C & I have been actively looking for someone to have on call to watch Addy occasionally. With the house hunting coming up and our wanting to have a date night every once in a while (like, maybe see a movie while it's STILL in the theaters?!) and other activities where bringing a child is not the best idea, it seemed like it was time for us to find a nice, responsible person to come spend a few hours with Addy.
Biased or silly as it may seem, our criteria includes: a female, upper teens to low 20s (older HS student or college age), available evenings & weekends, experienced, reliable, creative, able to cook easy meals (pasta or chicken nuggets, etc), active, CPR & First Aid certified...
Basically, we want someone to run around with Addy & not just plop her in front of the tv and allow her to gorge herself on cookies or fruit snacks. We have a decent park nearby and plenty of toys & coloring stuff for them to use.
Anyway, I posted an ad on this website I found: care.com because it was free and I thought I would check it out. We did look on Craig's List but the one person we actually contacted never wrote back and doesn't that seem kind of scary to you? All the people on care.com have background checks & references available if you choose to use them.
Care.com is tricky though. Yes, you can set up a job and you can search profiles and you can say to yourself, "That person looks awesome! I'm going to send her a message!" BUT THEN, the tricksy care.com actually X's out your e-mail address & phone number! So you think you'll get around paying for a membership by including your personal e-mail address but they make it impossible to contact anyone!
The good (or bad) thing though is that in one day, I have had EIGHTEEN people respond to my ad! I actually may remove it because I can't deal with all that. C & I decided to pick the best 5 and set up appointments to meet them (after I paid my $35 membership upgrade fee). Then we'll make a call from there.
I feel bad eliminating people from my search and sometimes I just don't even have a good reason other than I can tell that that's not the person I want watching my child. It's a gut thing. I eliminated 3-4 people just because they were older than we desired. I don't know, it's probably biased or ageist but I'm not sure a grandmother will be as good at keeping up with my 2-year-old.
No capitalization? Gone. Bad spelling or grammar? Gone. Addressed your message to me,"Dear Meaghan"? Gone. I have to draw the line somewhere I guess.
I'll keep you posted on the search but here's hoping we find some nice girls who can spell and like to play with kids!
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