Adventures in Babysitting

The following post was written last Monday, February 6, 2006. It did not get posted until today for technical reasons. Or just because I'm a dork. So, from last week:

This picture is from this morning. Today is a weird day. While I am working at home, our new babysitter Catherine is looking after Kiernan for the bulk of the day. While we did it all ourselves for the first year, plus, Wendy and I both figured it was time for me to start getting back to getting some of my stuff done. I want to get that novel I talked about earlier finished. And I need to start sending out a screenplay I wrote last year. In addition to the writing I need to do I've got to get back to acting. I've just been cast in two plays.

So we interviewed a couple of babysitters. The first one was supposed to come in to help a couple of afternoons during Wendy's last trip out of town, but she flaked. The next one, Claire, is wonderful with Kiernan. She is also, however, in eighth grade, so her availability is understandably limited. The next one we found when Wendy was chasing Kiernan during our sign language class a few weeks ago. We were meeting at a Starbucks and Kiernan decided he needed to pick up a few things at the bagel store down the way. His mom followed him into the store and they met Catherine, who worked there and was immediately attentive to him. She was also, as it turned out, an experienced babysitter, a college student over the age of twenty, and reliable. We interviewed her and scheduled her to come in a couple times a week.

As I said, today is the first day she'll be here looking after my boy for an extended period. Even though I'm here working--I have an office in the detached garage--I'm feeling pretty weird. Nervous. Distracted. A touch irresponsible, like I'm shirking my duties. I suppose all parents go through this. Many of them don't put it off until their kid is fourteen months old, so that's part of my problem. I really feel for my friends who must put their kids in daycare at an early age because they both have to work full-time jobs. That just must be torture.

Oh well, I guess it's all a part of growing up. For him and for me.