new for us friday: SitterScout = more ME time!

Parenting is a pretty hard gig. A very hard gig.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it every day because it’s so true. Anyone who tells you otherwise is totally lying.

And just when you think you’ve got things under control, somebody throws you for a loop.

Your first kiddo was a napping, sleeping dream; your second was a nightmare, spending more hours awake than you ever thought possible.

Your second one required tight swaddle to sleep–your third kicked it off from day one. Two kids who refused pacifiers, and the third wants to marry hers.

One kid is a crafty-crafter and willing artist, the other makes preschool teachers worry because he won’t draw as much as a circle on a piece of paper. One is meticulous in everything she does, and the other couldn’t give a hoot about detail, neatness, or cleanliness. A dirt-lover and a water lover. Two early teethers, and one who waited over a year for the first tooth to pop through. Some like fruit, one refuses fruit, each kiddo nurses differently, learns differently, grows differently.

It’s hard. Really hard. So I am a firm believer that some things have to be made easy.

This New For Us Friday, I’m sharing something that I have found takes one thing off of a busy mom’s (or dad’s) plate. It’s a little something that makes this parenting gig just a tad easier.

Here’s the skinny. . .

• SitterScout: SitterScout is a tool that works from any smartphone (or on your computer) to help you book your existing babysitters faster, by instantly contacting the sitters you choose and enabling the sitters to respond via text messaging.

Setting up SitterScout took literally three minutes. . .

 

. . . and before I knew it I received a happy confirmation email!

SitterScout doesn’t find you sitters–and that is something I love about this service. I don’t need any new sitters; I have a handful whom I trust and whom the kids adore, and for that I am extremely grateful. SitterScout helps you schedule your babysitters–the ones you already have.

SitterScout ‘gifts’ me a few minutes. It eliminates the time it takes to call the sitter’s home or cell, the return call, the phone tag, the figuring out of ‘Plan B’ if the first sitter doesn’t work out. When getting out of the house is the hard part, it makes locking in a sitter the easy part.

And I know that sounds simple, but honestly, I’ll take anything–anything!–I can get as far as ‘me time’ is concerned because, quite frankly, I don’t get a whole lot of it at this point in my life.

I tried SitterScout for the first time a few weeks ago, when I was scheduling a sitter for a night out for my husband and some friends, and I was thrilled at how easy it was.

Very simply, I:

1. Signed up at: http://www.sitterscout.com (I signed in using my Facebook account);
2. I entered my sitters’ names, cell numbers, and emails (emails only if I had them);
3. I added a ‘job’ — the date and timeframe for time I needed a sitter;
4. I chose my ‘Round 1′ and ‘Round 2’ sitter choices;
5. I clicked ‘Finished’;
6. I waited for my sitter to be booked!

Within an hour or so, I received a notice on my phone and via email that I had a sitter (woo-hoo!) and it took no time at all to make the plans!! Yay! I was going out! It may have been days and days away, but I. Was. Going. Out!

I happened to see the very same sitter I booked the very same afternoon I booked her as Cora and I walked up to school to pick up Maddy and Owen, and we laughed when we saw each other.

Kinda crazy that we made plans for this weekend but we never really said a word to each other, huh? Is that totally weird, or is it okay with you? I asked her. I’m so tech-savvy that sometimes I am in awe of myself. . . No really, someone told me about this site and I thought I’d try it. Is it okay?

Yeah, Mrs. Mascott. It’s funny–kinda surprised me at first, but it was actually a really cool service, she said. I like it.

So do I, my friend. So do I. . .

See you Saturday night! I said, smiling big.

And that’s it–a super-simple, totally cool and *FREE!* service that gives me a few extra minutes of time to myself–or time with my husband or friends or whomever. Believe it, friends. It’s F-R-E-E. No giveaway this week. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Why? Because this week, EVERYONE WINS!

You can add multiple parents. Love it. (So maybe my husband will schedule a surprise date night?!) You can add messages to sitters. You can send certain sitters messages. Love, love it.

Feel free to try out SitterScout and let me know what you think! What will YOU do with your ‘gifted’ few minutes? Your ‘ME’ time? Does it make your life any easier?

fyi: I was asked to write about this service as part of a Splash Creative Media campaign on behalf of SitterScout.com. All opinions are my own, influenced only by my own desperate need for occasional ME time and date nights and girls’ nights out and yoga classes or trips to the salon or gym. But honestly? I am surprised at how easy this was and how happy it made me to use it.