Tales from the Tracks

Yes, that’s right - the Ex, G, and I are now members of a babysitting co-op. Sure, I haven’t sat for anyone else yet, and okay, no one has sat for me yet, either, but… I am SO excited. No more pricey babysitters! Hooray! The first co-op meeting is on Tuesday and I will have the chance to meet other parents in our neighborhood babysitting co-op. After that, I can start sitting.

I’m excited for many reasons:

1. We’ll save money. Instead of $50 for a sitter on a night out, we’ll pay $0. Not too shabby.

2. Our son will be cared for by parents we know and trust. Why pay for a teenage sitter when we can have experienced parents watch our child?

3. It’s fun for our son. He gets to play with other kids while in the care of another parent. Win-win.

4. We meet other parents in the community. A babysitting co-op is a nice way to become integrated into the community and meet others nearby with similarly aged children.

On a semi-related note: the Ex and I saw our regular babysitter while taking a walk last week. As we haven’t used her in a while, she was playing an avoidance game. So awkward. I kept waiting, trying to make eye contact with her, but to no avail. Finally, the Ex prodded me away, before I could accost her.

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The price of babysitting is staggering. When I babysat as a teen (barely a decade ago), I remember earning $4 per hour - sometimes $5 if the family was feeling generous. When I first started searching for a sitter for my son just a few years ago, I made the mistake of asking prospective sitters what their rates were.

“I don’t sit for less than $15 an hour,” a high school sophomore informed me. $15 an hour? For sitting on my couch while my baby slept, eating my food and watching my cable TV?

Finally, I found a reasonable grad student who was okay babysitting Gavin for $10 an hour - the max I felt comfortable paying. While she is great with him, the knowledge that dinner and a movie costs me an extra $60 or so when babysitting is included prevents me from having very many nights out.

Recently, I found myself griping to yet another mother about the prohibitive cost of hiring a babysitter. Her response? “You should join a babysitting co-op.” I had never heard of babysitting co-ops before, but once she explained the concept to me, I couldn’t believe I had spent so long without one.

A babysitting co-op is a group of parents in a community that trade babysitting services with one another. Rather than paying each other in money, co-op members pay each other in points. You earn points by watching your friends’ kids and - when you need a sitter - they earn points by watching yours. The idea of exchanging babysitting services with people you know and trust (and for free!) is beyond appealing to me.

I have just begun researching potential babysitting co-ops in my area, and no leads so far. If I can’t find a co-op in my area, I’m determined to start one myself. Though, I have to say, creating a co-op and managing it myself sounds like a good deal of work…

Has rapidly risen to the top of the “Books that improve my quality of life” list.

Recently, Gavin read the Eric Carle classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, at school. Upon finishing it, his 3-year old brain made the causal connection between eating lots of food and turning into, as he so eloquently puts it, “a big, fat caterpillar.” Since then, he has morphed into something resembling the Weight Watchers police… for his father.

I think the problem actually stems from Gavin and my Ex having similar food preferences. Fruit snacks, waffles, and string cheese have become major sources of contention in our home. (If you really want to see a preschooler get mad, watch him wake up to discover his father has eaten all the Scooby Doo fruit snacks the night before. It isn’t pretty.)

Now, Gavin monitors his father’s food consumption like a 3-foot tall hawk. Whenever he thinks his father is eating too much of a single item (thus increasing said item’s chances of not being available when Gavin wants it), he informs him, “Daddy, you shouldn’t eat so much food, or else you will turn into a big, fat caterpillar.” My Ex doesn’t find it very funny. I, on the other hand, am still giggling about it as I write this post.

Admittedly, I don’t help the situation. I egg Gavin on and ensure this saying sticks, often prompting him with, “Hey, what happens if Daddy eats a lot?” to which Gavin, practically on autopilot says matter-of-factly, “Big, fat caterpillar.”

Thank you, Eric Carle.