Ayi Shuffle

I’m sitting in the den working on the laptop trying to get a project idea off the ground when Elisa opens the door and walks up to me. “No Dora” she says. “No Aidan iPad. No iPhone.” This is her way of letting me know she wants to play with one of these things. She says this because in the past when I’ve been working I’ve told her “No” only to relent into her cuteness. We start with Dora the Explorer images as served by Google which is weird because of the amount of my past work life spent on Bing image search.

This has been pretty much our 3-4 times daily routine since we returned from our US family vacation. While I’d like to think the main reason is because Elisa feels so close to me, in fact the main reason she is bored. She’s bored because the friends her age have gone off to preschool during the day and because we are down to one Ayi, hence the topic of this post.

Our Ayi situation has been relatively stable the past 2 years or so with Cui Ayi and Xiao Chen. Xiao Chen was the younger of the two Ayis and did the bulk of the housework and cooking. Cui Ayi has been with us since the beginning of our time in China and mostly looked after Elisa. She is also the Ayi who lives with us. Anyway, Xiao Chen had said she wanted to return to her hometown with her husband in June but one can never tell if its just a ploy to get more money. Ayi and for that matter employment communications is not so direct here. So we thought she really wanted more money and was unhappy that a few months back we didn’t let her take a second job helping out Yang’s dad. So we told her she could take the second job and she stayed. We also gave Cui Ayi a raise to keep everyone in balance.

Well, I guess she really did want to go back to her hometown and she did just that coinciding with our trip to the US. She gave a quick hug to the kids and the loaded into the car and that was that. When we got back the dilemma was what to do about the second ayi. Yes, we are that spoiled. I offered that we could have Cui Ayi take a break too and I could watch the kids for a few months until I start working again. I kind of really wanted to do it. But Yang did not like the idea at all and instead of Baba Ayi we hired Cui Ayi’s husband to come in for an afternoon through dinner shift as he has a nighttime job.

And its been a bit interesting. Once his work is done he has no problem enjoying the house, be it sitting in on the coach playing with Aidan’s iPad or taking a short nap. It reminds me of a co-worker I had who, being on a formal expat package, hired a more expensive Ayi for her more expensive apartment. She went to the US for a business trip and came home a couple of days earlier than expected. She found her Ayi asleep in her bed, not just for a nap, but had moved in there while she was gone.

Yang and I head to Chengdu for a long weekend this weekend. Maybe I should wash the sheets when I get back. Or before I leave?