Adventures in Babysitting

Okay, all you moms and mums out there, I salute you. Like, a lot. A lot, a lot. Good gravy! I can see now that there are many, many good reasons that I do not have small children. Among them that I might never shower again.

I'm fairly certain that you're not supposed to end a weekend of babysitting fun crippled like an old woman, right? That's what I get, I suppose, for agreeing that leaving me alone with an 3 1/2 year-old and and almost-one-year-old seemed like a reasonable thing to do. What were we all thinking?

I spent the weekend at my friend's house, while she and her husband attended a family wedding out of town sans the aforementioned small children. And it mostly went well -- they're still alive and kicking, so I figure I've done my job -- aside from the crippling, which happened when I went bent over to heft the world's biggest baby (seriously, 26 pounds, eleven months, slightly longer than two feet -- oy!) out of her pack-and-play, and at the exact moment I started to lift, her brother jumped on my back for a piggyback ride.

For a moment, I lost my balance and thought I was either going to fall forward and kill the baby, or fall back and crush her brother. Luckily, my back decided for me, and froze in a wicked spasm halfway, so I was sort of suspended there with a child hanging off each end like a fashion accessory.

Happily, it was just a spasm, and I managed not to squish either of them. And it happened at the end of the weekend, so while I'm sitting a little carefully today, all is otherwise well.

These are quite possibly my favorite kids in the whole world, so it was certainly not a hardship to spend a (mostly) hysterical weekend with them. I am amazed, seriously, that y'all get anything accomplished outside of keeping the little buggers alive. I was going breakfast dishes at nine o'clock at night, and trying to time my potty breaks to nap time. I didn't realize that otherwise, going to the bathroom is a group activity.

Some other things I discovered:

1) Everything you ever wanted to know -- or where afraid to ask -- about Pixar's Cars, a movie that no one has actually seen yet, I might add. It's frightening to realize just how much advertising kids soak up wholecloth. I was, however, briefly at the top of the heap for having brought a McDonald's Happy Meal toy -- aka Mater the Tow Truck -- with me as a gift.

2) Toddlers are eternal optimists. "Can we go see Cars?" "No." "Okay." Five minutes later. "Can we go to Chuck E. Cheese?" "It's eight o'clock at night. No." "Oh. Okay." And so on. It was so funny. It was like the embodiment of "nothing ventured, nothing gained." My guess is that your world is so filled with "No" when you're that age that it's not as surprising as it might otherwise be.

3) If you run out of lullabies that you know (it's not, in my case, an extensive list), a shrieking baby will respond to your desperation, if nothing else, as you sing Rizzo's song from Grease, the Cole Porter songbook, the theme from The Fact of Life and anything else your sleep-deprived little mind can drum up -- eventually. And the fact that when she finally does, she will burrow her little head under your chin, and make a soft little sigh that smells like baby food and nuzzle against your neck, pretty much makes you forget that she woke you up in the middle of the night in the first place.

4) My girlfriend's husband is a bad, bad influence. "Can we watch James Bond, Aunt Shannon?" (This, from a kid who's not allowed to watch The Chronicles of Narnia, because it might be too violent) "No, we cannot watch James Bond. Does your mommy know you're watching James Bond?" "No, it's our little secret." "Oh. Your little secret with who?" "Daddy. We watch good stuff. Buck Rodgers, too! And cartoons. Do you like The Simpsons?" Ack.

5) You can stop a tantrum in its tracks by confusing the hell of 'em. We were deep into the "I don't wanna go to bed" meltdown when I said, "Well, into each life, a little rain must fall."

Instantly, the tears stopped. "What does that mean?" It took fifteen minutes to get through all the questions, at which point we'd managed to get upstairs, brush teeth, wash face and hands, use the potty and hop into bed. Not bad for an accidental trick.

6) "Heck" is a bad word. I got sent to time out for saying it. (And don't think I'm kidding. This is a child with a finely-honed sense of moral outrage.)

6) The Boy Child might just be a mad toddler genius. My original, confident "no tv" policy lasted oh, about a minute and a half. While flipping madly through the channels trying to find more NASCAR racing (The Boy Child is a nut about cars, trucks, anything with an engine), we stumbled across a program on pyramids and mummies.

At first, I wigged out about whether or not it was going to cause nightmares, and then realized that it was way too educational for that. It was a PBS-style documentary, and I figured he'd be bored out of his skull, but he wouldn't let me change it, and several hours later, when we were playing with the blocks on the floor, he was building himself a pyramid, complete with using the little round columns as impromptu skids to move his blocks from one side of the pyramid to another. It was sort of eerily impressive.

So I salute you, hot mamas, you are far, far better women than I.