When we first moved to the Financial District in New York City, we moved into a building in which we were only one-of-two families who lived in the building. The rest of the inhabitants? They were all post-college 22-year olds. Not necessarily the perfect neighbors (we’ve been kept up many nights due to loud parties), but we found two amazing babysitters: Ashley and Katie. Ashley lived next door to us (she wasn’t the party neighbor – they lived on the other side), and Katie lived a few floors up. They were perfect: they lived in our building, they were young and they were energetic. And when they weren’t going out, they gave me and Michael the time to go out ourselves.
Eight years and a couple of apartment moves later, Katie had moved to the Upper West Side and we used her less often. Ashley, moved to the Upper East Side and we continued to use her, but also less because she was a 45-minute subway ride away, not next door. About four weeks ago, Ashley told us the big news that she was moving out of New York City. Selfish me, my first thought was, “Oh no! What are we going to do?!” Then, a week after Ashley left, I got an email from Katie announcing that she, too, was leaving New York City. I couldn’t believe that both of our long-time date-night babysitters were leaving NYC – within a week of each other!
Besides our girls’ daily caregiver who has also been with us for eight years, both Katie and Ashley have watched our girls grow up. They both knew all the little things about our girls: from the long process of putting the girls to sleep to the correct way of singing the “Lullaby Song.” And now they are both gone.
Our date-night babysitters moving on made me think of the stages that we go through in life. Both Katie and Ashley became part of our family when they were in their young 20′s. I knew that the time would come when they would out-grow us, but it just came so soon…these eight years just went so fast.
Now, we have a new date night sitter. We’ve known her for five years and she’s actually the older sister of one of O’s classmates. She’s in high-school, so somewhat closer in age to our girls, so she “gets” them. She’s told O that her two favorite book series are Harry Potter and Lemony Snickett – the same as O’s; and she knows all the celebrities featured on Nickelodeon’s Kid’s Choice Awards.
We’ve been lucky that we’ve been able to find smart, trustworthy, reliable date-night sitters who love our girls. I’m just bracing myself for when our current date-night sitter moves on to her next stage in life — college, or starts going out on Friday and Saturday nights. What will we do then?!? Guess we’ll figure that out when we cross that stage in her life.
xo,
Triple Threat Mommy