I wonder if the personality you have as a baby stays with you. My mom tells me that I started making- finger paintings with my strained carrots and mashed peas. 'An artist right from the beginning," she says. I looked around the room at my friends, trying to picture each of them as a baby. Had their infant personalities followed them as they grew?

    I actually knew Kristy as a baby, since she and I lived across the street from each other back then. Of course, I don't remember what she was like, since I was a baby too. But I'd bet anything that Baby Kristy was headstrong and determined to have things her way. She probably had definite opinions and wasn't shy about sharing them.

    Kristy (grown-up Kristy, that is) is the driving force behind the BSC. In fact, the business was originally her idea. Here's how it works: The club meets in my room, since I have my own phone, with a private line (that's why I'm the vice-president). We meet on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from five-thirty until six, and parents call us during those times to set up sitting jobs. We're very organized. We keep a dub record book with information on our clients and a calendar with our schedules. We also keep a club notebook, in which we each write up every single one of our jobs, which is not my favorite chore. Reading everybody else's entries helps us stay up-to-date on what's happening with the kids we sit for. The parents love that.

    We're excellent sitters: responsible, punctual, and caring. We love hanging out with our charges. We're not the kind of sitters who stick a movie into the VCR to keep the kids busy while we raid the fridge and talk on the phone. We think it's more fun to pull out our Kid-Kits (boxes we've filled with fun stuff such as stickers and markers and hand-me-down toys and books) and have a good time with our charges. You can imagine why kids — and parents — like us so much.