Baby Sitters

Chris Buth felt she'd been let out of jail on her last vacation, sleeping late and lounging on the beach."You can't put a price on a full week of sleeping in," said Buth, a suburban Chicago speech pathologist and the mother of a baby and a 3-year-old.But Buth and her husband, Mark, didn't leave the kids behind. Instead, they took their regular sitter with them to Florida for a week."I would do it again in a second," said Buth, saying the added cost -- the price of a plane ticket and a few meals -- was well worth the R&R time and flexibility she and her husband got in return.

CENTREVILLE -- Facing two counts of involuntary manslaughter in the accidental suffocation deaths of two infants at her Stevensville home day care last spring, Stacey W. Russum pleaded guilty yesterday to lesser charges in a plea arrangement she hopes will keep her out of prison.Russum, the first child care provider to be prosecuted on criminal charges for violating Maryland day care regulations, entered an Alford plea in which she admitted no wrongdoing but acknowledged that pros- ecutors probably had enough evidence to convict her on two counts of reckless endangerment.

My 2-year-old granddaughter cries when she sees me or my husband or anyone new. I have tried ignoring her when I go to their home, but she screams so loud I have to leave. How I long to hold her and love her. Can anyone help?To a 2-year-old child -- who may not see Grandma all that often -- Grandma is nothing more than a stranger.If you keep that in mind, it's easier to understand the fact that Grandma is only going to get what she wants if her granddaughter gets what she needs -- the reassurance that Grandma's presence doesn't mean the disappearance of Mom and Dad."

At the height of their affair, Paul Stephen Riggins would periodically call his longtime lover the familys teen-age baby sitter to tell her that his wife had left him. But it was a lie. Whenever the baby sitter called Nancy Riggins at work at the Burtonsville Giant store later in the day, she was always there. So when Nancy Riggins turned up missing, her 5-year-old daughter apparently left alone in the Riggins Elkridge house July 2, 1996, the sitter was worried. I knew something was wrong because I knew Nancy would never have left on her own accord and left Amanda in the house, the former baby sitter testified yesterday in Howard County Circuit Court on the fifth full day of testimony in Stephen Riggins murder trial.

When I was 10, Mrs. Manning would pay me 25 cents each to bathe her four children and put them to bed. She'd had four kids in six years, and I collected plenty of quarters from her.I would take the money, hike through the woods that surrounded our suburban neighborhood and cross a four-lane highway to what was then the Zayre's discount store. For 99 cents, I would buy the newest bright yellow, hardback edition of the Cherry Ames mysteries. I could not run back to my quiet bedroom fast enough.

TC Cari Allison would rather start her own business than deal with finding another baby-sitter.The Davidsonville mother of two sons, Joshua, 4, and Ryan, 2, had a steady baby-sitter, but is losing her because the sitter is moving. Mrs. Allison, who knows the difficulties of finding a reliable sitter, decided to make it easier for herself and others by creating a directory called the Baby-Sitting Network.The publication, which she hopes will come out quarterly, will list about 50 sitters from five areas: Annapolis, Bowie/Crofton, Arnold/Severna Park, Glen Burnie/Pasadena, and Deale/South County.

Bonnie Scott, a columnist for Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, uses the Internet to support her children's reading. Here are some of her suggestions:I start with the Children's Literature Web guide at www.acs. ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown. Here I have found lists of Children's Book Award winners, children's best-sellers and specific resources for parents.A Web traveler's Toolkit will link you to the best children's literature sites. Forums and bulletin boards let you post questions about kids and reading.

HCC to offer seminar on Old Baltimore site A one-session seminar, "Old Baltimore Research Project," covering the 17,000-item artifact collection recovered from the Old Baltimore site in Harford County, is being offered by Harford Community College from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday at Fallston Hall. The archaeological investigation of Old Baltimore highlights the expansion of European settlement in the upper Chesapeake Bay and provides insights on diverse research issues such as international trade status, and the nature of wealth on the frontier.

One of the smaller investments by the University of Maryland Foundation Inc. in recent years has been to UMBC President Michael K. Hooker's entertainment account.So far, it hasn't paid off.The money -- thousands of dollars -- was advanced on the theory that it would help Dr. Hooker raise money, officials say. But in a recently released tally, he scored third from the bottom among 11 peers in meeting fund-raising goals established for his campus three years ago."We've been laying the groundwork for fund raising in the Baltimore area that won't come for two or three or four years," Dr. Hooker said.

Perhaps you thought you could pin that pint of Haagen-Dazs you polished off while watching your sister's child on someone else. But it just may be that your every move was monitored by a video camera.Thousands of people across the country are using hidden cameras and other tools of the spy trade to snoop on family members and baby sitters.The equipment for home spying ranges from miniature video cameras hidden in stuffed animals and smoke detectors to kits that test snippets of children's hair for traces of drugs.