Not the Babysitter's Club

My friend B called the other day to see if I would look after her little guy, baby O; we carpool with them to our women's Bible study every week, so I knew baby D would be okay with it, and I'm a big fan of his, so I said yes. B has this awesome idea of assembling a list of moms in our area who could use a couple hours of babysitting every now and then, and I think it's fabulous! This way, when one of us wants to go to an appointment, or get groceries, or even just have a bit of time to ourselves, we can! I'm lucky enough to have family nearby (including baby sis who's home from college for the summer- hooray!), but not everyone does.

As for the matter of payment, it's unnecessary for money to change hands. Even though B offered to pay, I was quite happy to have baby O come over and play with D and have lunch with us. (Because O's about three months older than D, it's fun to see what we have to look forward to with her, like eating with more skill, and crawling around. Also, the two babies seem quite taken with each other, and who could blame them? They're both ridiculously, and empirically, cute.) When B came to pick him up, she asked if I could use a box of size 3 diapers, since she had bought a huge box which no longer fit baby O. Even though I use cloth diapers, I keep disposables on hand for when we go out to church or over to a friend's house. And baby D just happens to be wearing size 3! Perfect.

All this reminds me of a system that my parents had with other families who lived in our area; it was a babysitting co-op (possibly based on the play group we attended), and families would have a certain number of poker chips that they traded for babysitting services. My mom said that they acquired way too many chips because they looked after other kids more than they needed us looked after. But it's neat to see this kind of thing repeated in my own generation.

Duvet update: at the time of posting, the duvet is still drying. Not on the line, but in the basement.