Babysitter Try-outs - Round 1

September 24th. Giants Stadium. Mommy, Daddy, and U2 (and maybe you too if you have tickets). It sounds like a perfect evening, but you may notice there's one key component missing - Kaylani. When Daddy got tickets, he expected joy and excitement to be the response he got from Mommy since she's never been and always wanted to. Instead, he got a much different response.

The first words out of Mommy's mouth were "what about Kaylani?" It's a fair question, considering that Kaylani has never been away from both Mommy and Daddy for more than 30 minutes (and that was just so Mommy could come relay a message to Daddy at the pool in PR during nap time). Finding a babysitter was not one of Daddy's top priorities, especially when the concert wouldn't be for almost 6 months. It was, and has been, on Mommy's mind for quite some time though.

We have plenty of babysitters to choose from, and all of them have significant babysitting experience. There's Danika who lives 10 minutes away and has raised 2 daughters already. There's my Mom who would be willing to come down to visit and watch Kaylani for awhile. There's Neha who would love to babysit (although there's a chance she may try and steal Kaylani instead). Or there's all of Kaylani's friends parents in the area who would be happy to babysit (in exchange for their own night out some other time of course). Experienced options were not the issue.

When choosing a babysitter, it's important that Kaylani feels comfortable. And the only way we can judge Kaylani's comfort level would be for her to spend more time with her babysitter. So today, we took the first step, or round 1 in our babysitter try-outs. We headed over to Danika's for lunch, and after about an hour, Kaylani looked pretty tired so we issued a challenge to Danika. If she could get Kaylani to sleep, she would pass a major checkpoint in our search for a babysitter. We didn't think there was any chance since Kaylani has never fallen asleep with anyone other than us. Danika, loving a challenge, gave it a shot and wouldn't you know it, had Kaylani asleep in less than 10 minutes.

Now, you would think this would be a joyous occasion from Mommy, but like the U2 reaction, it was mixed. Instead of complete joy that we were one step closer to having some time to ourselves, it was a little sad that our little girl was moving on. It was one less thing that Kaylani needed from us. But at the same time, it was one step forward in Kaylani's independence, which is definitely a step in the right direction. It's also possible that she was just so tired from not sleeping last night or that Danika drugged her with Benadryl, but I guess we'll stick with the independence thing for now.

In any case, looks like we have our first babysitter past round 1. We're not sure what will be in our round 2 interviews, but one of these rounds will certainly involve a bottle. Sleep is one thing, but eating is an entirely different story. For all you potential babysitters, I'd study up now. But I bet it'll end up being harder for Mommy to handle whenever it happens. Oh well, seeing U2 should fix that.