I guess there's just no pleasing me. When I'm babysitting often, I complain about it. When I'm not babysitting enough, I complain about it. Just smack me.

To justify my wishy-washiness, I equate it with complaining about one's job. There are many things that might irk you about your employer/co-workers/work-load/customers/etc, and you may not hop out of bed every morning, happy and eager to face your work day.......but when it comes down to it, you don't want to take a bunch of unpaid vacations or get fired!

With that said, I do enjoy the days I don't have Bob. I feel like I get a lot more done around the house and I am free to rest my achy pelvis and back and indulge in naps and quiet loafing(obviously things I won't be able to do much of for a LONG time after the baby is born). BUT, I'd rather have Bob here and get paid for watching him 4 days a week because we have come to rely on my babysitting income.

The lady I babysit for IM'ed me yesterday to ask how much she owes me this time around (I get paid monthly). I didn't get the message until late last night, so I called her this morning to let her know. While I was waiting for her to call me back, I started getting more and more irritated at the fact that I have gone from babysitting an average of 15-20 days a month to a measley 4 days this month! It irritates me because she never warned me or talked to me about it; my days have just slowly decreased to this point.

There are a few good reasons why I have let it go for so long without asking her about it: For one thing, there have been weeks in the past where I may not have gotten as many days as I'd like, but then things may pick back up the next week and it would all even out....so I was just thinking, "Hey, maybe they're just trying to save extra money for the holidays and things will get back to normal later." Secondly, on the days I don't babysit him, Bob is either spending time with his grandma or his dad when they have extra days off work. I'm GLAD that he gets to spend time with family, and I'd feel kind of crummy for trying to put a stop to that just because of our finances. Another reason why I didn't think it would be fair to come out and say, "Hey, I need to be guaranteed X number of days from now on", is because I have to request off 1 day a month to visit my midwife (soon to be 2 days a month) and I've also had to request 2 vacations - once when my parents came to visit and stayed for a week, and also for my upcoming week-long trip to see my family next month......so, I didn't think it would be fair to expect a flexible schedule so I can keep my appointments but then expect them to keep their schedule rigid. (I must note, however, that I have never "called in sick" or given her short notice when I have to take a day off. She always knows about my appointments 4 weeks ahead of time, and about my vacations even further in advance)

I never felt the need to set ground rules at the beginning when it came to having a minimum amount of days I would need to babysit because we weren't planning on having to rely heavily on my income at that point. (Since then DH has gone to a job where he has taken a large pay cut) Also, I was told that I'd be watching him 3-4 days a week and it was never mentioned to me that it would end up fluctuating according to grandma's work schedule.

She knows that DH and I rely on my babysitting money because back when she was asking me how long I would be able to keep babysitting before our baby is born, she offered to have my replacement start watching him in January so that I can have plenty of rest and time to get ready for the baby's arrival. I thanked her for thinking about my needs like that and told her that I appreciated the offer, but that I do rely on my babysitting income and would like to babysit until the middle/end of March. So she definitely KNOWS that this is my job and that I need it.

When I just spoke to her, I let her know how much she owed me this pay period and then I reluctantly brought up the issue of my decreased babysitting hours. I told her that I hesitated to ask her about it because I didn't want to come off as being greedy or not wanting Bob to spend time with his family, but that I was just wondering if the frequency of my babysitting days would continue like this in the future and I was just wanting to know so DH and I could plan our budget accordingly. She replied, "Yeah, probably so, because my mom has been requesting days off work here and there during the week so she can spend time with the baby".

Nice to know.

I have learned an important lesson from all of this. Babysitting for friends is like doing business with friends. It's probably not the best idea because you just end up disappointing eachother in ways that you otherwise would not have. Maybe it wouldn't be like that with everybody...maybe there are people who would be a little more organized and consistent. Atleast now I know that if I do start babysitting again, I will need to set some ground rules up front and sick to them so there is no miscommunication.

BUT THEN....none of this would really be a huge issue to me if I didn't feel so pressed for money and an underlying guilt that I do not bring anything to our household, financially speaking.

Labels: babysitting, finances, general complaining, griping about people