And God Created the Au Pair

I never understood the signficance of the title of the book until last week when She arrived. Our French au pair. She helps me out with the Bambina in the afternoons, babysits a couple of evenings of week, and goes grocery shopping with us on Saturday mornings. Can I say just how nice it is to be able to try on clothes in Zara with the assurance that no one is abducting your child or even offering her sweets that you don't approve of? And yesterday afternoon, I was able to go grocery shopping, take a shower, cook supper, and finish an article.

I was initially afraid that the Bambina might not like the Au Pair, but boy, was I wrong. On Saturday at 13h, the Au Pair's quitting time for the weekend, the Bambina all of a sudden became very sad and said to her, "Why you leaving? When you coming back?" And yesterday, coming home from school, her first words at our front door were, "I want to see E!".

One glitch: she's a vegetarian. Not just any kind of vegetarian but the worst kind: she won't eat meat but she doesn't replace it with any meat equivalent and just eats starch instead. I need vegetarian recipes so the poor girl doesn't end up eating pasta and pesto sauce the entire year. She is only 21, after all. In continental Europe, that's still practically a child. I don't want any accusations from her parents that we are malnourishing her.