Hi!!!

I'm Ashely (that's A-S-H-E-L-Y, my mom spelled it different on purpose so I would be the only one!) and I'm the president and founder of the Sunshine Sitters Club. We are four best friends, we are all 12, we are all in 7th grade, and we are the best babysitters you will ever find. Really!!!

How We Started

Have you ever read the Baby-Sitters Club books by Ann M. Martin? They are the BEST. They're about a group of girls in Stoneybrook, Connecticut who start a babysitting club so parents can call one number and reach a whole bunch of sitters at once. Kristy thinks of it in the very first book, Kristy's Great Idea, which came out in 1986, before we were even born. She gets the idea watching her mom call sitter after sitter trying to find somebody for her little brother. There are more than a hundred books now and we have read every single one we could find at the library and the used bookstore. Natalie has 64 of them in her closet in order by number.

So in June, the week after school got out, we were at Karina's house reading BSC books (as usual) and Shaina said "why don't WE do that?" and I said "OK!!!" and that was it. We are the Sunshine Sitters Club because we wanted something happy and because Karina's mom calls her "Sunshine," which she hates, so it's a little bit of a joke too.

Then in July we all took a one-day babysitting class at the community center. It was a whole Saturday! We learned first aid, what to do if a kid is choking, how to hold a baby the right way, how to change a diaper (on a doll, thank goodness), and when to call 911. We all passed and we all got CERTIFICATES with our names on them. Mine is on my bulletin board.

Club Meetings

Just like the BSC, we meet every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 5:30 to 6:00 in my room. (The real BSC meets in Claudia's room because she has her own phone line. We don't have our own phone line, so we have an e-mail address instead, which is even better because it's 1999!!!) At meetings we read the e-mails from parents, look at the calendar in our club notebook, and decide who takes each job. Then we eat snacks. Usually Twizzlers.

Our Rates!!!

We can sit until 9:30 on school nights and 11:00 on Fridays and Saturdays. Somebody has to drive us home or walk us home, those are our parents' rules. For really big jobs (like four kids or a whole Saturday) we can send TWO sitters!

The Club Notebook

In the books the BSC keeps a notebook where every sitter writes about every job, so the next sitter knows what's going on. We do that too! Ours is a purple binder with stickers all over it. After every job you have to write what the kids ate, what you did, when they went to bed, and anything important. For example, it says in our notebook that Tori is scared of the vacuum cleaner, Mario will only eat his sandwich if you cut it in triangles, and Kylie's blankie is named Mrs. Pink and you must NEVER put it in the washer. See? Important!!!

Our Rules

No friends over while we're sitting. Ever. Not even each other (unless it's a two-sitter job).
Homework comes first. Our homework AND the kids' homework.
We write down the parents' number and a neighbor's number before they leave.
If anything happens, we call the parents. Even if it's a little thing.
No talking on the phone except to the parents or our own moms.
We clean up before the parents get home. (Mostly!)
We always write in the club notebook.

Best and Worst Jobs (So Far!!)

BEST: Natalie and I did a two-sitter job for Matthew and Stefan, who are brothers, 8 and 9. They put on a puppet show for us with socks and a cardboard box about a dinosaur who goes to the dentist. It was 45 minutes long. We clapped for every part. Their mom came home early and watched the end and laughed so hard she cried.

ALSO BEST: Shaina sat for Simone, who is 5, the day before her birthday, and Simone made her a crown out of a paper plate that says "SHAINA IS THE BEST." Shaina wore it home.

WORST: OK. This one was me. I was sitting for Tori and Travis and I was getting Tori's pajamas while the bathtub was filling up and Travis "helped" by putting a whole bottle of bubble bath in and then Tori needed help with her buttons and when I came back... there were bubbles EVERYWHERE and the water was going over the side!!! I turned it off and used every single towel in the house. Then I called their mom like the rules say. She was really nice about it and said the floor needed a good wash anyway. I wrote a whole page about it in the club notebook. The lesson is: never leave the bathtub when it's running. It's in our sitting tips now.

ALSO WORST: Karina sat for Mario and he ate two bowls of spaghetti and then wanted to play airplane. I'll let you guess what happened. Karina says she is never playing airplane again.

Pictures of us and our Kid-Kits coming soon, when Natalie's dad gets the film developed!!

Want to Hire Us?

My mom said we could have an e-mail address on our page as long as she reads it too, so parents, please e-mail us at [email protected] and tell us the day, the time and how many kids. My mom will read it, and then we'll talk about it at our next meeting and write back. We only sit for families we know or friends of families we know. Kids, you can e-mail us too if you want to say hi!!