In Praise of Babysitters

lets just say it: Babysitters RULE!

i don't know how parents do it with no help from anyone else whatsoever. in the past two months we have been very lucky in the babysitter department.
first my cousins came home from college and traded off days to watch sabine for a full three hours in the morning once a week. can i tell you the absolute sense of joy and relief that spread over me the first time mauren showed up and i could leave to practice yoga knowing that max was also working on his car stuff at the same time and sabine was happy as could be. (or at least well cared for) yay!
then our first official night out came in december also when max had his annual hamaganza : hams for the homeless concert and cousin molly watched sabine and i got to go to the concert. that one was great because molly arrived after i put sabine in bed. and when i walked through the door around 1am molly was just getting off the couch because sabine was waking up to eat. sabine didn't even know i was gone because i rushed up there and fed her.
in florida we took an hour after she was asleep to go out together for yummy dessert while the grandparents were on duty.
and now that it's january and back to school, my cousins are gone.. but luckily they have friends. so now we've got mauren's good friend alice coming over once a week in the morning. i get to take a yoga class or do my own yoga, max gets to gut his current car project and then we get a few minutes to go to lunch together while sabine plays and naps with alice. we are SO happy.
i cannot express how much better of a parent this makes me. i KNOW the days when i haven't practiced yoga in the morning. my temper is shorter and i can't handle trying to entertain this little being all day long. then i'm sure i'm a much worse wife too because by the end of the day i'm a total zombie, my brain is fried, and i can barely speak much less hold a conversation. sometimes on those days when i crawl into bed i feel like my body is full on buzzing from the inside out and it isn't in a good way. so thank goodness for alice coming to help and for max and i both to feel that we get to take a little break without putting extra pressure on the other one.
and in another development on the babysitting front. this last friday was max's birthday and he wanted to go out with friends on saturday. so my parents, being the lovely people that they are, drove down for a visit. on saturday night i put sabine to bed and went out with max. and my parents hung around watched a movie and then gave her a bottle and changed her diaper when she cried at 11:45 pm. it was the first time she'd ever woken up in the night and i wasn't there, so i can't think of anyone better to be there for her. thanks to mom and dad.
i don't know if that night out made me a better parent, but it was nice to just be a wife for a while and not a MOMmy first, wife second, my own person third. eventually i'd like to go out more, but we'll have to hope the sleeping thing sorts itself out first.
all i can say is YAY for babysitters. and if anyone would like to help out in this department we are more than happy loan her out for a while.