New Babysitter

Several years ago, after doing some research online, I decided that when our kids were ten years old, they would be allowed to stay at home alone for very brief periods of time and that when they turned twelve, they'd be allowed to babysit and/or stay at home alone for longer periods of time. Nadia ended up with more opportunities to babysit because of COVID because I wasn't allowed to take Oliver along with me when I took Ian to an orthodontist appointment. Because Ian turned twelve last month, he's become the second babysitter in our family. His window of opportunity for babysitting will be briefer than Nadia's because Oliver will turn ten in August. Nadia hasn't had as many opportunities to be paid to babysit lately because Ian hasn't seen the orthodontist since June; his next appointment is in February. Nadia has primarily been earning money through memorizing chapters of Romans and James as I give her $10 per chapter. Ian will be able to earn money babysitting on Tuesday afternoons for 3+ months as Nadia has a drama class from 3:30-4:45, and the church where it is held is 25 minutes from our home. Normally I will do some grocery shopping at Aldi during her class unless the parents are needed to work on the set or costumes on a particular day, but today the parents of the students in drama had a meeting. Sometimes Ian isn't done with his schoolwork by 3:00, but I told him if he wanted to babysit today, he had to be done by that time. He finished at 2:30 although he does need to put some more time into studying for his science test tomorrow.

Yesterday Pop Pop came up and spent about 6 hours with the kids. He took them to lunch at Bonanza as he had some gift certificates that expire at the end of this month, and it's only $1.99 for kids to eat there on Mondays. Ian played a game of chess with Pop Pop. Ian and Oliver both played some Nintendo Switch games with Pop Pop, and we all played Suspend and Exploding Kittens together. Nadia also helped Pop Pop try a virtual reality game with the Oculus. I gave him a haircut. He still has one more certificate so he's hoping to use the last one next Monday.