Dude, I meara'd.

Ran over a barricade? Did we find him safe and not mortally wounded?

mr. flea and I haven't been out as just a couple since the Dillo was born, and we did it precious rarely before. Partly because the kind of babysitters you pay (the only kind we have) are very expensive. Add up 4 hours of sitting, dinner, and a movie and you're talking $100...

Plei, probably you overestimate the havoc the squeak wreaks - I mean, I have attempted to ride housepets as a sober adult, so riding the cat can't be that crazy (it was a large dog, okay?). It won't work for last-minute stuff, but you might investigate whether any of the day-care teachers do moonlighting babysitting - several of ours do, and that means you have a sitter who knows your child (and her havoc) and you already trust.

I have said this to Deena a million times, but I will add flea and AmyLiz and Plei to the list of people I would be THRILLED to babysit for at any time. I just wish MM would get his ass in gear about that transporter. Then I could add him and Aimee to the list as well!

I've babysat since 6th grade, and I've had some handfuls in my day. But, whenever parents start saying they're not sure I can handle their bundle of energy, I tell them about the family I started babysitting for in 10th grade. Twin boys; three months old. A year later, they got a sister. A year after that they got a brother and a sister. And their mother asked me to buy a minivan (it was joke, but I just had hatchback, and it was difficult to transport five kids in it). I think I've changed as many diapers as a lot of mothers have. By the time the second set of twins came along, I was over there all the time, just for fun--not necessarily always for pay. Poor D needed so much help! J worked nights, so only really saw the kids on the weekends. And, that's when you can actually sleep when there are five kids in the house under 3.

Miss those guys. I should give them a call. They're so cute when they get on the phone. Specially the youngest. She doesn't remember me much, but she is a chatterbox. Shit. They're all in jr. high and high school now, I think. Craziness.

Glad Daisy Jane and SuziQ had good nights. Suzi looked AMAZING! Thanks for sharing the picture, love.

{{Moms of wee ones}} I wouldn't want to go back there. There were options and possibilities for babysitting, but I rarely had the energy to go to the trouble of setting it up.

It gets so much easier. School helps. I have a great mom network. Kids have sleepovers. My mom friends will call me and ask if I can take their kids for the night. I call them and they take mine. That is why I have managed to attend all the F2F events. My children stayed with their friends. Went to school, were fed, and homeworked.

And then before you know it they are old enough to stay by themselves. Like cutiehead Nick!

Suzi + Red = Hott

I would love to babysit for Buffista babies, too.

Vortex, thanks for asking! No, the mug has not turned up, but we got new locks put in, mostly because we've been needing to do it (we haven't changed them from when we moved in) and also I just wanted to silence that paranoid part of my brain, thinking the mostly not possible.

Hopefully replacement mug will be acquired today (we punked out after dinner and watching Friday's Dr. Who and just puttered around and went to bed). I am also operating under the assumption that the original mug will turn up right after we buy the replacement and use it so that it can't be returned. Sometimes you gotta use Murphy's Law to one's advantage, right?

In exciting news, the new brew is bubbling happily in its fermentor! Tom is very excited. Burble burble burble.

Suzi + Red = Hott

No shit! Absolutely bee-yoo-tee-ful.

Nora, glad you got the locks changed. Better to be safe than sorry.

The new cat, Elliot? Is fucking heavy and he tried to push me out of bed last night. Honest to god.

A few weeks ago my son walked in the front door from practicing ball in the driveway. He put his ball down on the chair in the hallway and went to get something to drink and took a bathroom stop. DH and I were sitting in the LR and said hey and watched him. He came back to go back out to practice and the ball was gone. All 3 of us searched everywhere. We were sitting 15 feet from where he left it. We looked in the most crazy places. Never have found it. Still makes us crazy.

Other exciting list annihilation news! We have VoIP phones at home. I set them up when we went north for the summer. We got home August 12th. Today I hooked them back up at home. Fear me with my productivity.

Ran over a barricade? Did we find him safe and not mortally wounded?

Yeah he was fine. He was just really pumped from the show, dancing out on the sidewalk, and then decided to charge a barricade. He knocked it nearly to the other side of the street, and then he just kept running.