Poll: Do you have babysitters?

[*anj*]

The Anniversary thread made me wonder about this. So, how many of you actually hire babysitters?

[Crissy]

My kids are old enough now that we don't, but when they were younger we regularly hired a babysitter. We had three regulars from which to choose, and we paid well enough that they always made themselves available.

[nancypants]

We do. We have two teenage girls from church that love watching the boys. The kids are always super excited when the girls come over. It's fairly rare. Maybe twice a year at most.

[stephanie]

I have a neighbor that is 16 and we have her watch the kids if it's for a short amount of time. She only watches them when her parents are home so in case of emergency. If dh and I go out for a day or so then we bring them to family or we also have a babysitter who is 23 and she is awesome! It's worth it to dh and I-just to have a little time to ourselves.

[Pster]

No answer fit - we don't have babysitters. Would if we could. Just relatively new here so we haven't found them yet I guess. We are going to try and switch off and on 2x a month with another family soon. Then I guess we wouldn't need an official babysitter.

When our parents come visit - they do watch the kids for us tho!

[Plaid Dad]

We rarely go out alone (sad to say), but when we do we usually leave our dd with our neighbors. We watch their girls on occasion, too, particularly during the day if the mom needs to run an errand and doesn't want to wake the younger one up from her nap. We live in a two-family house, so we're all under the same roof, although in different living spaces. It's very convenient, and the kids get along well.

[dangermom]

For the past few years we've had a regular babysitter; a girl from church whose parents are friends of the family. She's great, and shows up every Saturday at 6.30 unless she has something else she has to do. Now she's 16 and has a life, so we're going to get a new girl pretty soon--we know her from church too, but she's also a close neighbor and homeschooled.

It's really nice to have a regular babysitter; I don't have to remember to call someone and the kids look forward to Saturday nights.

[KristineIN]

Well I voted for the last one, because we have never "hired" a babysitter. I have dropped them off at a friends house, if I have a dental appointment or something like that, but very RARELY do dh & I just go out for a pleasure date without the kids. Now I did learn of a homeschooling family that lives just up the road that I could probably call on, but we just don't. We don't have the extra money to go out, and we'd rather just stay in. One thing that we do do is they have pretty early bedtimes, so I do have time to myself/ourselves in the evenings.

Kristine

[Cathy in IL]

I rarely go anywhere wothout my children, but I do need sitters when I need to bring my ds to doctors and hospitals. Thankfully I have friends from church and my homeschool group who take the girls for me. My church has a deacon who helps me find care for my other children when I have to run my ds to the ER. The support has been great! Last time he was in I had 4 different places where my dd's could have stayed. I have really been blessed.

[Amy loves Bud]

I had to check them all! We have friends we trade off with frequently. We hire sitters (friend's teenage daughter and a former employee of ours mostly) from time to time. We have family that will sit overnight if we want, but we're really more comfortable with our friends in that regard, so we're more likely to do that. But, we never leave a baby with a sitter before a year old or so. I might make an exception this time with one of my good friends here in the neighborhood.

[*anj*]

Yeah, but Kristine, how about this?

You can make a trade off arrangement with the family down the road and then after you drop the kids off you just come back home without them!

You can have a date at your own house!
Think about it: a little chicken tikka masala, only enough naan for two people, a little backrub, a little...well I think you can figure it out. And even if you don't do the backrub and all, you could enjoy a quiet conversation. :cool:

[Lorna in the boonies]

We never had babysitters. For our first 12 years of parenthood, we lived an hour away from civilization, and we did so on a small town pastor's budget -- this meant that by the time we traveled to town, we couldn't afford to do anything!

Now we live 10 minutes from civilization and our oldest child is just a few days shy of 15 -- so now we can leave them on a regular basis. It's nice. It's very nice.

(If we could have afforded a babysitter during those years, we would probably have used one once a month or so.)

[GraciebytheBay]

I chose "we have relatives who babysit for us," but the relatives are our older children! Before they were old enough to babysit, we hired someone every once in a while, but it was so expensive (but usually worth it).:)

[Kristafish]

but I'm wondering if that will change when the baby comes :)
Our kids now can kind of watch themselves(12 and 11) and are no problem for family.. throw a newborn in and who knows LOL
We don't go out all that much without the kids anyway :)

[Jackie in AR]

The Anniversary thread made me wonder about this. So, how many of you actually hire babysitters?

We did when the dc were younger. Now that they're older, my in-laws will keep them for a couple of hours if we want to go out to eat.

Sometimes all 4 dc go to my parents' home and spend a couple of nights and we'll try to do something then.

I can't remember the last time we hired a sitter.