We have two fun and friendly dogs named Lucas and Annie. Lucas is a big shepherd and barks a lot when people he doesn’t know show up at the house but he doesn’t do anything more than that. He gets to know people very quickly and has never shown any aggressive tendencies beyond “sounding the alarm” when someone arrives. He is very popular with all of our friends and visitors. Annie is a small mixed breed that couldn’t scare a fly if she wanted to. They are very good dogs. They love the kids and the kids love them back.

Our household is relaxed and fun and we are all very activity oriented. The boys spend as much time outside as they can - playing in the yard and exploring the property with us and the dogs. They also go to various camps, gym classes and pre-school activities. They are, fortunately, very good sleepers as well.

Our property is well set up for live-in help as we have lots of room (15 acres) and a furnished apartment that is semi-detached from the main house. It provides great privacy if it is desired. We have a pool that the kids love to play in so a swimmer would be preferred but is not necessary as the kids obviously stay in the shallow end for now. The apartment has its own full kitchen so our au pair will have the option of eating with us or on her own in the apartment. We would be happy with either choice. We also have an extra car that will be available to our au pair at any time for own personal use.

The town we live in is called Lutherville. It’s about 15 minutes outside Baltimore, MD., about 45 minutes from Washington, DC and a little more than an hour from Philadelphia. Lutherville is very pretty and there are lots of schools, universities, restaurants, etc. in the area. It's a great area for jogging, bike riding and many other outdoor sports and activities. The neighborhood is very pretty and our neighbors are friendly. There is a horse farm adjacent to our property.

Dear Prospective Au Pair -

My wife Meghan and I (Steven) are looking for an au pair to help us care for our two sons and a baby that is due in Nov. George is approx 2 ½ and Charlie just turned 1. The boys are healthy, happy and very sweet. Meghan and I are pretty easy going and have had almost zero problems with the nannies and babysitters we’ve employed thus far. We are looking for someone who truly and naturally cares about children. Beyond that we’d like someone who will be happy to be here sharing our home with us so that in the end everyone’s lives will be enriched by the experience. We are fairly casual in our management style so we may be a better fit for someone that is naturally inclined to self-motivation. We are relatively flexible with schedules and lifestyle and just hope to find someone that will be as considerate of our wants and needs as we plan to be with hers.

A couple of important points about our needs:

- Experience is important to us. We prefer someone with past experience in child care - the more the better. Someone who has been an au pair before or studied childhood care / education or worked with children in a professional setting would be a big plus. It's ok too if the only experience was at home looking after your siblings or sitting for the neighbor's kids but we'd like to hear as much about your experience as you can tell us. Candidates that can provide references from people they've worked with before will have a big advantage so please let us know if you can provide that.

- We really do need a safe, fairly experienced driver because we need help taking the boys to and from school and other activities.

- We also need someone with pretty good English. It doesn’t have to be perfect or even “very” good but the kids are just now learning to speak so it’s important that anyone they spend a lot of time with can help them develop their language skills. Exposing them to a foreign language would also be great but at this stage English needs to come first.

I’m sure You'll want to know more about our family and what it would be like to live with us but I hope this gives you a general idea of who we are and what kind of person might be a good fit for us. Thank you for considering us and we look forward to speaking with you soon. Sincerely, - Steven and Meghan