Baby-sitting Woes

Tonight it’s our turn to baby-sit. I am so not a fan of babysitting. Even as a pre-teen I often avoided mothers with young children, in fear that I might be asked to watch their youngsters on a Friday night. But with our present situation it’s not much of an option to pay a babysitter each Friday so that we might go on a date. I don’t remember how much I was paid on the rare occasion that I did baby-sit, but the girls seem to expect quite a bit. I mean what is minimum wage these days? Do you have to pay them minimum wage or can you pay them less? And does their age qualify them for higher pay or lesser? For example, if I hire a twelve-year-old to baby-sit, can I pay her less because she has lesser experience? These are questions I’ve pondered. So hiring a babysitter hasn’t been something we’ve done often, it’s just too expensive to pay them and then be able to afford dinner or a movie or both. And let’s face it; I’m not the kind of girl that will be satisfied with gazing at the stars and having a picnic with my husband for a date. I like to go out, I like to eat out and I like to see movies. In order to do this we came up with a plan. We got three other couples together, besides ourselves, and decided to take turns switching off baby-sitting every Friday night. So once every four weeks Tom and I get all of the kids, which isn’t too bad, there are only six including our own, and then the other weekends we get to go out and have a free babysitter. It’s quite lovely. It doesn’t always end up being a big production either, sometimes we’ll just go walk around the mall and window shop, it’s just wonderful to walk around a store without the boys running around. But that once every three week turn we take is never the highlight of my week. It does become bearable though because Tom is always there to help, and if anyone knows Tom you know that he really does help, and is much better with kids than I am.