So, we don't have a babysitter.
(Perhaps this should be titled, "About the complete LACK of babysitter.)
This means we don't ever go out, just the two of us, unless we are visiting a set of grandparents. We're lucky to have two sets of overly-enthusiastic-about-babysitting grandparents that live close by, but they're still several hours away. Nice as that is, it only happens a few times a year. Date night is not something we enjoy on the regular. (Although, I do hear date night CAN get boring after a while.)
This sounds terrible, doesn't it? It sounds like we're cooped up in the house, bemoaning our lack of social life and time without children, going a modern version of domestic crazy. Except...that's not really what's going on. See, we're not that popular. We don't get invited to a lot of cool places or neat parties. In fact, we only get invited to cool places or neat parties when our children are the guests and we're just the tag along parents. A super fun, no-kids-allowed invitation graces my inbox...perhaps twice a year. In the past 12-months I had to say no to an out-of-town wedding and a hockey game. See? Just two things.
We are missing things we like to do by ourselves: concerts and sporting events, movies, fancy dinners with $10 slices of chocolate cake. Fortunately, these are all things we can easily do in other cities so, like I've said, it's not really a big deal to me that we don't have a babysitter. In fact, I hardly ever think about it. We seem to keep pretty busy.
I would probably keel over from happiness if a set of grandparents moved in across the street from us, like in Everybody Loves Raymond. No, really, I would be OVERJOYED. All of you people that have one (or two!) sets of grandparents in town? I am so jealous. If your grandparent has a regular, standing babysitting date with your kids? EVEN MORE JEALOUS.
And yet, I recognize this is a very temporary stage of life with two very young children and once they're older and can basically run things themselves and tattle on a weird babysitter and know when to say HELL TO THE NO, then we'll find someone that can make sure they don't kill each other while we're out watching Downton Abbey: The Movie sometime in 2016. (WHAT? A GIRL CAN DREAM.) Or, maybe a great babysitter will fall in our laps in between now and then and the problem will solve itself.
Anyway, "Get A Babysitter" is not really high on my list of things to do.
Chris has been maneuvering to change this. He's been emailing me not-so-subtle pictures of the bulletin board at the community center, with ads for high school girls looking for babysitting jobs and he's brought up things he'd like to do (that I'd like to do, too!) but then I give him a look and it says, "Um, we gots no babysitter, dude. Did you forget that part?" And then he says something ground-breaking like, "BUT WE COULD GET ONE AND THEN WE COULD BE FREEEEEEEEE." After all, he is a normal person and he would like to spend time with his wife without someone whining about Cheerios and making his ears bleed. I understand this. I want these things too.
But, man. Finding a babysitter sounds like the worst task EVER.
Ideally, our babysitter would be a high school age girl that is nerdy enough to not have a boyfriend or be so popular that she's never available on the weekends. She would be smart, Red Cross certified in a number of things, live close by so I don't have to go get her and drop her off, and be trustworthy beyond belief. To be truly perfect, she would be the daughter of a close friend so that I have an idea of what kind of family she has, her values, and the ever-present knowledge that if she screws something up I KNOW HER MOTHER.
(In other words, she would be ME at age 16. I made thousands of dollars babysitting when I was a high schooler. I vacuumed and did dishes. I was very popular with parents.)
I live in the suburbs, so you'd think I would know a boatload of families that meet this criteria. But, remember, we're not that popular. I actually don't know a single teenager or young college/first-job aged adult that I'd trust to spend time, unsupervised, with my children. Well, I take that back. I have exactly TWO relatives in the Dallas-Ft Worth area that I'd let watch my kids. One is my brother-in-law (he's watched Claire before, is very good with her, trust him 100% to call 911 at the appropriate moment) and the other is my first cousin (I'm not entirely sure he has any babysitting experience but he's a solid guy and in a pinch I'm sure he could play trains for two hours).
They both live really far across town and have their own social lives and I suspect babysitting is not super high on the list of Fun Friday Night Stuff! for them. (They would probably rather go to the bar on weekends. I sure did when I was their age.) Also, Jennie watched the girls once last December so we could go to a Christmas party and that might be one of the top-five nicest things anyone has ever done for me. But other than that, NADA.
***
Last fall the entire Penn State situation made me realize there was another reason I was ho-hum about babysitters. Because we lack an already-existing trustworthy person, trying to find some STRANGER just for the sake of a dinner out seems...really stupid. Yes, yes, I know about background checks and references and all of that but another adult in my house, alone with my kids? An adult that I am "trying out?" I cannot wrap my brain around that to think it's something I'd be comfortable with.
(This is one reason I never pursued a nanny for Claire while I was working. I very much like the idea of accountability that you get in a group setting.) (Although, it could be argued that's what the Penn State parents thought they were sending their kids off to so you're damned all the way around on this one. Let's just go live in the closet with some rations for the rest of our lives and stay safe together, away from the horrible, cruel, awful world.)
In theory, I love the idea of paying someone to watch my kids while I hit the town with my husband. But I am not going to leave my kids with just ANYONE. The idea of calling one of these high school girls and "trying her out!" sounds kind of odd. I mean, how does one "try out" a babysitter? How does one evaluate a randomy person with basic algebra skills to see if you trust her with your children? This doesn't seem like a very good idea, even if the only trauma that happens is to me from wondering WHAT IS GOING ON BACK AT THE HOUSE RIGHT NOW? IS SHE SMOKING POT? IS SHE TEACHING HER HOW TO THROW UP OR CUT HERSELF? IS SHE TALKING ABOUT THINGS THAT MAKE YOU FAT? IS SHE TALKING ABOUT MONSTERS THAT LIVE UNDER BEDS? CLAIRE DOESN'T KNOW ABOUT MONSTERS UNDER THE BED.
Because whoa, beyond physical or sexual abuse (AWFUL-AWFUL-AWFUL TO THINK ABOUT) there are a LOT of subtle and direct ways to poison a kid's brain and in an isolated setting WHO KNOWS what words are being traded. The most likely truth is that just trains or blocks or endless episodes of Sid the Science Kid is what would be happening at the house. But Claire (and certainly Charlotte) are still young enough that they don't quite know the difference between right and wrong and what adults are supposed to do/not do. It is SO AWFUL to have to think about these things as a parent but, well, I have to. I do.
Possibly an extreme and needlessly panicky place to mentally live? Maybe. But, it's where my brain lives on this topic and I find that I'm pretty inflexible on it.
Claire is still young enough that I filter quite a bit. She is so impressionable at age three. She will believe, literally, ANYTHING an adult tells her. I tell her the truth (most of the time) but some topics just aren't brought up to my three-year-old. I still remember the time some adults told me in graphic detail about Jesus' crucifixion when I was in kindergarten. The idea of NAILS in a HAND was so horrible and gruesome to me that looking at an image of the crucifixion, for years, brought to mind questions of,
"Why on earth would someone DO that? It doesn't even make SENSE. And it's so GROSS. This is so weird. This whole this so, so weird."
I'm not saying that person ruined religion for me, but it was certainly a topic that I hadn't been prepped for and with no follow-up or context (and how would my parents have known to follow up!?) my imagination ran kind of wild for a few years on that one.
So, things like that: age appropriate and inappropriate conversations, actions, television shows, questions about the meaning of life, ETCETERA.
I suppose the biggest reason I ignore my husband's questions about finding a babysitter is that I don't really want one, for dark and ugly reasons I've seen happen to other children on television. I know I can't keep her in a bubble forever, and it's not my intention to. She goes to preschool, she's been in daycare, she will continue to go places and see people and I will leave her in trustworthy places. She has been and will continue to be influenced by other people. But not alone, in my home, by someone I don't really know all that well.
The safest thing seems to be...not hiring a babysitter until someone trustworthy comes along. And, yeah, I KNOW that even people who are seen as trustworthy might still be weird or crazy or abusive (and they always say those people are the most likely to abuse, I KNOW) but there is only so much screening a person can do. A trustworthy person seems like a better place to start than "Stranger On A Bulletin Board With Nothing To Lose."
If I had a regular need for a babysitter I might be more inclined to follow through on a search. If, say, I had someone come to the house every Tuesday and Thursday for a few hours and then maybe I wanted to be able to call her on some weekends? Then that feels like more of a relationship to be had and she could watch the kids while I'm here at first, while we get to know her. But to randomly try and find someone for random nights? I just don't think I can do that right now.