Adventures in babysitters…

Lately, we’ve had a number of activities that have kept me from posting (parent orientation meetings, dinners, etc.) and have required us to dive in blindly and find good babysitters to watch the kids.   By asking the neighbors who they use, we got the numbers of a few high school students in the neighborhood.   So far, they’ve worked out well, no 911 calls had to be made, and the kids don’t run and hide when they show up at our doorstep.  Success is measured in small steps these days…

As I’m writing their checks, I’m struck by the fact that I’ve hired someone not old enough to vote, who is legitimately young enough to be my child, to watch my children.  It’s foreign to me.  And yet, I know people hire high school students to babysit all the time.  I, myself, was hired out as a babysitter in high school and made quite a nice earning from watching little kids so the parents could get out.  As a bonus, I scored some time watching cable channels we didn’t have at home and rummaged through their pantry (ALWAYS keeping in mind the Cardinal Rule of babysitting – never open anything and never finish anything, always eat just enough to get satisfied, but not enough that it will piss the parents off). 

In Denver, we found some fantastic babysitters through Craigslist, of all places.  They were usually college or grad school students, working on some kind of Early Childhood Education degree.  Our last babysitter, Amie, was a true gem.  I hired her when it was time to get back to rehearsal after I had Miss P, and I was desperate to find someone.  However, I was a bit apprehensive.  Miss P wasn’t colicky, but she was an intense baby with really early separation anxiety, could scream bloody murder at the drop of a hat and continue for a good solid half an hour.  At times, I had to put her in her crib and walk out to the backyard to collect myself.  So I was terrified to hire some youngin’ who couldn’t handle the stress.  Shaken Baby Syndrome anyone?  Then came Amie to the rescue.  She was kind, gentle, patient, engaged, and the kids adored her. 

However, Amie had to head to Germany for four months about a year after we hired her, and I once again found myself on the hunt for a temporary babysitter.  I did the usual search, narrowed things down to two folks, did calls to their references, ran a background check (both came back fine) and decided to go with the one who seemed a bit more spunky and energetic.  For the sake of anonymity, I’ll call her Erica.    We hired her before the winter break, as she was heading back home to the northeast, and she started the first week in January.

I should have known something was off.  That first week after I wrote her a check, she called and told me she had problems cashing it and wanted to ask for her pay in cash.  Oh, and could I also pay her in advance for the next week since she needed the money to put a deposit on an apartment?  I compromised and told her she had until the end of the month to figure out how to deposit our checks, and that this was the only time I’d advance her salary.  I would love to say this was the only thing that made me cautious, but it was just the beginning.

Little things started happening that didn’t make sense.  I came home one day to find that she has showered.  Showered.  Huh?  Her excuse was that she had started her period and bled through her clothes.  Yet she just happened to have a change of clothes AND a towel in her car.  For crying out loud, girl, are you homeless?? Then she started eating us out of house and home.  For real.  I’d come home to warm up leftovers for dinner, only to find that they had all been eaten.  Or I’d look for that box of crackers and they were gone.  Or that a frozen dinner had turned missing.  Again, I jumped to homelessness.  What the hell was going on?  The kids never really said anything bad about her, so I didn’t give it too much thought.

Then about 5 weeks after she’d been with us, I don’t know what made me do it.  But I googled her.  Yes, that’s right, I used google as a detective tool.  And you wanna know what the first thing was that popped up on her?  Are you sitting down for this?  Erica was ARRESTED.  On CHRISTMAS DAY of all things.  For…are you ready?…Narcotics possession.

After my shocked silence wore off, I lost my shit.  Are you f’ing kidding me?  What do you have to do to get ARRESTED on Christmas Day??  My guess is she got pulled over or something and they found drugs on her.  Perfect.  I had hired someone with a drug record to drive my precious cargo around.  I was livid.  Of course, Erica never divulged any of this to me.  And it happened after I had done all my safety nets.  But looking back, everything suddenly made sense!  Of course she needed cash instead of a check.  And no wonder she ate everything in sight – she had the munchies!  It might also explain the mid-day shower.  Scenarios started running through my head of her getting pulled over, searched and arrested with my kids in the car.  Horrifying. 

So, I did what any good parent would do.  I Nanny-cammed her.  Well, not exactly.  I knew she used my computer, so I left an audio recording software running one day and left my laptop open.  That night, armed with a bottle of wine, I listened to all 5 hours of it with my jaw dropped open.  She was okay with the kids…just okay.  There were lots of time-outs given, and at one point she accused my 20-month old daughter of lying.  Really?  But it wasn’t like she was abusive or anything.  But after she had taken Mr. B to school and put Miss P down for a nap, the audio file got real interesting.  She spent the next two hours on the phone to her friends while eating two separate lunches.  And in those phone calls, she explained to her friends how great the pot was out in Colorado, how she’s figured out how to smoke weed just enough so that she’s not baked all day, and then some stories about her court date that would have her leaving Colorado a good 2 months earlier than our agreed upon date.  Oh, and she went outside for about ten minutes.  God only knows what she was doing.  A quick search on my computer showed that she had been looking for jobs at a marijuana dispensary in her spare time.  Clearly this wasn’t the occasional party toker, this was someone who used pot as a way of living.  Say what you will about legalization and all, I could care less.  What you do in your spare time is your business, but if that’s your lifestyle choice, I don’t want you watching my children. 

I was sweaty, panicked, betrayed, angry…you name it.  How dare this woman lie to me, take care of my children, and try to weasel her way around things.  I came up with a story about how Miss P had suddenly and finally gotten in to the daycare center we had her waitlisted on and that we were giving her half a week’s notice for termination.  I never told her I knew all of this stuff, but it didn’t matter.  I wanted her out of our lives for good. 

Thankfully the other babysitter I had interviewed was still available and stepped in to help out.  She turned out to be fantastic, and I have since pimped her out to all my other mommy friends in Denver.  But I still feel a bit burned by that whole experience.  As parents, we put so much trust in to the people that look after our kids when we want/need to get away.  I can’t stay cooped up in this house forever!  Our latest babysitter is a squeaky-clean and nerdy as they come, and I love her for it.