So What's The Story With Flipping Baby Sitters? | Life Love and Hiccups: So What's The Story With Flipping Baby Sitters?
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Thursday 21 August 2014

So What's The Story With Flipping Baby Sitters?

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What the hell is the story with baby sitters? Is there some kind of unspoken rule that a mother should never ask another mother about her baby sitter?

Did I miss that memo?

Here’s the thing. We have never really employed a baby sitter in the 13 years we have been parents. 

Well not often anyway. 

When we only had two kids we hired our boy's gorgeous Kindy teacher Anna to come and look after our boys when we had weddings to go to… maybe only twice though. 

We also paid one of the girls next door to look after them once, so I can think of maybe three times we have ever actually hired a baby sitter.

The rest of the time we either go out separately whilst one stays home with the kids (which really kind of sucks) or we have asked my Mum and Dad to look after the boys for us. But again that really wouldn't be more than a couple of times a year.

Part of the reason stems from Kai being such a sick baby. I honestly didn't trust anyone to look after him because - I mean what if something happened and I wasn't there?

Yeah, I have a tendency to catastrophize things.

So we have got around this by just not going anywhere that we can't take the squids with us and that’s OK, I’m so not complaining because truthfully we like having them with us. 

It’s just that recently Carl and I have been craving some time to ourselves every now and then. You know to go out for a romantic dinner or lunch and be all grown up like without having to wipes noses or tell anyone to stop playing with salt shakers or escort little people to the bathroom fifty freaking times before the main meal. 

Also, now that the boy's appetites are getting bigger, we can't get away with splitting meals between them so it would be a welcome change to go out for dinner every now and then without having to take out a second mortgage. 

Just once a month would do us. 

Just a few hours peaceful grown up hours to ourselves once a month.



We don't want to have to ask my parents to do that for us so we decided it was high time we find ourselves a reliable baby sitter. Well slap me silly and call me Billy - every time I ask someone about their baby sitter it’s like I am asking them if they have ever had an std - they wont make eye contact with me and suddenly they have an urgent need to be somewhere else.

What? 

What did I do?

Is it that they think I am going to poach their baby sitter from them? You know steal them away with a bit of chloroform and a promise of angelic children and an extra fifty bucks?

Yeah. No! That's not my intention.

I just want to know - how does one go about finding the right baby sitter?
How old should he or she be?
How much do you pay them?
What is baby sitter etiquette, like are you supposed to drive them home?

Can you help a gal out with some info if I promise not to poach yours?