Marin's First Babysitter!

This past Friday night Marin had her first (non family) babysitter. (I've taken the liberty of considering Molly and Brian, family).

Meet Caleigh: Sweet as can be, good Catholic school girl, has prior babysitting experience, and has had an excellent babysitting example: me. Yep. Me. I'm old enough to have changed my babysitter's diapers.

So when Caleigh said she was interested in babysitting for me- first I gulped that she was old enough, then I checked myself for wrinkles, and then I jumped on it!

Friday night, Jason and I went to a benefit that my dad participated in called, 60 Men Who Cook. My dad made delicious Red Velvet Cake and if you ask me, he was a shoe in for the grand prize. We were robbed though by some high school kids with a culinary interest that everyone thought was cute. Whatever kids. In any case, it's all for a good cause.

Before we left Caleigh and an on-her-second-dinner Marin, we explained the ropes. We left her a credit card to order dinner, and showed her how to work the DVD player. We showed her Marin's room and about what time she should put her to bed. We told her to have a good time. Relax, have fun. Don't worry about a thing. "There is one thing", we told her. We said that Norah would normally be okay to not have to go out until we got home, but since she was there, she may take advantage of her and want to go out. Either way, we said, there's a leash by the back door. What we forgot to tell her was that the back door locks automatically. Woops.

So let's set poor Caleigh's scene for you: Marin is in bed asleep (thankfully). She probably has her movie on pause and her pizza on the way. She's all settled in. Maybe she's about to get caught up on some homework. But suddenly she's locked out of a house she's never been to with an overly excitable 50 pound boxer, while a baby that she just met is barely asleep upstairs. Her cell phone and the house phone are of course locked inside right next to our "in case of emergency" numbers. Caleigh checks the front door and even the front window but the place is locked up like fort knox, because my mom has set the fear of God in me that someone with an axe or a butcher knife is just a second away at any given time after dark.

What to do? Caleigh (and the dog) go to the neighbors house. No one's home. She tries the other neighbor. Whew. They're home. That neighbor gets creative and decides to get his ladder out and bring it over to our house, climb on the roof and hope a random door in our upstairs bathroom (doesn't everyone have a door in their bathroom) is unlocked. Luckily, he found one that slipped past my mom's checklist. It was unlocked. He went in the door, and down the stairs and to the back to let Caleigh and the dog, back inside the house where I'm sure they both breathed a major sigh of relief. Of course it was the first time we had the neighbor over. Not exactly the dinner invitation he was perhaps expecting. Lucky for us, he was close to the previous owner, and was familiar with the layout of our house. Marin, of course, slept right through all this. Does this mean we can leave her home alone more often? (Only kidding.)

Jason and I were really impressed with how Caleigh handled herself. She didn't freak out like I definitely would have done. She didn't call the cops, like I definitely would have considered. And she didn't throw huge rocks at the window until it broke, like I would have definitely wanted to do. Look at that, little Caleigh is all grown up. When we got home later that night she told us that there was a little "situation".

So Marin's first babysitter experience was not without drama. But what have we learned? We learned that Marin can sleep through a breaking and entering. We have learned that we have a great babysitter on hand. And we learned to leave said babysitter with a house key.

From there, is should all be a piece of red velvet cake.