Damn!
I should start this by saying Thank you to the Universe for grandmothers and grandfathers who babysit out of love. We are very, very fortunate to have two sets of grandparents within a few miles of our home. This means our kids see their family often and occasionally Ian and I can leave the children with trusted grandparents for an evening of grown-up time. This arrangement isn’t exactly string-free. And we can dip into this well only so often because these generous grandparents have a life, too. But, for the most part, it’s worked very well for us for the last almost seven years.
Last night, Ian and I attended a friend’s 40th birthday party. For the first time ever, we hired a teenage girl to babysit the boys at our home for the evening. She is sweet and seems responsible; she is the oldest sister of one of Lucas’s classmates and my kids have been around her several times before. They really seemed to like her. Asher gushed this morning about her "yellow hair."
But damn! We paid $60 for just over five hours of freedom! With our relatively modest dinner out, that brought the evening’s expenses to more than $100—a huge chunk of our month’s entertainment budget.
It was worthwhile, definitely. And I feel good about now having a sitter I’ve already used, whom I can call for future evenings when the grandparents say no to my pleas. In a way, it’s a kind of an investment in my own sanity—a Get-Out-of-Jail-for-$10-Per-Hour card, if you will. But I don’t think we’ll be able to do it very often.
April 5, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Is there a babysitting coop at the school? If not perhaps you can work something out with a couple of like minded moms. I’d suggest Em (I think she charges 5 an hour) but I think she needs a little more experience.
April 5, 2009 at 4:10 pm
$10 an hour? Wow! Rates have gone up… 😉 glad you got some real live date time without any strings, though. As you say, SO worth the cost of admission. xo