Dear... Diary? Dear members of the BSC?
Dear, nothing. This isn't a journal, Haley. It's the club notebook!
Good observation, Marilyn.
Why, thank you. Anyway, Friday evening I sat for the Marshalls...
...And I sat for our new clients, the Tiners. I know, Vanessa, that you told us we should really only do an entry together if we babysit together... well...
In a way we sort of did. You see, Nina Marshall was given a rather fancy pair of walkie-talkies for her birthday last month. Her little brother and sister seem to like them more than she does, however.
And they aren't the only ones. You would not believe the range on those things! Well, we were only right nextdoor to the Marshalls, but still. Pretty good.
I know. Carolyn and I used to have some, but they were really crummy. These walkie-talkies were state of the art. It was almost like talking on a cell phone with someone. Only you have to push a button every time you want to talk, of course.
And I'm pushing that button right now. Marilyn, you've taken up too much of the entry already, you...you... silly-billy-goo-goo!
Ha ha ha, He he he!

Marilyn and Haley seemed to have a lot of fun writing this entry together. It rambles on and on for four pages, actually. Pretty nice way to start off our notebook. I wonder, why did everyone complain so much about writing about our baby-sitting jobs? Oh, well. It seems that Marilyn and Haley have changed their minds about that.

I'll start off by telling you about Haley's job for our new clients. About ten minutes earlier than she was scheduled to baby-sit, she was ringing the Tiner's doorbell, armed with her brand-new Kid-Kit in the other hand. In it were the coloring books I'd given her, plus new markers and crayons. She also had some of her old story books, four books that she had borrowed from the library, and the Memory game. She had decorated the box with silver wrapping paper and out of magazine letters, she had spelled "Kid-Kit" across the lid. (She told me later that her box was "incomplete," both inside and out.)

The door was flung open after a couple of minutes by a six-year-old girl with a wild look in her pale, blue eyes. She was wearing a Stoneybrook Elementary T-shirt, blue jeans, and running shoes. Her pale, blonde hair was in two braids with blue ribbons tied around the ends. In her hand was a walkie-talkie. Haley didn't know if anyone was on the other end.

"Hi!" she said, in a friendly voice. "I'm Sadie! Are you Haley?"

"Yup," Haley said. Sadie responded by darting off to tell her mom that Haley had arrived. Haley wiped her feet and let herself inside, closing the door behind her. The Tiner house was very comfortable. Not too messy, but not too neat. The furniture looked worn-in, as if it was several years old. Curled up on the couch were a chihuahua and a tiny, new kitten. Sprawled out on the floor dressing her paperdolls, was little Sealie Tiner.

Sealie was the spitting image of Sadie only smaller, of course. Her hair was in pigtails, too, but they weren't long enough to braid. She wore faded overalls and a pale pink T-shirt. What a relief it was to see that these were typical kids, not prim and proper ones like the Prezziosos.

"Hi-hi!" she exclaimed. Haley smiled, knowing she had heard that greeting from someone else before, but she wasn't where she had heard it.

"Hey, there," Haley replied. "Paperdolls! I love those."

She wasn't just saying that. Haley and I used to play paperdolls all the time when we were little. Sometimes we made our own, other times we used the ones that we got out of our "American Girl" magazines. She made a mental note to find paperdolls for her Kid-Kit. Our old ones were in bad shape so she knew that would be something else to buy.

Sealie looked delighted to hear this and began explaining the game she was playing with the dolls to Haley. As she was doing this, her mother walked in, spraying a mist of her perfume on herself. Mrs. Tiner was dressed up in a simple black dress with gold jewlery and a black shawl draped over her shoulders.

"Mommy looks beautiful," Sadie said, following her mother with a look of fascination.

"Yes, she does," Haley agreed. Sadie beamed, as though the compliment had been for her.

"Thank you," said Mrs. Tiner. "Nice to meet you in person, Haley. I'm Shonda Tinder. Mr. Tiner and I will be going out with the Marshalls tonight for their anniversary. In fact, I think they have a sitter from your club as well."

"That's right," said Haley.

"Thanks for coming early. That's always nice. I'm sure you and the girls will have a wonderful time. I left you some instructions posted on the refrigerator. They've already had dinner, and bedtime is at 9:00 tonight. Normally it's earlier, but when a sitter is over, its a special treat for them to stay up later."

"Yeah!" Sealie said enthusiastically.

"That okay with you?" asked Mrs. Tiner.

"Of course!" said Haley. She was delighted to have the extra time to get to know the girls.

"Great," she replied. Then she called out, "Steve? Let's get going."

Mr. Tiner appeared in a matching black suit and tie. Mrs. Tiner promptly adjusted his tie, and then said, "Good-bye girls! Don't be too much trouble for Haley."

"We're never any trouble, Mommy-silly-billy-goo-goo!" Sealie replied gleefully.

Her mom smiled wearily, "Of course not, sweetie. Bye now!" And with that, their parents left.

Silly-billy-goo-goo! Haley knew where she'd heard that before. From my sister! When Claire was five years old and going through a silly stage, she said that to just about everyone.

"Sealie," Haley ventured to ask, "Who taught you the word 'silly-billy-goo-goo?'"

"I got it from Jimmy Neutron," Sealie replied matter-of-factly.

With that, Sadie burst out into a fit of giggles. "Not Jimmy Neutron! That's a movie!" She turned to Haley. "She means Jamie Newton. He's a big boy that lives down the street and he has a little sister named Lucy. Jamie taught her to say 'silly-billy-goo-goo' and 'hi-hi' and all sorts of funny things."

"Silly-billy-goo-goo!" Sealie shouted, for no reason at all.

"Ten-four!" Sadie was now talking in her walkie-talkie. "Our baby-sitter just got here. Her name is Haley, and she's pretty. Is yours there yet? Out and over." (She meant to say "over and out.")

Immediately, the walkie-talkie answered back, quite clearly. "Yeah. Her name is Marilyn. We already know her though."

As you can imagine, Haley was quite suprised and pleased by this. She had noticed earlier that the Marshalls and the Tiners were nextdoor neighbors. She had regretted the fact, however, that it was a little too late for the kids to play together since it would be getting dark soon.

"Is that... Eleanor Marshall you're talking to?" Haley asked.

"Yeah!" Sadie looked pleased that she had guessed. "How did you know?"

"Their baby-sitter, Marilyn, is my friend. She's in the Baby-sitters Club with me."

"What's the Baby-sitters Club?" Sealie wanted to know. Haley told her a little bit about it, and little Sealie's eyes grew wide with interest. Meanwhile, Sadie and Eleanor talked back and forth on the walkie-talkies.

"That is so, so cool," Sealie exclaimed. "When I'm a big girl, I want to be in a baby-sitters club."

"I bet you could be the president," said Haley. Sealie beamed.

"Know what?" Sadie said. "These walkie-talkies are Nina Marshall's birthday present. They are very grown up, and she lets me and Eleanor play with them. I can hear Eleanor all the way from her house." Just then, the walkie-talkie interrupted her. It wasn't Eleanor; it was Marilyn!

"Hi, is this Sadie? This is Nina, Eleanor, and Toby's baby-sitter, Marilyn. Can I talk to Haley?"

Sadie pressed down the button to talk. "Hellooooo Marilyn! Yes, you can." She handed it over to Haley. "You have to press the button to talk and un-press it so that Marilyn can talk."

Haley nodded obediently and followed the instructions (as if she didn't already know.)

"Hey, Marilyn. Tell Nina these are great walkie-talkies!"

Marilyn obediently repeated that to Nina. Then she pressed down the button to answer back. "Isn't it neat? The Marshall kids are really good friends with Sadie and Sealie."

"I think Sadie and Sealie know Jamie and Lucy Newton, too." Haley said when it was her turn to push the button. She decided to tell Marilyn the "silly-billy-goo-goo" story when they could talk on an actual phone.

"One of these day we're going to have to put together a play group or something. Remember when the old BSC did that?" Marilyn responded.

(Marilyn put that part in the notebook and underlined the word 'playgroup' three times. It sounded pretty neat to me. I thought we might have to wait until next summer, though. Or maybe we could have one over winter break.)

Haley and Marilyn chatted for only a very short time. Then they let Sealie have a turn talking to Toby Marshall. She did most of the talking though, and Toby said a few words at a time. Typical boy.

On the other end of the conversation, Marilyn was having a pretty nice time with the Marshalls. eight-year-old Nina was finishing up her spelling worksheet for school. A rule at the Marshall house is that if the kids have homework on the weekend, they are supposed to finish it Friday night. (At the Pike house, this would never work.) Every now and then, Nina would ask for help using her words in sentences. Eleanor and Toby had been talking back and forth between the walkie-talkies "all day," according to Nina and about an hour ago, they had the idea to use them to talk to the Tiners.

"Toby and Sealie, sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S-E-N-G," sang Eleanor.

"Kissing is spelled K-I-S-S-I-N-G," Nina abruptly corrected her. Then she turned to Marilyn and said, "I have to use five of my spelling words all in the same paragraph and it's sooooo hard. Can you help me?"

"Hmm, let's see," Marilyn studied the words. "These words don't go together very well, do they?"

"No, they don't," Nina agreed. She blew her bangs out of her face, looking frustrated.

"Hey, that's okay," Marilyn said. "We just have to be creative."

At that moment, Toby shoved the walkie-talkie in Marilyn's hand. "All done." He said it as though he had just finished eating. It was a phrase he used often and sometimes at the most inappropriate times. Someone would be talking to him and he'd stop them mid-sentence with: "All done talking." or "All done listening."

"Toby!" Eleanor scolded him. "You didn't ask if I wanted it. And I do!"

"It's okay, Eleanor. You still have..." Marilyn looked at the clock, "..thirty more minutes to talk. Then all of you need to get ready for bed."

"First I have to finish this," Nina whined. "It's taking forever."

"It won't take much longer," Marilyn assured her. And it didn't. Just as Eleanor's thirty minutes were up, Nina had finally thought of a paragraph using the words "cactus," "together," "astronaut," "jungle," and "gigantic." It went like this: "The gigantic cactus was too big to jump over. The astronaut and the alien split up and went around it. Maybe if they had stayed together, they wouldn't be lost in the jungle."

After all of the kids had gone to bed, Marilyn and Haley made use of the walkie-talkies themselves. They wrote the first draft of their notebook entry while it was fresh in their minds. (I was impressed by that!)

What was I doing while Marilyn and Haley were at their jobs? I was helping out at Claire's birthday slumber party. However, I felt a little bad because my mind kept wandering to other things. I was unable to give the party my full attention.

It was later on that night when the gifts had been opened and the candles had been blown out, that I did some serious thinking alone in my room. The kind of thinking where you have to sit down and write it all out.

I could hear Claire, Margo, and their friends down the hall giggling up a storm at something. The Pike house was dominated by the girls tonight. The triplets were all spending the night with Buddy Barrett. In turn, his little sister, Suzi was one of Claire's party guests.

Poor Nicky was stuck with the girls tonight. He was grounded for... something. So my sisters plus Melody Korman, Laurel and Patsy Kuhn, Myriah Perkins, Suzi Barrett, and three other girls in Claire's class were all tormenting and hounding the poor guy until Dad finally told them to stop.

I remember what it was like to just be friends with the girls in your class at school. I'm finally starting to branch out. For instance, Haley and I are the only two freshmen in the BSC while everyone else is in the eighth grade. And Charlotte could actually be in the seventh grade if she hadn't skipped a grade, although I cannot see her in the same grade as Margo.

Margo and her friends aren't mature enough to babysit if you ask me. I know that the original BSC started when they were seventh graders, and Mal and Jessi were only in the sixth grade when they became junior members! But our club is different... older. I wanted it to stay that way. So far, Margo had not said a thing about wanting to join. If she ever really wanted to be a junior member... well, we would have to talk about it.

I was leaning toward the prospect of adding another older member... an eighth grader or a ninth grader, most likely... to the club. I realized that it could not be left up to me to decide. Everyone else would have a say in it.

We were lucky that we had not had a conflict in scheduling thus far. Friday's meeting had gone smoothly, probably because fewer calls had come in. But we came so close on Wednesday to having a big problem when we thought that no one was free to sit for the Marshalls.

I collected all my thoughts and wrote down the questions I needed answered:

Should we have a junior members yet? (probably not.)
Should we take on associate members? (probably so.)
Should we ask someone our age to be a full-time member?
If so, is there another office they could take? And who could it be? (???)