My wife and I always seem to be on the quest for a better babysitter. Why the hell is it so difficult to find reliable people to watch over our children? We don’t require but a few fundamental qualities in a babysitter; human safeguard, cleanliness, and the ability to immerse themselves with the children and their activities. Of course logical qualities such as hygiene, overall responsibility, attentiveness and common sense are always expected of the people we entrust the health and safety of our children. But why do we constantly feel like the viable options for available sitters are so damned scarce?

Unfortunately our experiences with babysitters have been pretty shitty- you cannot imagine the things we’ve come home to. Picture this, you and your spouse actually have an opportunity to get out for an evening, without children for the first time in months and you want to make the most of it. So you call the best option you have for a sitter, lay down the rules or expectations you have and then escape your home as quickly as possible. With four children you never know what might come up so in order not to risk waiting around for a “night stopper”, you have to make your way to the car expediently- almost as if you’re crossing southbound over the North Korean border. Usually the children give straightforward and intensive interrogations when meeting a new sitter, so you typically have about 2-3 minutes before they realize you’re still there and catch you with 1000 questions not excluding “can you bring me something back”?

So you and your spouse step out for that rare and highly enjoyable evening, with thoughts of possibly coming home to 4 sleeping kids, a clean house and perhaps even try to get all Tarzan-like with your significant other in the bedroom….but noooooo, asking for just one smooth evening would be too damned much. Usually after returning from outside of the home when a sitter was required, something is often amiss. The kids are all awake, messes are everywhere in sight and all factors once again ultimately result in “no sex for daddy”.

Perhaps the antidepressants we found on the kitchen floor were the last straw with one of our older babysitters. How depressed do you have to be that you don’t even want to pick up your meds off of the fucking floor?? The icing on the cake with the same sitter was when she brought fake poop over to the house, placed it on my younger son’s bed and told him that he needed to clean up the “dog’s” poop. My son cried until realizing that after be forced to gather all the cleaning materials it was fake. She thought it was funny. Did I mention this sitter was over fifty years of age? In the same evening we found soda and tea stains on our new living room furniture (we’re not rich people so we try to take care of everything we have). In general things were a mess with her, so I sent an endearing  letter wrapped in sarcasm, indicating that future services were no longer required.

We once had a sitter that even dropped our baby on the wooden floor and crashed our car in the same week. The worst part was that our children were the ones to inform us of these incidents. Fired her over the phone.

Get this: On one occasion we thought we had found a great sitter. She came highly recommended (then again they all did), she was a great student and so forth. Initially I did notice that she was seemingly hooked on her phone but in any case I assumed all was under control. Soooo, one particular day we required her services during working hours as my wife was in school and I was at work. I arrived at home around 4:30pm, just before my wife, as I knew we were going to have a showing of the home around 6pm and things needed to be neat. We had been in the market trying to sell our home for over a year so any rare showing required the ability to impress potential buyers. I entered the home from the back kitchen door which gave access to the play area and I immediately felt sick. The play area resembled a fire storm, the music was blaring and there were pieces of tar-like black rubber fucking everywhere (and to this day I still don’t know where it came from), and then….oh my god….I saw my my youngest daughter! At the time she must have been only 1 or 2 years old, but you wouldn’t have been able to guess her age at that moment due to her appearance. She looked like a dwarfed version of the most fucked up Pocahontas you’ve ever seen. The makeup was caked on from the middle of her scalp down to her toes. Her whole upper torso sparkled like a freaking disco ball. The shit was so thickly applied to her skin that even wax figures would have drowned in envy. When I asked her older sister (about 6 years old at the time) where she found the makeup, the reply was simple ; “In Mama’s makeup kit”. I then noticed that my youngest daughter’s diaper was just about to touch the floor- with the waist stickies still at the waist! This poor kid had not been changed since we left the house and now bore the weight of 3 wet bathroom towels. The kitchen was a disaster- the other kids had streams of chocolate running down their bare chests and smeared it around every room. Apparently the sitter was so wrapped up in her phone that she did not notice the children entertaining themselves by making rain dances with the Hershey syrup bottle. The stove was covered in macaroni and cheese, concealing any semblance of the white factory stove we had already despised so immensely. Please note that I am well aware of what children are capable of and that shit happens. But not elephant shit. I mean, this was a Tyrannosaurus Rex diarrhea shit of a situation with people coming to view the house in less than an hour. Needless to say the sitter was fired without pay.

Then you have the dream babysitters, the ones that your kids love, go out of their way to keep a tidy home, engage the children and have overall respect for the situation. These are the types of sitters we can’t seem to find, and when we do find them they either don’t last due to other obligations or have limited availability.  Some sitters are so good that you don’t even want to bother them for smaller occasions out of fear that the children may wear them out too soon- you need to save this sitter for the overnight getaways. Come on parents, you know what I mean. And if you don’t have these troubles then let it be known I hate you right now.

Lastly, you have your parents or in-laws , both of which prefer to take only half of your children at a time. To some extent I can understand that giving care to four young children simultaneously might seem safer with a degree in zoology, but even tougher grandparents can’t stop children in their crusades to achieve anything but normalcy. In one of my previous blogs I mentioned an incident in which my youngest son was found hanging out of the 2nd floor window, totally naked with the exception of a cape and batman mask, and the family cat in one hand. Luckily my father in law was able to get a hold of him just in time but it once again proved that our kids will test anyone. But that stuff happens, right?

It’s not easy for anyone to take over your children, but it’d be marvelous to have an outsider that is willing to properly  babysit on a consistent basis. When the sitter refills your vodka bottles with water, or the 4 yr old boy plays with power tools while the sitter is texting, an open poop diaper is stuffed behind a book shelf, your kids are doped up on sugar or watching “skinemax” while the babysitter is eating her cereal with headphones on, then you’re better off taking the deal your parents offered and undertake an outing with only half of your kids – at least some relief was gifted.

I’ve grown tired just by reliving some of the horror through this blog, so perhaps we’ll have to use our precious get out of jail free pass we’ve saved for that awesome babysitter this weekend.