Finding a Sitter

An unfortunate part of being in the Air Force is that you are far from family. Obviously, we would prefer that our parents or other family members care for Elise when we leave her, but that's not something we get to choose right now. Now that MDO is out for the summer, I have no way to attend doctor appointments or hair appointments without Elise. We do have many friends here that we would absolutely trust with Elise, but we prefer to be professional with things of that nature. Plus, we wouldn't want our friends to feel like they're being taken for granted and hey, sometimes, we want to go out with them too! So we felt it was best to go out and find ourselves a reliable sitter for Elise.

This is a tough thing to decide....finding a stranger you're comfortable enough with to watch and take care of the most precious thing you have. It was really daunting to me at first. I asked many of my mom friends who they used. Some use high school students/neighbors, some used young women they knew from church, and others used online services. Since my husband and I agreed that Elise is too young for high school students, and we don't attend church, we opted for the online services.

We chose to use care.com. Since I only needed it for this one time, I simply paid $25 for one month of service and posted the job I wanted filled online. It was just for a date night and I waited for the applications to fall into my inbox. It was pretty slow at first. Eventually I got some bites and chose three girls whose applications stood out to me to interview in my home and meet my daughter. The website is really great in that the potential sitters all have profiles that are like resumes, and I was able to view background checks before any of them came into my home. My husband could only be present for one of the interviews, and since I have quite a bit of experience in babysitting myself, I conducted the interviews and follow ups.

These are the sample questions I used for the interviews and then I answered their questions about myself, Elise and our family:

1. Tell me about yourself. What do you do/What are you studying?
2. What's your previous experience with children?
3. What age(s) are you most comfortable with? Why?
4. What are your strengths/weaknesses in working with children?
5. Do you have a philosophy on discipline? If so, what is it?
6. What constitutes as an emergency?
7. Are you comfortable with traveling with our daughter?
8. Do you have any questions for me?

I had one girl just not show up at all, which was frustrating. Pretty unprofessional in my opinion, so I chose to go ahead and cross her off the list. The other three I interviewed, we all really liked. They were all professional, sweet and polite. Though one had a not so flexible schedule (which could come in handy if I needed someone to watch Elise during the day if I had a doctors appt), and one was very obviously uncomfortable with our large dog.

Luckily, we found a sitter we are pretty excited about. Elise seemed to really like her, which says a lot since Elise can be really shy around new people and this girl wasn't at our house for very long. We chose someone who had more experience with Elise's age group and has a joyful disposition. She only works part time and is flexible with her schedule.

I'm not sure if other moms do this or not, but I also typed out a pretty detailed list of Elise's nighttime routine. I honestly don't know if I'm doing it for the sitter, Elise, or myself and my own peace of mind. It doesn't really matter to me either way!

We are testing the waters this weekend when my husband and I go out on a date. Our sitter will simply be getting Elise ready for bed and putting her down, so not really a huge challenge. Though it is still an adjustment, so we fully expect hiccups. We feel though, that Elise is getting older and becoming more adept at handling these new situations and we should be giving her the opportunity to adjust to new things and people like this.