The Babysitter

After 11 months of being a simultaneous full-time parent and full-time employee, we decided this was not the most sustainable lifestyle and looked at getting a nanny for a few hours per week.  I feel like in most circumstances, this wouldn't be that weird or difficult, but when you're the parent of Ivy G, you have concerns.

Since Ivy doesn't like people in general (unless you're a child and willing to let her pull your hair and claw your eyes), this kind of limits the pool of people who are able and willing to spend time with her.  But!  I figured that this babysitting arrangement could help with Ivy's people probs, and maybe it'd get me some more sanity sleep as well.  Win, win.

After talking with some old neighborhood babysitters about pricing, and noticing how confident they sounded in their ability to manage my child for such little pay, I thought, "Maybe these babysitters could give me some pointers.  Maybe I'm paying for some childcare and some training."  By the way, bless those babysitters' hearts.  I've been in the business world too long, because $5 per hour sounds like pure service.

Anyway, I rounded up some young ladies in the new ward to give this a shot, and I haven't been so nervous in quite some time.  I wasn't nervous about Ivy's well-being.  I was nervous that the babysitter would run away and never come back.

This was pretty much my expectation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dQpFu8uRP0

The first few tries went about as expected, but then today I heard Ivy laughing like a maniac downstairs and I couldn't have smiled bigger.  Things just got a little bit more awesome around here.