babysitter, nanny

Two weekends ago, I babysat for the first time in about fifteen years; for the baby of a friend of mine. It was a pretty short night; we arrived around 6:00pm and the kid was in bed by a little after 8:30pm.

I was fascinated by the new diapers; apparently nowadays boy babies and girl babies have different diapers, and regardless of gender all of the diapers have cute cartoons printed on them, and the sticky tabs are much more usable than before and don't get stuck to random parts of the diaper.

Baby bottles, bathtubs, and high chairs are also much more complicated (sophisticated?) than they used to be, and I'd never actually used a diaper genie before. I think I used to just wrap poopy diapers in plastic bags, but honestly it's quite possible that I just used to throw them in the laundry room wastebasket. Anyway, things went pretty well, I think; nothing unexpected happened, the 10-month old "baby" was quite well-behaved, and he actually fell asleep when put to bed.

A couple days later I was at another friend's house for a BBQ. She has a 4-month old daughter, but with two grandmothers visiting and a live-in nanny, she was very much able to focus her full attention on hosting the party. In fact, between bouts of changing and feeding the baby, the nanny managed to make delicious Shanghai-nese "shou mai", cook several other authentic dishes, and clean up the kitchen area.

Afterwards I was thinking, forget the baby, I should hire a nanny for *me*. I could use some home-cooked Chinese food, clean laundry, and a spotless house, too, not to mention more practice speaking Chinese.