Brandon's birthday was in early June, but we hadn't had an opportunity to celebrate it with dinner. A serious perk of being married is that you essentially get to enjoy not one, but two birthdays. Two dinners out (after all, it's no fun going out to dinner by yourself), two cakes, two celebrations, and two occasions for presents. Brandon recieved a Vaughn Williams CD - I like Vaughn Williams!; ice cream money - enough for two!; and Mastering the Art of French Cooking - hey, I can always enjoy a cookbook whose main three ingredients are cream, butter, and eggs. Brandon didn't fare so well for my birthday, however; I don't think his shoe size is a 7, and he definitely doesn't like wearing knee-high black leather boots.
Kathleen does NOT do well being 1. out of the house and, 2. up past her bedtime. Combine the two, and you get to force feed a screaming baby to keep her quiet, and then pace the back of the movie theatre afterwards. Many people's children love being out, spending time with mom and dad. Not ours. So, our only option was to find a babysitter.
Never having actually paid a babysitter before (previously we had an exchange worked out with Brandon's cousin), I wasn't quite sure how to go about finding one. I could always call around in the ward for eligible young women. But then how much do you pay someone to come and watch DVDs at your house for hours? I didn't need the super-certified, years-of-experience babysitter. I just needed someone who had the ability to call 911 and snatch the baby out of her crib if the house caught on fire.
Thank heavens for the local community bulletin board. I love them, because you can find all sorts of odd offers, and interesting goings-on. Additionally, you can find a babysitter, with a posted price: $3 an hour. She and her friend were only 11, but that's all we needed. So, hoping that one could trust one's neighbors in Springville not to be known for baby-neglect, I gave Makenzie Moon a call. She sounded perfectly normal, and better yet, she lived 3 houses away around the corner! $3 an hour for someone who will walk to your house!
Wednesday night Brandon and I got spiffed up, met the babysitter, her mother, and her friend who came to keep her company, and then joyfully headed up to Provo without our favorite child. We enjoyed a delicious dinner (with no interruptions other than from our server), a nice perusal through the bookstore (without a bored child), and saw the nine o'clock showing of Miss Potter. If our Whoppers, Junior Mints, and Charleston chews hadn't melted in the car during dinner, the night would have been perfect. However, I will take melted candy any day over a screaming child.
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