The Old leaves and the New begins .....

Every two years, for those with helpers or maids at home helping out with house chores and taking care of the little ones, we have to face the inevitable of our maid completing her full 2 year term and will be leaving. Not only do we suddenly lose a helper, our life routine that has pretty much settled in will get disrupted to a certain extend. To those, who have not manage to get a replacement maid immediately, I would say that the changes can be rather shocking and drastic to say the least.

Our pinay maid is coming home today, one month earlier than her contract date. She has not exactly been an angel and comparing to our previous maid, an Indonesian, this helper is definitely not only smarter but also more daring and lazier.  However, after having said that, she was still manageable. We do still appreciate her for taking care of Ryan and especially Chenya, whom she has taken a special liking. Maybe, it is because she has a daughter of her own back home and she misses her a lot. She is constantly worried of how she is doing and how well she is growing. Then again, which mother would not.

The biggest mistake we made with this maid was our liberty with her in having her handphone. We have been warned by the agency that we should not allow the maid to carry her handphone during the day. We were specifically instructed to take the handphone from her in the morning and only give it back to her at night. But, we were too soft hearted, We thought that by treating her well like our family member, she would put her work and task first before playing with her handphone.

Our problem started when she bought her new handphone. She was constantly on it, at first secretly and later on more blatantly. It gets better if we reprimand her but only for awhile.

So, lesson learnt and learned the hard way. Never never again allow the next maid to carry her own handphone as all pinays apparently have the same issue. They just have too many friends to chat with .....

We are going to welcome our new maid today after dropping the previous one off at the agency. The whole cycle of getting to know her, getting accustom to her, getting her trained, getting her familiarized with us and her tasks, learning to trust her, getting her into her routine starts all over again, not to mention our apprehension of how Ryan and Chenya will take to her. But at least, we have a replacement almost immediately and my mother in law has been very gracious to come stay with us for two weeks to watch over her while we are at work.

As with all our previous maids, we wish her all the best in her life back home and the future. And with all our new maids, we are looking forward to a wonderful and pleasant two years ahead.....

Celebrating our maid's recent birthday in March this year....We made it a point to celebrate all our maid's birthday. We made it a point to make sure that they get their ang pow during Chinese New Year. We made sure that they get a Christmas present when we do our Christmas present exchange under the Christmas tree each year. And the presents are not only coming from us but from my sister, my mother in law and sister in law.....

The cake that we purposely purchased for our helper this year to make sure that her birthday spent with us are memorable ones. She claimed that no one had purchased a birthday cake for her before ....

We are uncertain how much she appreciated all this but deep in our hearts, we just want to be the best employers we could possibly can (despite being human) to her, to be fair to her and to do our utmost to make sure that her stay with us during the years as pleasant as it can be ....

Bon voyage Ranelyn and Welcome Emily ..(another saga unfolds) ....