New French au pair has arrived. The kids call her Nella, which is cute. Except she hasn’t been around long enough for them to remember remember, so baby girl asks 100 times a day, and little man asks but then doesn't really listen, so sometimes he calls her Banana and sometimes he calls her Vanilla. Close enough. I really like her so far. And I think she was happy to see me leave for work...the hardest part about the last place she was (aside from having to share a 1 bedroom apt. with a family when they were in ny and having to sleep on a cot outside the baby's room in case there was a noise) was the fact that the mom was a stay at home, so she said she often wondered why she was even there...you know if the kids have a choice they'll always go to mom. So, I left her for a few hours with the 2 little ones yesterday, kind of ease her into it, and when I came back she said things were "perfect", and in the time span I was gone she'd done the kids laundry, folded and taken upstairs, practiced letters with little man, made lunch, laid baby girl down for a nap, and was upstairs playing video games with little man (his favorite thing to do EVER), and who knows how much else. So I think the first couple of days, with me or dh there the whole time, she was feeling a little uncomfortable...like she should just hang in the background...so when we left, she finally had something to sink her teeth into. I like her. Hopefully I'll still like her in a month.

I did cry when crappy au pair left. Big fat tears of joy. Then I threw a party. With balloons. And copious amounts of vodka. She didn't even say goodbye to anyone (again), or wish big guy a happy 10th b-day or anything. Bitch whore.

Test was better than expected. I crammed my ass off, and it paid off big time. Note to self: perhaps it would be a good idea to read the chapters earlier than two nights before the test. I was seriously overwhelmed at the amount of information I had to digest...would have been a lot better if I didn't procrastinate so damn bad. Hopefully sometime this weekend I'll get a chance to start reading the stuff we're covering next.