High Maintenance Mom

It took me forever to find a babysitter for our first. I kept telling myself that I didn't want to go out but really I think I just wasn't ready. Once I finally found someone, I was pregnant with our second. We scheduled three months with one date night each and it helped. The plan was to hire our babysitter to help out with the baby and to continue the date night thing -- but it didn't happen. Things got hectic, the babysitter was unavailable, and before I knew it, our second was 11 months old. We have no problem dropping both kids off at daycare for 8 or 9 hours but for some reason, night-time seemed sacred...

My mom has been telling me to get a sitter since our first was born. She didn't seem to understand my hesitation. Occasionally, she would tell me about how at six months, she had left me with my grandmother to travel around Europe with my father. I have some of the letters from my grandmother to her. "...she's doing so well. She's eating lots of new foods and has just started to crawl. I'm sure she'll be moving around in no time." My mom said it was hard to leave me but my grandmother trained me to stay in my crib and play by myself until 8 AM so it really did work out for everyone.

I'm jealous. Why is it that my parents could leave me for over a month to travel in another country and I can't leave my children for a few hours? Do I really believe that my parenting style is so wonderful that someone else, who hasn't read the same books, been to the same lectures, had the same conversations, or responded to situations the same way I do, can't help out?

So, I now face a committment that requires a babysitter. A friend found her sitter using Sittercity. The service is working well for her and she let me know how excited she is about her new freedom. I had to admit that it sounded great.

Since our old sitter isn't available, we asked a new sitter come by the house for a few hours to see our routines (I wrote everything down on paper too, just in case...). I had a late meeting and worried that our sitter wasn't going to work out. My husband was more than a little grumpy when he picked up the kids but when I called to check (I only called once) everything was fine. Our new sitter had kept both kids occupied and was able to feed the little one yogurt, a task I have not been able to accomplish for several days. It still makes me smile to think about it and although I'm a little nervous, I'm looking forward to our first night out in a long time.