The child care issue

We have THE BEST babysitter EVER. She started as a friend of a friend who decided to stay home with her two kids. One is a few years older, the other is the same age as my son. Both girls. She has taken care of my son since he was 6 months old.

We had an agreement when we started- 5 years ago- that she would be paid $30/day. Some days she had him for 4 hours, some for 6, rarely for 8.

She is awesome. She treats him as one of her own. He is being taken care of in a home environment. In the summer she takes him to the beach, the boardwalk, the park. She drove him to and from dance class. She really loves him.

The issue is.... now that he is in kindergarten I emailed her *yes I am a chicken* about "renegotiating" her pay. She went from an average of a 6 hour day watching him to a 2 hour day. Thats right. TWO HOURS. An hour before school and an hour after. He goes half days in the afternoons. We talked to the school to have him switched to afternoons and for the bus to pick him up and drop him off in her neighborhood not ours. We did that because her daughter was also afternoons. This way she either had afternoons to herself (what is that?) or she could volunteer at her older daughter's school.

What did she say to my proposal? She said no. That in the five years she has watched him she never had a raise. Well, I'd call this a raise. A $15/hr babysitter. CRAP!

But we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. We love her. We love how she is with Colin. We can't get that anywhere else. And so we pay....