I’m lost in the sea of confusion trying to find the best outlet for potential childcare for my kiddos. We’ve got the best daytime preschool for the younger, the elder attends a lovely local elementary right down the road, and a coworker’s daughter is incredibly motivated but not willing to cover nights when needed — but being relatively new to the area I’ve hit nothing but snags looking for reliable care in that gray area between about 5:30 and 11 p.m.
Sittercity.com was good last summer — we found several great sitters who we fell in love with (also had several other links from co-workers) but alas, fall semester came and we bid them goodbye. Since then we let the site lapse as it has seemed much less useful — maybe due as well to the school sessions.
(I’m okay with changing of the guard — I don’t mean this to sound as if I’m expecting to find a domestic, child-rearing goddess for me at $10/hr. Really, just a safe guardian for my kiddos occasionally, a healthy role model a day or so a week, on-call the occasional weekend.)
Does anyone have suggestions on where to search for someone like this? We’re slowly emerging into the neighborhood as far as spiritual scene, other families, etc., but not there as far as (obviously by this post) getting the connections yet. In the university towns where I’ve lived before, there were physical and virtual “job boards” to link students with prospective employers (whether in a future field of study or just for spare cash) — does anyone know of anything like this?
Any thoughts, comments, critique, even heckling could be useful.
(About us/possibly pertinent — two new Duluthian’s, health care backgrounds, west side, two active-but-not-wild school-agers, and a loving cat.)
Be well PDDers!
