Shaun....just saw this (sorry). Our answer is 100% yes. We pay $220/week most weeks and that includes food. Our girls are 2 and 4. We supply diapers and wipes, but the sitter does the rest. She is awesome. Our 2-year old went from hardly talking with the last sitter who has about 6 kids, to talking a ton because she gets more one-on-one. That and she's forced to play with her sister, which is a bonus or else they fight. We had the same sitter for 4 years and she was great, but quit unexpectedly. Generally it is $40/day for one kid or $60/day for two. We negotiated with ours to $50/day on the days our oldest has preschool in the morning. None of our sitters have ever claimed their income, so we can't claim it as childcare expenses, so that is a downfall...but some sitters do. Sittercity.com, care.com and CraigsList's Childcare forum all have a ton of listings.