Atypical au pairing day

Today was unexpectedly a very unusual day in my au pairing world, but days like that themselves are not that uncommon so far.  So I thought I'd tell you all about it.

As soon as I walked in the father, who is an oral surgeon but also rather an academic who gives all kinds of papers on his profession, told me he needed me to run some very important errands in the morning.  He asked me to do this Friday also, saying it would be an hour or a little more - it was three hours of the morning and I ended up being late to pick up O from daycare.  So I was wary about doing this today, but part of the time spent on Friday was due to a bunch of mishaps.

Anyway, today made only the second time I've ever had to do anything for him.  I had to go all the way to the outskirts of Paris to drop off a couple of his papers - about 40 minutes from his office one way - was home for about 20 minutes to pick up some things, then headed off to pick up O as usual.

On my way the mother called me and said that oops, I had to run an emergency errand for 14 year old D, who forgot some of the things she needed for a school project.  Two of the things (some daisies and aluminum foil) were at their home and the mother had one (a highlighter).  So I had to pick up O, go to the mother's workplace, go to their home, and go to D's school to drop off the stuff, taking O with me the whole time.  Luckily he fell asleep and stayed asleep for the duration of our errand running.

I went home and napped (I was super tired from not sleeping much last night), picked up M from her school, brought her back and found the mother fretting about J, who normally walks home from school by himself.  He stayed late for a Chinese class tonight at the high school that is affiliated with his elementary school and she thought he had forgotten the special card he needed for permission to go home by himself.

So I went back over to J's school, to the high school section, and waited for a long time.  No sign of J.  No sign of him at the elementary school section, either.  I called the mom and she said maybe he did have the card after all and to come home.  Halfway home I run into J, who said they don't check for the cards at the high school part so he just left on his own.

Okay.  I watch the little ones for a bit and start giving D a piano lesson when the mother runs upstairs and says she's taking baby O to the hospital!  Last week he had fallen and hit his head on the corner of a wall, getting a nasty, bloody cut on his forehead.  Apparently he fell again tonight and the cut opened back up.  I was just about done with D's lesson, it was about 7pm and I was going to go home after.  But with the mother at the hospital of course I stayed until she got back, leaving around 8 instead.

Most of the time my atypical days involve much more running around than usual, normally for little things like D's mishap this afternoon.  One atypical day, however, deserves its own post and involves a reality TV crew filming at their home.

Today I ended up walking a lot of miles and climbing up and down my own apartment stairs (7 or 5.5 flights, depending on how I come in) five times.  I am now very tired!