We have two children Nathan aged 4 and Andrew aged 2. With my husband and me both working Tania is a great help with the children. She is very flexible with her working schedule helping us a lot as we don’t have family living close by us. She prepares meals and cleans after the children. She is a very friendly and sensitive person when it comes to dealing with children. She understands the moods of small children without forgetting that she is in charge while we are not at home. She is also very patient and teaches them Spanish. She likes to talk about Colombia and about her family. Nathan wants to go to Colombia with her to visit the places she talks about and to meet her childhood friends. Andrew absolutely loves her. She is great with little kids.
My husband loves college football. He doesn’t miss a game from his team (Utah Utes). Nathan loves watching football with him and everybody needs to wear red on game day including Tania who is more than willing to do it to not bring bad luck.
Tania has a great sense of humor and is willing to join all child activities as a playmate. That makes it easy for the boys to like her and accept her as part of our family. She plays cars, puzzles, matching games, jumps on the trampoline, reads books and does lots of art activities with the boys. She takes them to swimming, gymnastics, arts, soccer, preschool, Portuguese and Kumon classes. She also takes them to children’s museums, amusement parks (like Great America, Gilroy Gardens, Happy Hollow, etc.) and mini zoos.
Tania often joins us in family activities like going on trips to Hawaii or Big Trees. Tania took the children to the beach, built sandcastles and played water games with them. She is interested in being part of our family while respecting our privacy at the same time. She was amazed by the big trees in California.
Tania often cooks lunch and sometimes dinner for the boys. She varies her cooking among the boys’ favorites of spaghetti (and other pastas), chicken, soups, rice and sometimes she will cook us all a special treat from her home country. She enjoys sharing food that she receives from her friends and family back home and we probably enjoy it more than her as it is always very delicious and different from things we are used to here in California.
We are proud of how Tanis is so independent and outgoing. She has made friends with other au pairs, with fellow students at her English class and others that she has met through common friends. When she first joined our family, we were concerned that she would not be very comfortable going out in the evenings, but she made friends very quickly and is usually out with friends on weekends and enjoying her time away from the house and experiencing a fulfilling social life. She is always very respectful and lets us know how late she plans to be out.
