For the record, finding the right nanny is harder than finding a husband. I've had more nannies in 2 years than boyfriends in my lifetime.
With much regrets I let go of my last nanny, the one whom I thought was The One. She was efficient, clean, pleasant looking, but she just ain't the right fit for Mountain Boy. After almost 5 months of being with us, he still rejects her.
She also has a bunch of problems I could no longer ignore.
1. She is hard of hearing. Sometimes she doesn't hear when I call her, and it also causes her to do chores really loudly which forced me to have her to stop working when mountain boy is asleep.
2. She mispronounces her Ls and Ns. Its a big problem, one day the boy said "neng" instead of "leng" for cold.
3. Not nurturing. He hasn't learnt to speak that much chinese and I blame her. Really I do. Instead of teaching him that cat is "mao", she says "xiao mao mi" which is so much more difficult to learn. Then she took my advice so literally that she started cutting down 3 words to 2 and it even doesn't make sense. Like "dui bu qi" becomes "bu qi". Huh? Dumb right?
4. She takes advantage of my generousity. Besides being my most highly paid ayi, she also spends the most money on herself. She goes grocery shopping for us but ends up buying her own stuff and forgetting our stuff. And not just that, she buys the anti-aging and whitening range of products ok!
She is very choosy with food, and has no qualms about telling me that she likes sunmaid raisins, post cereal, and that wheat bread and mantous are not nice.
5. She is quite troublesome. Always asking me to buy stuff for her on taobao. Not only that she sometimes ask me to return them do you know how troublesome that is!! As if I have so much time. And she is always asking me for skincare advice, like which sunscreen, what kind of make up etc etc. Its just very irritating coming from your nanny.
6. She is stubborn. I asked her to put the trash can in the landry room next to the kitchen instead of the kitchen itself cos the boy likes to play w the trash can. I told her at least 5 times, I even physically put the trash can in the laundry room myself before finding out the next minute that it is back in the kitchen. I asked her to pin up her hair to prevent her fringe from pricking her face and it never happened. I even bought her a row of hairclips. 0ne day I physically took a hair clip and pinned it for her.
See these are just some small examples of her transgressions. She also has some serious attitude problem and likes to talk back. She says stuff to me that my chinese friends say an ayi will never say to a local chinese family.
So there, I am finally letting go despite wanting very much to keep an ayi for longer than 4 months- yeap tts the average lifespan.
On a happier note the new one arrived yesterday. I asked mountain boy 3 times if he likes her and he said "ess!" all 3 times. That's a good start.
