Saturday, June 30, 2007

Babysitting co-op, anyone?

 


It takes a strong man to carry a child's sippy cup.

We went to the grand re-opening of our local zoo today, along with everyone else in town. It was a lot of fun. We ran into friends and neighbors, which always makes me happy. It feels like home. Anyway, free ice cream, free pizza (the line was too long, though), lots of critters, and a train. It was MG's idea of heaven. She got to ride the train once with Mommy and once with Daddy, and it still wasn't enough. I have a feeling I'm going to be riding that train a lot. It's going to be worse than the merry-go-round at the mall. Every time we drive past that part of town, it's going to be, "THE TRAIN! THE TRAIN MOMMMEEEEE! THE TRAIN NOW!!!" *sigh*

What is it with kids and trains?

I'm thinking of starting a babysitting co-op. If you're local to me, and you're interested, e-mail me. I think if we had a token system, where we each start out with X number of tokens, and each kid-hour was one token (so, if you watch my two for an hour, I give you two of my tokens. If I watch your 3 kids for two hours, you give me 6 tokens, etc.), it could be really cool, and could save us all a lot of money. I know of at least two other moms who are interested. Anyone else?

I think if we do this, we should all get together at my house and get to know each other first, so everyone is comfortable with one another. I'll play secretary and keep track of everyone's points and contact info (so I'll e-mail everyone once a month with a point total for them and everyone's contact info). If Karen watches Chelsea's kids, Chelsea can e-mail me and say, "Give Karen 3 of my tokens." Then I'll e-mail Karen and say, "Chelsea has given you 3 tokens, your total is now 13," and I'll e-mail Chelsea and say, "Ok, now you have 7..." Maybe I'll set up a separate e-mail address for this. Hmmmm.... Geez, we could even set up a Google account for this, and use the Google Calendar and Google Docs and Spreadsheets to keep track of everything. Hmmmmm...

Ok, new prerequisite for being in the co-op is a Google account - e-mail me if you don't have Gmail and I'll send you an invite. Oh, and we can chat!

This could be huge, guys. Who's in?
Posted by Picasa

2 comments:

Jen said...

So when you run out of tokens, you have to beg to watch someone else's kids?
Love,
Jen

Amy said...

Nah... When you run out of tokens, you can buy more from the machine at the arcade or the laundromat. :)

Hopefully we'll have enough people and enough interest that running out won't be an issue.