Sit quietly

For the last 11 weeks, oodles of people have been telling me I need to get some help. Well, yes, mental help, too, but they mean help of the childcare persuasion. And I would sigh and say yes, that would be awesome but where to start? Where does one find a babysitter?

Apparently, the veritable treasure trove of available young women down the street at the large college in our neighborhood wasn't coming up in my brain as the logical place to start. Besides, I would actually have to go put up flyers and do research and interviews in all my spare time. That was said with the most dripping of sarcasm tone I can muster, by the way. Spare time! What a concept!

But when Josh weighed in and told me I should get someone to come a few hours a day, I knew he must have felt bad for me. I was complaining about it yet again to a good friend this week and she reminded me she sent me an email way back in the summer with a college student's info. At the time, I needed someone during the day to help lift Emmie when I was riddled by my pregnancy restrictions and this girl had class during the day so I never followed up.

But because I never delete anything -- my inbox contains more than 6,000 emails (my friend and longtime reader SupaCoo just died of cardiac arrest when she read that; she keeps her inbox as close to zero as possible) -- I still had the girl's info.

I called her, reached her on the first try and explained I was looking for someone two hours a day, mostly as a mother's helper, during the witching hours of dinner, bath and bedtime. She said she was available on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I fainted from excitement and then recovered and asked if she could come over to meet me and the kids. How about the following afternoon, she asked. Umm, let's see, YES!

She arrived promptly, didn't look like an axe murderer and came highly recommended by a friend of a friend. Pretty much unless she killed some kids, I was going to hire her. And even then, if they deserved it, I would have been OK with it. As soon as she walked in, Jack and Emmie started screaming that they wanted to show her their jumpy house (Doesn't everyone have a 12x9 inflatable bounce house in their basement? No? Must just be us. Moving on.) and dragged her downstairs to play.

I hung out with them for a while, chatted with her and then thrust Maeve at her and announced I was going upstairs to start dinner. Everyone seemed to have a good time and nobody cried, so I think I might have Mary Freaking Poppins on my hands here.

She said she could start Thursday, which was yesterday, and she did. At first I felt bad asking her to watch all three kids while I ran to buy batteries. After all, the reason I need a babysitter is because three kids is crazy insane. But then I remembered I am PAYING her to watch my kids. So off I went. Niggling guilt, yes, but I think I'll get over it. (But no, Aunt Marnie, I don't feel guilty leaving three kids with you and I don't even pay you. Thems the breaks.)

While it was still massive chaos, even with another adult here, it was my own fault for trying to do too much. Note to self: never again host book club thinking "That way I won't have to get a babysitter." Yeah, it's the food prep and cleaning that you really need the babysitter for, not the actual sitting-around-drinking-wine-and-gossiping part of the night.

Hopefully next week will go even better. She'll be here Tuesday with Emmie and Maeve so I can take Jack to swim class, and Thursday with all three so I can get stuff done around the house. Or, I don't know, take a nap since I have an infant who wakes up at night. Twice a night. If I am lucky.

And yes, I am now the stay-at-home mom who has help with the kids. Next thing you know, I'll be shopping, going out to lunch and getting manicures.