Last week, I dipped my toe in the babysitting co-op water. I responded to an email from a woman (who I had not met) looking for a Friday night sitter for her six year old son. The Ex had an event to attend that Friday anyway, and so it seemed like a good opportunity for me and G (as we would otherwise have been sitting at home).

The woman seemed nonplussed by the fact that she had not met me before, since every new member is vetted by the co-op before joining. In fact, when G and I arrived at her house, she barely acquainted herself with me before she and her husband headed out to the theater. She clearly had more confidence in my babysitting skills than I did.

A side note: Prior to last week, the last time I babysat was in high school. And, while I am a mother, it is so different interacting with your own child. I was quite nervous that I would be a bad babysitter.

Anyway, I brought G along for the sit because I thought a 4 year old and a 6 year old would play well together. (And because I had sold the co-op as the “Friends Come Over and Play Club.” It’s all about marketing.) Boy, was I wrong. The boy I was sitting for - we’ll call him Andrew - had zero interest in G. And, upon realizing this, G, who was so excited to go to “the Club,” promptly had a meltdown. He stood in the doorway with his head down, whimpering that he wanted to go home. Meanwhile, Andrew tried to get me to ignore G and play a game with him instead. He called G “weird” and I had to remind myself that I was also Andrew’s sitter and it would not be appropriate to lambaste the monster for making fun of my poor baby.

After 30 minutes of coaxing, I got G to return to the playroom where Andrew was building a train track. Andrew wanted me to build it with him and actually passed the pieces around G to give to me. Awful. That sent G back to the doorway for another 15 minutes.

Finally, it was time for Andrew to go to bed. After he was asleep, G and I built a big train track of our own and read a bunch of books. I promised myself I would only bring G to sits where the children were his age or where I had met them before.

When the parents came home, we concluded the sit experience with a discussion of points transfer (aka my “payment” since co-op use points, not money). I was to email the co-op secretary and inform her that I was due 17 points - 6 for traveling to the sittee’s house, 4 for each of the hours Andrew was awake, and 1 point for the hours thereafter. I did this as soon as I got, unable to keep from wondering incredulously if there was not a better way.

The meeting started by handing out a sheet of paper with each member’s points. Then, the chair read this sheet, line-by-line, aloud. She read each of the twenty-five members names and their respective points, while the rest of us followed along, as though we were somehow unable to read the sheet of paper for ourselves. After the reading of the points was complete, we discussed ideas for social events. Among the suggestions were: playgroup and get-together at the park. I had to wonder how many times these social events had been suggested before, as they seemed rather obvious. Didn’t the group already have such activities on a regular basis?

Then, the icing on the cake. The old secretary (who had completed her two-month term) handed The Book over to the new secretary. The Book was a 3-inch binder that contained all the sittings that had occurred in the co-op. When a member completed a sit, she/he called the secretary and reported it. Then, the secretary recorded the sit and the points in The Book. The Book was the official source of record.

I was flabbergasted that none of this -save coordinating sits, on occasion - occurred online. How antiquated and archaic the methods for what otherwise would be such a great idea. Granted, I have not yet coordinated a sit myself and I am looking forward to doing so and to finding out how this process works, firsthand.

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.

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…

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.

I joined facebook in 2004, as a senior at Harvard (the school where the site originated). My member number (the order in which you joined the site, relative to everyone else) was in the hundreds. Facebook now boasts millions of users. Though I am late 20s, I felt no shame in my social networking addiction.

Until my parents joined. And my crazy relatives. And they all friended me. Not only did they friend me, but they started posting on my wall and messaging me PROFUSELY.

Suddenly, I saw a vision of myself 20 years from now. I hope to god I have enough self awareness not to put Gavin through what my “I’m 20-something still, aren’t I?” relatives are currently putting ME through.

When my son was born, my friends showered me with gifts of cute little onesies, baby bjorns, and stuffed animals galore. Had one them been a parent themselves, I remain certain they would instead have given me full body armor and a helmet.

You see, I am writing this post on the eve of my septoplasty. For those of you who don’t know, a septoplasty is a surgical procedure done to repair a damaged septum. I was not born with a deviated or damaged septum. No, my injury occurred at the hands - err, the diapered butt - of my three year old son.

Two months ago, I was very innocently lying in bed on a Saturday morning. Gavin, thrilled that it was a weekend day (what he aptly refers to as a “Mommy-Gavin Day”), bounded into my room and threw all 40 lbs of his toddler self upon me. In his pure elation, he did not consider neither his takeoff nor his landing, and he landed, diaper first, right onto my face.

My nose wasn’t broken, so I assumed all was okay. The only thing I found strange was that ever since the nose-landing incident, I suffered an unusual amount of congestion. Finally, I took myself to see a doctor who quickly assessed the situation. My septum was bent and the only way to repair it was through surgery. (He assured me that this was a very common injury, especially for those with large dogs and / or small children.)

So, tomorrow I will have my surgery. The sympathy from those around me is truly wonderful, though. When I told my Jewish mother what had happened, her reaction was, “So you’re having a nose job?” My Ex is having even more fun telling people that I am “having my nose modified.”

FML.

Here are some of my tips for making the change from spender to saver:

• Buy second-hand. You can score amazing deals on name brand items if you buy them used. I buy lots of goods second-hand and save SO much money that way. I got a like-new, low mileage, previously owned car last year and saved about $10,000 off what it would have cost me had I purchased it new the year before. I also buy most of son’s clothing at second-hand stores, getting things like Ralph Lauren polos for $3 and Baby Gap jeans for $5.
• Buy discount. For those items you need (or prefer) new, hit up discount stores such as Nordstrom Rack, TJ Maxx, Marshalls, etc. You can score some high-quality items at reduced prices - I just bought a necklace at Nordstrom Rack that retails for $250. The price I paid? $40.
• Buy real estate. That probably sounds crazy right now, but if you can afford it (and are stable in your job), now is actually a good time to buy. Interest rates are low, as are home prices, and the federal government is strongly considering increasing the first-time homeowners tax credit from the current $7500 to $15,000. Additionally, the government is considering turning this interest-free loan into a lump sum that would not need to be repaid. As in, free money.
• Buy in bulk. I don’t clip coupons, nor do I make a shopping list before I head to the store. Instead, I simply shop based on what’s at a good price when I go and stock up on items I know I’ll use. Try to avoid the multiple trips to the grocery store each week - you’ll spend more that way. Also, pay attention to the unit price of an item (usually listed in the corner of the price label) and buy it in whatever size it is the cheapest (but buy multiples of that size). The largest size is usually the cheapest, but not always. So check.
• Bring lunch and drink office coffee. This one has saved me nearly $3,000 per year. A morning latte ($3) and a sandwich for lunch ($7) doesn’t seem like a lot until you look at what it’s doing to your budget on a yearly basis. I switched to drinking coffee in the office (unlimited refills!) and bringing my lunch - anything from leftovers from the night before to macaroni and cheese with frozen edamame.

A 33-year old American woman named Nadya Suleman just had a set of octuplets, bringing her total number of children to fourteen. Fourteen! Holy hell. And, the oldest of the children is seven. She has fourteen children under the age of eight.

Just reading this story online yesterday made me want to lie down and take a nap. How does one parent fourteen small children? Suleman is not married and is on welfare - all fourteen of her children were conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF). While I am all for women raising children on their own if they so desire, I think it is highly irresponsible to purposely impregnate oneself that frequently. And, to rub salt into this wound, the woman receives public assistance. Tax payers are supporting Suleman’s little hobby. Suleman’s mother explains that her daughter is “obsessed with children.”

So unbelievably irresponsible. No one knows how Suleman was able to convince a doctor to implant eight embryos at once, especially in a woman under 35 with six other children. The father of all fourteen kids is reportedly a neighbor of Suleman’s who had donated his sperm. However, this neighbor recently married, according to the Telegraph, and asked Suleman to stop using his sperm to conceive children. Clearly, she did not comply with his wishes.

I hope someone examines Suleman’s mental health and evaluates her ability to care for that many kids. So sad.

My soon-to-be three year old does this Jekyll and Hyde act. At school, he parades around in a dry diaper all day, politely using the potty whenever the urge strikes him. His teachers insist he is potty-trained and want to move him up to the next classroom where the kids no longer where diapers.

I refuse. Why, you ask? Well, once home, Mr. Potty Trained turns into a peeing machine. We put him in underwear - he peed right through them. We put him in pull-ups training pants - he adjusted himself such that he was able to pee outside the training pants without actually wetting himself. While very resourceful, he did wind up wetting my couch.

We make the potty available to him. We encourage him to use the potty instead of diapers / pull-ups / underwear. I’ve even bribed the kid with ice cream. (In my defense, my Ex bribed him with a pet goldfish.) Nothing.

Does anyone out there have any potty-training tips for me? I am getting really, really tired of waking up to the sound of “Uh-oh, Mommy. I peed on my bed.”