I’m annoyed about a babysitting arrangement and I’m sorry, but I need to give a (long) backstory for context.
Me, DH and our two kids live in London. Our extended families live in different parts of the UK, nowhere near London. Nonetheless, they try to help us out as much as they can and my mum, in particular, frequently comes to help with school holidays, etc.
Our closest friends (literally. They live around the corner) have a daughter the same age as our eldest (six) but their families live on the other side of the world, and they therefore get no support at all.
They have a long-standing babysitter, but we help out whenever we can by having their daughter for sleepovers if they want to go out. We recently had her for the weekend when they went away for their anniversary, and my mum has had all the kids (their daughter and our two) a few times to allow us to all have a night out or attend a wedding or similar. The girls are now at an age where it’s actually easier to look after them when they’re together, because aside from the odd spat, they entertain themselves.
However, while they occasionally have our daughter for the afternoon, she has never had a sleepover at theirs. This is because our kids get up early (around 6am, there seems no way to prevent this) and, fair enough, they don’t want to wake up then. Can’t blame them, cos I don’t either ! Just explaining this, because we have had their daughter sleep over countless times - she often gets left here if they come round for dinner, it goes on late, and she falls asleep with our two. We always let them sleep in until they’re ready to come and get her the next day. The reciprocal sleepovers stand at nil.
So...one of them is having a birthday lunch in a restaurant soon. It’s not a ‘special’ birthday, but he’s taken the notion to invite lots of our friends who have left London for more affordable climes. Loads of folk are coming, they’ve all arranged babysitters, and we’d been really looking forward to it.
There was WhatsApp chat about asking one of the women who works at the nursery all our kids attended/attend to babysit while we go for lunch, but when I spoke to her she had another commitment. Our friends were making noises at that point that their usual babysitter wasn’t likely to be available.
I thought we’d either find someone else the kids knew, or just bite the bullet and take them all with us (like I say, the girls are at an age where they’re not too difficult when they’re together.)
Today, I got a message to say they’d booked their usual babysitter, but as she’s recently been in hospital, probably not fair to ask her to look after more kid than one kid, so here’s a link to a babysitting website that charges £12/hr for up to three kids.
What I took from that was, ‘I’m alright jack. Sort yourselves out!’
If I’d been in their position, I’d have felt like it would be the decent thing to see if we could sort something out together still. I just wouldn’t have sorted out babysitting for our two and left them to it. I just would not have done it.
It’s really rankled with me!
In their defence, they have ‘rescued’ me a few times when I’ve been running late for nursery/school pickup, and there was a day last summer when I was puking and they looked after my kids for the day while DH was at work. I know if we were desperate, they would do whatever they could to help us out.
Should I say this has irked me, or should I stay schtum? I am annoyed, but I know I can get overly worked up about things. I equally hate confrontation, so when stuff like this comes up, I typically silently seethe for a bit and then get over it.
But AIBU to be annoyed? Am I a wet blanket if I say nothing, or would I be making a fuss over nothing if I mentioned it had pissed me off?