girls and Henry were pretending to be performers and jumped around in the grass.

All in all I have to say I am a little proud of myself after that weekend, because I was a bit afraid, that I wouldn’t spend time with someone else in the near future, and now it turns out, I made 4 new friends over the weekend, with whom I already made further plans for this week and next weekend. I just had to overcome my fear and my newly discovered shyness and as soon as I did that, it turned out to be a big success.

That’s all for now again, thanks for taking your time if you stuck with me till the end of this post.

See you soon,

Lena xx