Happy Blogversary, Happy Birthday to ME!

This is another backdated post, really its January 19, 2009, my birthday! I had passed my blogversary on January 15. I reached my 10,000th hit on October 27, 2008. This will be my last and final post on this blog. It’s been a year of great fun, and I thank my readers for encouraging me to continue. I thank Mindy for being there in the beginning and getting me into blogging in the first place. Lots of you first found this blog once it was halfway done, so you can always look through the archives if you want to read more.

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My Birthday

On my Jewish blog, I put a poll asking you to guess what age I’m turning. The majority said the right age. Some of you knew beforehand that I was turning 20, and some were just good guessers. A few chose 19, I’m thinking that maybe they didn’t read the whole question, and chose the age that I was at the time. It’s a cool age to celebrate, I am now 2 decades old!

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What Bloggers said about “The Babysitter”

If you wrote about me, and I didn’t include you, then please link me to it so I can include it. Thank You!

Frum Punk:

The Babysitter: Adorably awesome and always alert, Babysitter builds upon bounties of brilliance. Channeling child care with life lessons, she seldom sees anything but the best in any situation.

Mike In Midwood:

Babysitter: A blog on babysitting and handling children. Usually gets into the psychology of children or parents in different actions. And at this very moment the babysitter is on a streak of "rights".

Child Ish Behavior:

The Babysitter- She will watch your kids(if you tell her in advance), comment on lots of blogs, and tell you how to put a good spin on things.

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Key Word Analysis

I’ve had a bunch of interesting keyword searches of how people came to my blog, but I didn’t think of saving it from the website, and once it went over 500, they all got erased and now its only the keyword searches since the 500th one. But some of the main ones were “excuses for not babysitting”, “spoiled children help”, “why kids don’t like sleep”, “Connie Talbot”, “Isaac Hersh”, and “kids shower products”.

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Bloggers I have Met

Mindy, Jessica, Jacob Da Jew, Child Ish Behavior, Frum Skeptic, Moshe, Frum Punk, Bas Melach, and Sweety.

Bloggers not included in meet ups, I met individually. Mindy I had known beforehand. Jessica, I didn’t really get to meet, but I got to see her one time from the city bus window. Jacob Da Jew I met one shabbos, cause he came to a neighbors house, it was a pleasant surprise, but I was a bit shy. My mother actually remembered him from a time he sang at my neighbor’s son’s bar mitzvah. So it was a cool small world.

Meetup #1

About the famous blogger meetup that was written up about already 3 times, I will now say over my side of it. First here’s Frum Punx, Frum Skeptic’s and childish’s.

So at first I wasn’t going to go, but then I decided to go and was so happy I went. Frum Skeptic was really kind to meet me half way, and then I felt more comfortable, cause I had time to get to know her. When we got to Moshe’s house, I got to see his cute little Shlomik playing ball in the drive way with his grandmother. Then Frum Skeptic and I were brought into the house where we waited for the others to come back from shul.

I’ll skip all the extra stuff, and get right to the people stuff. So when I was walking over to Moshe’s house with FrumSkeptic, she told me that Frum Punk was going to be there too. I hadn’t known this, and it was a cool surprise. So Frum Punk comes in and asks people their names, then he turns to me and asks my name, and it took me a few minutes to realize which name he was talking about, I was unsure if I was supposed to say “The Babysitter” or my real name. But then at the end I said both, and that was solved.

Then Moshe brought out the food, and I learned about the Russian Volba from Frum Skeptic. It was interesting and kinda gross at the same time, to see her peel away the fish skin and eat the fish as if it was a snack. Although she said that usually her father does that part for her, so she wasn’t used to peeling the fish. She said that in school she would bring it for snack sometimes, and that it would smell bad, but it still tasted good. It was cool to find out about different cultures. But yet this didn’t make me loose my appetite.

Then Moshe brought out his Dafina, I tried to eat a bit of it, but it wasn’t my taste. Moshe kept insisting that I eat and wanted to know why I didn’t eat anything. I told him the food was just too interesting or too fancy for me. I really do like eating.

Then we had lots of discussions about all kinds of stuff. At one point I embarrassed myself by blurting out something without thinking. I mistakenly said one abbreviation instead of another, abbreviations that were very similar sounding, but had totally different meanings. That caused a bit of a reaction, and Moshe said he was going to write about what I said. Then later when I checked his blog, he hadn’t wrote about it and I was relieved!

Meanwhile, Moshe was very into his drinking and stuff, and he brought out all kinds of bottles for us to try. Childish had no problem trying the drinks. FrumSkeptic tried some stuff too. I can’t remember if Frum Punk had anything, but probably. So then Frum Punk said I should drink something too, and at first I said that I wouldn’t. But then I agreed to drink something, to make up for not eating anything. Or some other deal, I forgot what. So frum Skeptic, suggested some flavored thing, that looked like flavored seltzer, that had little or no alcohol in it. So I drank a little and it wasn’t bad.

Then when we were ready to leave, Moshe showed us some jokes and stuff on his fridge, and his hooka, and the hanging meet on the ceiling. Then I walked home with FrumSkeptic, and it was really fun talking with her, she told over so many interesting stories. Then later she blogged about them, and it was cool to compare, cause I already knew the stories, and she told over more of the details to me. All in all I had a great time! The time was around 5 and a half hours!

Meetup #2

Recently I had the pleasure to meet up with Bas Melach. I was on the city bus going to the designated place to meet her, when this girl on the city bus drops her pocketbook. If you’ve read my other posts, then you know that I love to pick things up, that I get an enjoyment from it. So I picked up her pocketbook and gave it to her. We were sitting across from each other.

Then she asks me my name, I tell her my name, and she asks if I go to the college that was near the stop she had gotten on from. I told her yes I do, and asked her what her name was. She told me her name and I couldn’t believe it. I asked her if she’s friends with so and so, and she said “yes, how do you know?”. So I asked her, if she’s “Sweety"? so it took her a few seconds to figure out what I meant. She was thinking to herself how in the world would I know that. So I reminded her that a while ago, we used to e-mail each other, and she had told me her name then, and I remembered. So it was cool that I got to meet an unexpected blogger.

Then when I met Bas Melach, I had a great time talking with her. We talked about college, and career plans, and bloggers that we knew before, and stuff she mentioned on her blog. Then at the end she said we need to say some “Torah”. I said “what?”, she said that in Pirkei Avos it says that when 2 people meet, the shechina comes down, so you should say some d’var torah or something. So then she took out her palm and played a shiur that she had from seminary, we listened for like 10 minutes from her head phones. Then the battery died so that ended. But it was a cool experience.

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Top Commenters

Finally, I would like to thank my top commenters for commenting on my blog. I appreciate all that you have contributed, and you have been the fuel that has kept me going. I thank all my commenters, not just the ones that made the top 10 list.

And the winners are:

Here’s an award for being the top commenter:

    

You can put this award on your blog.     

    

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Once again, I would like to thank you all for reading and commenting! I had a great time with this blog, and it really helped me at different points in my life.

At this point I would like to remind you, that if you have a link on your blog roll to my babysitter blog, and haven’t put a link you to my Jewish blog, you can do it now. Because from now on I will only be posting on The Jewish Side.

I will now be changing my blog name to “Jewish Side of Babysitter”

The End!

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Well, not the end, I have an update to make.

UPDATE: I am so extremely very happy to hear that the “Large Family” has had baby #12, on January 20, 2009. 

That makes it 10 girls and 2 boys! Oldest is 17! My precious family that I love so much, I can’t wait to be there for baby #12. Even though I stopped babysitting, I haven’t stopped going to them. I play with the kids for free, because I love them so much and get so much enjoyment from it, that no money can pay for it.

What great timing, I had a feeling it would come at this time, when I was putting up my ending post. Such a great birthday present for me! It’s like I just had a child!