I'm the last Au Pair in a line of five for my current family. The kids have had Au Pairs coming in and out of their lives for 3-4 years. They know that eventually I'm going to leave and as a defense mechanism they don't get too attached, especially the younger (Reason #37 why I will never have an Au Pair). But this disengagement from me makes it difficult to form a positive relationship. On the one hand I have to drag him on walk and force him to play games with me, and on the other hand while he's happy to avoid the special fun times, I'm around all day so he's perfectly comfortable being a grump at me.
Despite his best efforts there are some days he cannot resist enjoying spending time with me, like Dec 3 when we baked 60 sugar cookies that never made it to the neighbors. And last Saturday.
It finally snowed last Saturday. And for those of you in Portland saying I shouldn't complain you've had plenty of snow and cold: it's been under 0 degrees C here for weeks on end, never coming above the freezing point, and also refusing to snow. So when it started to snow on Saturday, the two of us at home alone for the whole day, we got unreasonably excited. We waited and waited for the accumulation to hit a sweet point and then we took both dogs for a snow ball fight walk.
It was amazingly enjoyable, and even if he returned to being a pre-teen the moment we got inside and he realized how wet and cold he was, we had one good day together.
My mom at this point of the story started wondering if I really was in a good place. My mom, like most people, is able to hear the negative louder than the positive. I've had two really good days with the kids in the last 2 weeks. When you're more used to removing yourself from the equation because they don't want you around at all, 2 days is a lot. 2 days means that things are looking up.
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