Playing Mommy

So I've thought for a while that I've thought that I when I have children, I want to have five of them. In the 15th hour of what will be a 16 hour day of babysitting five children...I still want to have five. As the parents don't get home for at least another hour, I have some time to kill. As hard and challenging as today was, it was still fun. Of course living in my own little return college student life with no schedule wasn't really beneficial for my somewhat rusty babysitting skills. I've also never baby sat for this number of children before. I don't think I did a very good job. Their lunch was late, and they didn't really like it, and so they told me they were starving for dinner, which I proudly got to them ontime, and they ate almost none of the huge feast of frozen chicken nuggets and fries that I made. These kids were so fun though. When I first got there, the youngest child, a 15 month-old girl smiled and immediately put out her arms for me, and refused to budge from my side, almost for the rest of the day. On the tour of the house, I was a little shocked to see a somewhat disturbing rubber skeleton doll in the two-year old's bed. The mother explained that this was Fred, and the little girl had felt sorry for him, thinking he must be so cold without skin, and rescued him from the Halloween decorations. Later in the day this same little girl was running around with her shirt around her hips, calling herself a princess. We also spent a good portion of the day hiding under her blanket from differently colored monsters who were coming to eat us. While we were waiting for them to leave, I tried to teach her to give butterfly kisses, and her understanding of it was to kiss me, with her lips, on my eyelashes.
Most of my babysitting experience is with children young enough not to notice when you make mistakes. A 8 month old baby, when you hand her a bowl of applesauce doesn't look disdainfully down at it, and say "Why is this in a baby bowl?" The oldest of the children, noticed all my blunders today, no doubt, but is at the age of discovering tact, or he just didn't care that much. But 6 year old really let me have it. It was seriously so funny. It's a little nervewracking coming into a family situation and trying to understand and recreate daily routines and rituals, like meal times, and bathtimes (oh boy THAT was a fun one, and then it actually did get fun) for the optimum comfort of the children. The kids really did try to help me though. They were sweet about helping me find things. And I got taken advantage of horribly in the dessert, and bedtime department, per tradition for babysitters.
And though trying to get an exhausted, and therefore, at the height of terrible two-ness, two year old to see your point of view and do what you want them to do, while juggling an exhausted, and therefore exceedingly cranky baby, can be really hard. I did it. And I may not have done everythong right, but it was a lesson in patience, and perseverence, and seriously, these kids are just so stinking cute, and so sweet, so even when they were being brats, it was still okay. Today make me excited to have my own little world of chaos someday. Should be a challenge, should be hard and will be wonderful. Today was a day of learning, and growing, and really, I just love kids. It was definitely a test, and while I don't appreciate being slightly taken advantage of my the parents (16 hours, really? They didn't mention that) It was still a good day. Hard, but good. And those are the best kinds of days aren't they? Tomorrow could be one of those days as well. I'm doing Primary Singing time for the first time. Slightly terrifed, but hopeful. Whoo!