Babysitting Saga Continues

Whew! Our laptop's in the shop right now which has been both a good and bad thing. It makes it harder for me to take and edit photos or update the blog, but it also means that I have more time to spend playing with David and get some Spring cleaning and organizing done.
Since my last post I had yet another babysitter decide that she couldn't watch David anymore. At the same time my office had too many nurses on staff and almost no visits for me so I opted not to not go back. This would mean sticking to a bare-bones budget and make it unlikely we would get anything saved, but I really didn't want to go back to working 12 hour night shifts unless as a last resort.

For a few weeks I was essentially a stay-at-home mom. Then everything changed. One of the full-time nurses left and the office is swamped with visits. There are no plans to replace the nurse unless the census grows so once again I was in the market for a sitter. It's still a huge pain but at least I knew from prior experience not to try traditional daycare centers (most will charge the full week's rate regardless) and went straight to the online classifieds. The first couple of sitters I met with didn't work out (one decided last minute she needed to go back to full-time work and the other just didn't seem like a good fit), but I've finally found what I hope will be a good match.All of my previous providers have been sitters who have had no other clients (though my last one had 2 boys of her own) so this will be our first brush with an actual daycare setting. I have learned from experience though that while it's most convenient for me to hire a part-time nanny to come to the house that David's much happier exploring new environments with novel toys and other children. I've also learned that people don't earn enough from one part-time kid to want to do it long. I know there's a lot of scary stories about home daycare but this woman gave me a list of over 20 parents who gave great references and only watches 2-4 children at a time rather than taking on the max allowed by the state. I'll start back next week and am pretty excited. I really do enjoy my job and relieved that our finances won't be quite so stretched.
And since I haven't posted any David pics in a while I've included some shots of the past month. I don't have any great photos as I have to hurry and whip out a shot before he realizes I've got the camera and races over to grab it.

David and Teddy (his new BFF)