Two nannies and a driver cost us about $1000 USD a month and for that luxury we get to outsource the raising of our children. It is high time we fire them all and do it ourselves.

Ok, maybe not, but from previous posts you may have picked up on a thread that I haven’t been all that happy with our ayi situation and in this post I will vent a bit about it. Basically, it comes down to the ayis have a different set of priorities for our household than I do. I want active kids, a clean house, and simple food. They want to do the least amount of work possible for the most amount of money.

For 90% of the time we’ve been here, we’ve had one older ayi and one younger ayi. The older ayi has been with us for 90% of that time, her name is cui ayi. The younger ayi position has rotated quite a bit with our current one the longest tenured at about two years.  In my idyllic mind, the younger ayi you be taking the kids to the park, helping them with crafts, and so on. In cui ayi’s idyllic mind, the younger one does all the housework and cooking while she gets exhausted watching Elisa watch TV. This was actually pretty clear five years ago, when we were on our third or forth younger ayi and Yang was getting a little tired of training them only to have them leave or get fired. So she asked the new younger ayi to listen to cui ayi and just do what she does. The younger ayi promptly sat on the coach and said “you mean like this, all she does is sit here”.  (we ended up keeping that younger ayi for 1.5 years until she moved back to her hometown)

It all became pretty clear to me this summer when I worked from home vs. previous school breaks when I was in the office or travelling. The kids wake up and left to their own devices will play computer games and watch TV for most of the day, especially Aidan. The ayis show no interest in taking them out, especially as summer got warmer and warmer. It because worse when both ayis threated to quit over more money and we relented and allowed the younger ayi to take a morning job thus reducing her time to help out with the housework here by two hours a day. One would have thought we were having cui ayi split rocks, she walked around the house exhausted and only took Elisa out when Elisa insisted. And she never prompted Aidan to go out on his own, which he won’t, so I ended up taking many afternoons off work to do so (Lydia needs no prompting).

So, I’m thinking what would be so bad if we just got rid of the ayis and I took care of the household. Yang dismisses it out of hand which is fair enough since she’s seen little evidence I can wash a dish not to mention cook a meal. Of course I could do it but it would mean sacrificing what I want to accomplish career wise and remove the social flexibility Yang and I have now. So likely we will not do anything, the kids start school next Thursday and the daily rhythm with break the current pattern they are in. And then Elisa will start go to pre-school in a few months at which time the ayis will have found true bliss, sitting on the couch and gossiping.