Katie

This is Katie.  She's been our babysitter for 2 and a half years; i.e. Ilan's entire life.  She left us to go to school in Virginia Beach.  We really, really miss her.

Katie seemed to really love and enjoy our kids, which is the primary thing you look for in a babysitter, and she also didn't take much crap from them.  She wasn't afraid to discipline them, and wasn't afraid to occasionally tell Roan that she was really bored of trains and could they please please please talk about something else?  She has lots of common sense, which is something I no longer take for granted, after having a babysitter without any.  And she was always on time.  In fact, she was usually early.

Katie was almost too good.  There was a time when she was cutting Roan's peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into car shapes.  Roan told me about this, and asked me to cut his sandwich like Katie does, and I never got it right.  "Mommy, you didn't make the spoiler like Katie makes the spoiler," he would say, or, "where are Lightning's eyes, Mommy?" And let me tell you, when you are rushing around trying to feed your kids, and pretty hungry yourself, the last thing you want to hear from your little pipsqueak of a son is, "mommy, this doesn't actually look like the Lightning McQueen sandwich that Katie made so I'm not going to eat it."

I took the top photo on her last day with us, at the end of June.  This one on the bottom is from May, in our backyard on a rainy day.