Anonymous wrote:We were in your boat too when our kids were small. We had friends whose kids were about the same ages and we took turns doing overnights. My kids would stay at their house then vice versa. Do you have any friends that might do this?

This is what I was going to say. Try to arrange sleep overs and then reciprocate for the other families.

Be prepared to pay well. Lower pay for hours when kids are asleep is ridiculous because the Nanny is on duty 24/7.

Anonymous wrote:You should ask a friend who has a nanny if their nanny is interested in weekend work. Then at least the nanny comes with a trusted reference.

Stop stealing nannies.

This is OP - thanks for the suggestions folks. We will definitely ask the daycare/preschool, we hadn't thought of that one.

We were in your boat too when our kids were small. We had friends whose kids were about the same ages and we took turns doing overnights. My kids would stay at their house then vice versa. Do you have any friends that might do this?

I’d ask at your preschool. They’ll mention it to the other preschool teachers too.

Some daycare / preschool teachers will do this.

The term is proxy parent - looking for a travel nanny or proxy parent nanny. There are some nannies that specialize in this

Please do not hire someone from a website to stay with your kids for a weekend.

Ask on your neighborhood listserv if someone can recommend a nanny who might be interested in (a lot of) weekend hours.

Have you asked your regular sitter? If not I’d start there. She might be available or have friends who are.

You can also check with teachers at their school. When my kids were in elementary school, a lot of single teachers also did overnight weekends to make extra money on the side. It’s the perfect solution!

Anonymous wrote:You should ask a friend who has a nanny if their nanny is interested in weekend work. Then at least the nanny comes with a trusted reference.

+1 I wouldn't leave kids with someone they've never seen before. At least have the nanny babysit for them for a few hours before hand. It's not that there aren't good caregivers out there, but it's going to be tough on your kids to leave them for 48 hours with a stranger.

You should ask a friend who has a nanny if their nanny is interested in weekend work. Then at least the nanny comes with a trusted reference.

Hello,

My wife and I have two little ones (girl almost 4 and boy almost 6) and are coming up on our 10th year wedding anniversary. The kids (in preschool and rising 1st) sleep through the night, are well-behaved and don't have any special needs. Except for a couple of one-night overnight stays for weddings where children were not invited, we've literally never had any time away from them.

Unfortunately, we really don't have family who we can leave our kids with. The overnight stay for the wedding we left them with my mom, but my mom is not really physically capable of handling them for more than a night (we were gone about 20 hours and had to drive to Western PA and back, it was not great), and she is a heavy smoker. The other wedding we left them with an overnight sitter that we were not super happy with. We have a more regular sitter who we are happy with but she has her own life and works for a big 4, so it's not really in the cards.

We're hoping we can get away for a weekend on our own terms for our anniversary. Has anyone had any luck with an online service that would offer weekend care? It seems like pretty slim pickings for sitters who would be willing to do that. Obviously we would pay.