I have a confession to make. It's a little embarassing, and I think it makes me sound overprotective and uptight. I'm only a little overprotective and sometimes uptight. Before you read this, let me remind you of a few things: I let my child eat dirt. Sometimes, he plays with diaper creme and plastic bags. He regularly has dried boogers crusted under his nose. OK, here goes: In just over a week, my son will turn one, and he's never had a babysitter. That's right. Never.
Yes, Axel goes to a childcare center three or four days a week. Also, his lovely and generous grandparents watch him a couple of times a month, wanting nothing for their efforts but slobbery baby kisses, a few homemade muffins, and my husband to climb on their roof and complete slightly dangerous home maintenance tasks. But a stranger has never been compensated at an hourly rate to watch my son in my home. Never. No friendly elderly neighbors have put him to bed, no teenagers have called their boyfriends and eaten the graham crackers and sorbet we pretend is real junk food, no friends have watched Axel at our house. It's been his teachers at daycare, my parents, his dad, or me.
As you might imagine, date nights are few and far between. We've gone on a handful of parents-only outings in the last eleven months. The only movie I've seen in the theater over a year was In Bruges, which was just okay. I'm so out of the preview loop that I don't know what big Oscar contenders are coming up with nail-biting scenes that make me wish I hadn't guzzled that big Diet Coke.
For the most part, I've been fine with this. I'm not even sure where one finds a babysitter these days. Our block is teenager-less. The one trustworthy college student I tried to recruit was already booked - and then she went back to school it Atlanta. She's the sort who gets straight As, brings along a tub of craft supplies to do art projects with preschoolers, and does modeling in her spare time. I'm not even exaggerating.
Read More...
