SO!

 Since I found out I wasn’t going to be able to move, I decided to advertise on CraigsList for a few kids to babysit over the summer. Initially I didn’t get ANY responses, and I had posted the ad a couple of weeks before school let out for summer, so I thought for sure that I had just missed the daycare rush and everyone who needed a sitter for summer had already found one. I kept renewing the post anyways, because I was desperate…

SO! I finally got a few emails, all for jobs I didn’t want. I advertised for summer only, school age kids. I got responses asking me to take 3 year olds, one of which is not potty trained and is vegetarian. Huge hassle. I also got an email from a woman looking for care for her 7 yr old, which I JUMPED on and emailed her back right away, she arranged a time to come by and meet me, on Friday, but then never showed up. Which sort of sucked, because I spent all day scrubbing my house from top to bottom, in order to be prepared. Another woman with a 3 yr old emailed me with her number and I sent her an email back explaining that I would only be able to offer care through the summer, and would that work for her family, but she never responded again. I also emailed the mother of the 7 yr old asking if she would like to reschedule and meet up this weekend or during the week sometime, but no answer.

This leaves me with the vegetarian, un-toilet trained 3 1/2 yr old. Now, if you know me at all (Melissa.) you know that one of my pet peeves is kids who aren’t potty trained. I don’t think there’s any excuse for it, unless your child has special needs. It’s just you and/or your child being lazy. Which is fine, if that’s what you want to do, you want to spend 100s of $$ on diapers and keep wiping your kids butt, that’s great! But *I* am not in the mood for wiping other kids’ butts when they’re old enough to know better and use the toilet. I potty trained Milo almost as soon as he turned 2. It took a couple weeks, and I wanted to pull my hair out, but it wasn’t too bad in the long run, and now he’s completely toilet trained and he’s not even 2 1/2. I don’t think all kids are ready at the same time, but I think that AT or BY 3 years old, your child should be out of diapers. End of story.  ((And NO, I do not want to hear the story about how/why you didn’t potty train your own child before they were 3, or 4, or whatever, because it doesn’t effect me at all, and I’ve definitely heard it before.)) 

The woman wrote that her son is "doing well with potty training" so I have hopes that he won’t be in diapers/pull ups for much longer, and that once he’s been here for a couple of weeks, and I can have him in underwear full time. Sounds ambitious, and it’ll depend on how well he really is doing with the potty training. OH, and his mom is vegan, which in my mind means she’s going to be fussy and particular, and probably a pain in the ass, but that’s just the impression I get from emailing her. She asked me a bunch of questions in her first email that were very clearly answered in my ad. She also doesn’t seem to actually read what I write back to her, because she will respond to me and ask me questions I JUST answered, and also when we were arranging a time to meet, I told her that Monday (Memorial Day) would be fine because we didn’t have plans, but to make it for either before 12 or after 3, because my youngest will be napping in the afternoon, and she asked me if she could come at 2. NO, PAY ATTENTION. I emailed her back and asked if we could push it to 3 and she said that was fine. Seriously? At first I thought that maybe she had other plans after 3pm, but nope! Just didn’t pay attention the first time.

She also asked me what my meals/snacks are like during the day, which sort of threw me for a loop, because you’d think that a mom whose kid has a restricted diet would want to provide meals for that child. So now I have to come up with vegetarian meals to feed this child. I hope he’s a good eater, or he’s gunna end up having lots of PB&J and Mac&Cheese. lol For the other kids, I usually make grilled cheese, sandwiches, chicken nuggets, hot dogs, spaghetti… STUFF WITH MEAT! lol… he also can’t have most candies, or anything with gelatin (marshmallows, jello) either. SO, that’ll be fun.

Because of all of this, I told her Iw as going to charge her $150/week. She told me that $600/month is more than she was hoping to spend, but I just ignored that statement in one of her many emails, because that’s a really decent rate for a kid that would be in the "toddler" age group due to still being in diapers. If he were potty trained, I would have told her the same rate I told everyone else who emailed me and asked, which is $125/week, coming to $500/mo instead of $600. But, sorry, this sounds hugely inconvenient. PLUS, none of the other kids/parents who emailed me actually ended up working out, so I need the money.. 

Then one of Kasin’s friends, Aiden, who lives down the road, brought his mom over to meet me. Since the last few weeks of school, Kasin and Aiden have been hanging out a whole lot because they realized they only live a few houses away from each other. So they’ve been playing in our yard or his yard, hanging out A LOT, running around on their bikes, etc. Aiden also has a younger brother, Owen, who is 5, and he tags along with them a lot, too. I had tried to go down and meet their mom, just because I wasn’t super comfortable with Kasin spending so much time over there with people I hadn’t met (he wasn’t allowed in their house, just in the yard) and Kasin really wanted to be able to play INSIDE, and I had told him he couldn’t go in anyone’s house unless I knew their parents. However, the day I walked over there, she was napping and so I told Aiden not to wake her up and that I’d try again later.

BUT! She came over here yesterday during out cook out and met me and we talked, and she said that Kasin mentioned I was doing daycare here at my house this summer. She apparently needs someone to watch Aiden and Own every other week, as her 14 yr old daughter spends every other week with her dad. I told her I’d be more than happy to take them! She said she’d call me later and talk about rates and what not. I’m not sure how much to charge her, because a.) there’s 2 kids, and b.) They’d only be Tue-Fri, not 5 days a week. Everyone else is paying $25/day, so for her that’d be $50/day, which comes to $200/week for both kids. That seems like too much, to me! I may just ask her what she would expect to pay, or how much she can afford, because I don’t want to put her out by overcharging, either. Plus, since her kid and my kid are really good friends, I feel like I should cut her a deal. Maybe I’ll just take them both for $150/week, which is just another $300/month, but that’s better than nothing, huh? 

For a couple of weeks here and there over the summer, I will also be babysitting a friend (Krystal)’s daughter, Kalli, who is going to be 3 in August. She’s been potty training that kid for like a year and still isn’t ready to switch her to undies, but I think Kalli is more ready than her mom is. lol.. I think once they switch, it’ll be a sealed deal, but she’s younger so I’m not too worried about all that. She’ll send her in pull ups and she can use Milo’s frog potty, and it’ll be fine. Unless she switches her to undies before she ends up coming. I really think she could switch her and it would take a couple days for Kalli to realize she doesn’t have the option of a diaper anymore, and then she’d be good to go. I think most people get really down about that, though, and they decide to nix the underwear before giving it a real chance. I get that it’s messy, but, well, kids are messy. lol  ANYHOW, I told her I’d charge her $125/week, but that I could give her a discount if she needed it, because I didn’t want to put her out, either.. she’s a single mom who lives at home with her parents and is trying sooo hard to move out with her daughter, but so far hasn’t been able to. She said her co-pay at her regular daycare is about $80/week, anyways, so she’d let me know if she couldn’t pay the full amount.

ANYWAYS, so I’ve had plenty of interest, no commitments… The lady with the vegetarian 3.5 yr old should be here in about 15 minutes, though, so hopefully she’s not as picky as I’m expecting, and she’ll like us and we’ll have her son starting June 3rd. He’s only in town for June and July, so I won’t have to worry about him in August and going to start my internship the week before school starts for the kids wont be an issue. 

IN OTHER NEWS, I heard from a friend who lives at Executive Estates (the sister low-income housing to the one I applied to, Chenana, and was denied at, due to my bad credit.) that the lady I was working with at Chenana is a real b!tch and that I should just call over to Executive and talk to the head office lady there and see what she can do. The friend who gave me the info also told me that the office lady there (Diane) said she would help me and that I should put my friend’s name down as a reference and that it will help me since she knows the friend and the friend is a great tenant and all that. SO, there’s hope after all! I’m going to call over there tomorrow and tell her I can’t move until August because of my lease here (Which isnt true, we don’t have a lease here) but that I would ideally like to move on August 1st. We’ll see what happens! I had already given into the idea that we were just going to stay here for the next year and make do.. but we are already behind on our rent.

We are also hoping to take out a personal loan with Ross’s dad as a co-signor, for about $15,000. Absurd, I know, but that’s about what it will cost to pay HALF of our rent (here) for a full year and then pay my tuition for the student teaching year. (about 4k/semester, for 2 semesters.) 

I’m SO NERVOUS. Wish me luck… all over the place. 🙂
~ Ashley