Monday, September 24, 2007

A question for the Internets

(Oh, and I just noticed that this is my 400th post! Wow!)

All right, all you etiquette gurus out there, I need your help, please!

Good friends of ours have repeatedly offered to babysit, and we are finally going to take them up on their offer. I'm sure we will reciprocate for them in the future, but I'd like to do something for them as a way to say thanks. Paying them, I'm guessing, would be too weird. So what do we do instead? My first thought was to cook them a nice dinner and leave it for them. Is this a good idea or a bad idea? If you were in my shoes, what would you do?

Thanks in advance!

10 comments:

Unknown said...

Great idea! We used to buy pizza for friends who babysat. And we often babysat for friends who left us nothing but plenty of snacks and drinks in the fridge. Which was fine too.

Lauri said...

Don't make it too much work for yourself - your friends want to give you a chance to enjoy yourself - not create any stress - leave some easy treats or give them a bottle of wine.

Anonymous said...

I too was going to suggest a bottle of wine. Bringing back desert for them would also be nice, particularly if they aren't big drinkers.

DRD

Anonymous said...

That would be dessert. ::)

Michelle said...

Dessert is a great idea, or a gift certificate to a local place (pizza, Chinese, deli...) where they can pick up dinner on a night when they need a break!

chocolate? ;-)

EcoGeoFemme said...

If my friends had me babysit, I wouldn't want anything. If they gave me something, I would accept it, but the point is to give them a break when I can see how hard they are working at being new parents.

Anonymous said...

Or some really nice chocolate? I agree with other commenters that you shouldn't have to put in too much work -- they want to give you more time, not less.

Jane said...

Thanks, everyone! The dessert/chocolate idea is a great one---maybe I'll do that instead.

jo(e) said...

I was going to chime in and say that homemade cookies or something like that are a great gift to give someone who does you that kind of favor.

Anonymous said...

Leave a bottle of wine and Baby Jane for more babysitting when you deliver the bottle of wine as a token payment for the first bit of babysitting. That way you get one more babysitting job-though they didn't volunteer for that second bit of babysitting just at that moment-out of them-Could they turn you down with bottle of wine and baby in hand at the same time?-and they...wait, a bottle of wine while babysitting? No, that's not such a good idea after all... :(

Sorry.

Back to the drawing board.