As most of you know, we have two special needs sons. They can be very difficult to care for.

Outside of family (my mom, dad and sister), we have three regular baby sitters.

Long story short, we need a baby sitter for tomorrow night. DD1 is in a play, performed with her home school group. Two of our regular sitters are busy, and the other is in the play.

I'd really like for my mom and dad to be able to watch the play. We've torn them away from enough of our girl's activities to watch our boys in the past. My sister has taken a job where she works in the evenings, and even if she wasn't working, I'd like for her to be able to choose to watch the play.

We pay our sitters $7 per hour. It's tough work.

The three teenage girls might be burnt out from watching them. I'm sure they have legitimate commitments for tomorrow night, but I get the sense from them that regardless of what we pay, they are getting burnt out.

There is another neighborhood girl that might work out. She's pretty heavily involved with high school sports, and is often not available. I didn't think about her until I started writing this post.

We'll probably find someone for tomorrow, but a lot of times we need to scramble until the last minute to find a sitter. Or, we get my parents to do it. Or DW or I stay home.

This is strange territory for us. We always brought our girls with us to things. When we didn't live in the area (close to family), there was a neighbor family with small children about the same age as our girls. When DW and I wanted to go out alone (which was rare), we left the girls with our neighbor family, and they would do the same. It was infrequent, and money never changed hands. We just took turns, and it seemed to work out.

DS1 is getting much more manageable in public. But, his younger brother is still very difficult to take out into public.

I would imagine that in the next year or two, he will mature out of his present behaviors. Until then we will scramble, and pay accordingly.