Hi there from the Jains. We have three fun loving kids; Ajay Aria and baby Ashni. Ajay is 7 years old and Aria is 5 years old and Ashni is a 15 month peaceful and happy baby! We are lucky.
Ajay and Aria both go to school every day during the week. We have moved to this wonderful home from an apartment and have grandparents that come stay occasionally at weekends. We travel quite a lot and I work both from home and the office. My husband Anish is a very busy Dad who usually travels away from home on business for a week or two every month on average.
We love animals and we are a strict vegetarian family. We currently have an Au Pair Stefany from Colombia who will be leaving us in September to finish her degree and so are familiar with the Au Pair experience. We also have another baby sitter/housekeeper that covers other times when Stefany isn't working and helps with cooking if I'm working late etc
Our ideal Au pair must have lots of experience with children and enjoy spending time with them be very responsible active and with a positive attitude. We will need our au pair to work atleast 45 hours a week. The typical schedule involves getting Ajay and Aria ready for school making breakfast preparing packed lunches and driving them to school and after school activities. We really need someone who is patient with helping kids to do homework; especially Ajay who always prefers playtime then homework time!
Also Ajay and Aria need homework help and practice lessons every day. The kids have lots of activities locally; swimming lessons play dates etc so you need to be able to manage playtime with a few kids in our garden or picnics or the beach or swimming pool.... We are very close with our neighbors families which have 2 kids each and also Ajay's best friend from school whom we see with his little brother almost every week.
My Mother from London is currently here staying with us. We are trying to persuade her to come live with us as she is 84 years old and loves the kids and they keep her busy too - especially Ashni. So we may have an extra resident too.
We are looking for an Au pair who is very comfortable driving and must have an international Drivers license as you will be driving the kids most of the time during the week and also sometimes running errands.
During school season Ashni may need to be driven/collected from school and Ajay and Aria comes home on the school bus around 3.30pm. After that they have play and home work time before its dinner time bath time and bedtime. Occasionally they also have extra lessons which they need to be driven to eg Baseball Dance Chess and music class.
I like that meals are already ready before they come home from school and their packed lunch already ready or planned the night before so to save time from the morning rush. In terms of cooking I love it we have a cooking lady that comes over occasionally and makes a whole batch of food as well and then the grandparents cook as well. So we only need our Au pair to make very basic dishes which we can teach eg making a salad every day making bread in bread maker (mainly just measuring and throwing the right ingredients in) or making pasta. We would love if our Au pair makes something baked once a week eg cupcakes! but otherwise cooking is a shared job.....
We prefer that the kids are taken outside to play in the garden parks or on walks at least once a day if the weather is nice and also do some structured activities like dance time puzzle time reading time and Montessori "work" etc in the playroom. We are a tidy family so we would like our Au pair to help keep the kids rooms and play room and kitchen tidy & help with kids laundry and involve Ajay and Aria in helping to tidy up as well!! We also occasionally need help in kids bedtime routine also although mostly we do story time with the kids especially since we haven't seen them all day on occasion.
We are an active family and we like to go to swimming gym and the park. Also we tend to keep a large veggie garden and fruit trees during the summer time so we involve the kids in lots of gardening tasks as well. All three kids currently have their own veggie garden and Ajay helps with Ashni's garden too. Last summer they loved picking strawberries and watching the baby peaches "grow up" We would love to have an au pair that enjoys swimming as well. We are members of the local Zoos and childrens museums so we always have trips organized at weekends. We also travel a lot- mainly for work but sometimes we bring the kids and Au Pair with us for example every Fall we host an event for work at Disney World so we always take the family with us...
We may be getting a puppy as well so we hope you love the outdoors and pets too. We try and sit down to dinner together as a family whenever we can though its not every day and talk about the days events before we fall back into kids bath time and bedtime routine. We travel whenever possible and as one set of grandparents are in London UK we tend to visit them a few times a year. We also have a family home in Florida by the beach so be prepared to join us on these trips!
We live in Great Neck New York which is a lovely suburb with lots of community activities like free concerts movies in the park etc about an hour's drive outside of New York City. Our town is small quiet and very safe. We live a few minutes from the train and bus station which can take you to the city center Manhattan within 20 minutes. There are also a lot of fun activities for you to do nearby in your spare time. We live next to the main shopping area beautiful parks great restaurants library gym quiet cafés and many other entertainment spots e.g. you can even walk to the cinema and a great network of other Au pairs.