Barbara Zeitvogel (Germany)

We would like to nominate Barbara for Au Pair of the Month and the year if we could! She is doing a wonderful job caring for our son William and being part of our family.

Barbara joined our family at the end of January and it was like she had always been part of our family. She is warm and friendly and always professional. Her communication is open and honest and always constructive.

She has really focused in on what our son loves to do which includes dancing, music, singing, cooking, trains, cars and being outdoors. She has found creative and exciting wasy to develop his love for these activities and create learning opportunities in them. 

When it comes to dancing, music and singing she takes William to the library where they choose a wide range of genre of music from the music section and once home, play everything from the classics to pop including some great German songs and nursery rhythms! It has been great hearing him singing and dancing to them. Every Friday she also takes him to the great Au Pair Link music group with songs that William then dances and sings to for the rest of the weekend. He has become very passionate about a particular song including a line "What did the Fox say". Barbara must have heard that song a thousand times now, and yet each time she is engaged when playing it for him and has even shared with William her fox hat.

In the afternoons you will often find them cooking or baking something - and Barbara really takes on board the things he would like to do in a day. One day William turned to Barbara and said: "Barbara please could we make some chocolate brownie" and they spent the afternoon making the most "delicious" brownies to quote my son! He has also learnt to make pizza dough, pizza, traditional German Easter biscuits, traditional German sweet bread (which he was proudly showing his Nana) and she has found very inventive ways to make it all DAIRY FREE! For example my son now sprinkles "potatoes cheese" on his pizza - grated potatoes and he loves it!

William loves all trains, cars and pirate ships. Barbara takes William on trips to the city where they park at our local train station and take the train into town, once there they go for picnics down by the docks and while eating their lunch or morning tea watch the ships and boats go by - William gets very excited! There does not even need to be a really big ship for him to get excited just a wheel of a ship or a rock outcrop that is a "boat" and she is right there behind William getting involved and playing together with him.

They have grown a great bond together and it is wonderful and reassuring to see. I know their bond is close as when you now ask William who is part of our family he says "Mummy, Daddy, Barbara and Granny" This really made us feel like we made the best decision when deciding to go with Au Pair Link and when we asked Barbara to join our family.