Adventures In Babysitting

Most of you know that Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my "off nights" from work. However, this week my Wednesday night was canceled so Tuesday, Feb 12th, was to be my only "off night". Monday night before I left from work I got a text message from Coach Nichols (who is the football coach at Faulkner but him, his wife, and their two children are members at University, where we are) asking if I could babysit on Tuesday, they were having kind of a babysitting emergency.

I have to interject here and give you a little background. In high school, I baby sat all the time. I was an expert babysitter. The same goes for my first two years of college. That, however, is pretty much where it ends. In Lineville, Cole (a 3 year old son of the football coach and great friends of ours there) stayed with me a lot. But, it wasn't like babysistting. Sometimes, I would go and get him just because I loved having him. He was more like a nephew/little brother. Never was it a I watch your son and you give me money for it kind of exchange. There is another little boy, Devin, around the same age, here in Montgomery. Then there is Lily, the daughter of my friends Brint and Shanon and Tucker, son of Greg and Rayla, again, more like family. In all of these cases, it was a child that I had spent a lot of time with them before I watched them. So, what I am saying is that I haven't "babysat" a child since appx the year 2000. See where I am going with this?

However, the Nichols are wonderful people and their children are so cute and I thought, I can do this. Let me tell you, Tuesday, I was awesome. I even thought, I'm not too old to have kids, I still have plenty of energy! I went to their house when I got off work Tuesday and Peyton (the beautiful two year old that I was staying with) immediately took to me. There wasn't even any crying or fussing when his mom left! We watched kid shows, we played basketball and baseball outside (it was almost 80 degrees outside), we found a catapillar (sp?) and played with it, we went for a walk around the neighborhood, and we even jumped on the trampoline! Even nap time went great! We both slept for almost two hours! I even made a pizza for lunch! Oh yeah, I can totally handle this. At the end of the day I was exhausted but feeling great! I had a good night that night and went to bed about 7:00 (give me a break, I had been up for over 24 hours!)

Wednesday, Leigh came in and woke me up about 7:15 and said that Coach Nichols was on the phone and wanted to know if I could babysit again, that their babysitter had just called and told them that she couldn't watch Peyton. As easy as Tuesday had been and as frantic as they were, I didn't even have to think about it! I was there in less than an hour. Wednesday, Peyton wasn't quite as happy to see his mom go because they had thought that he might have to go to school with her for a little while. It wasn't bad though and before long we were watching tv again. Now, I knew that there would be no playing outside today because it was 36 degrees!!! So, we bundled up and went to Faulkner to visit Louise and Leigh. Then we went to Target to buy Valentine's presents for Louise, Dirt, and Leigh. Going to Target with a 2 year old....fun. We got there and immediately he started in with the "I wants". You have to know that this child is SO good but, come on, he is two years old in Target, he wants stufff. Then, when we get to the very far back end of the store, guess what? He has to go potty. Geez.... So we make a mad dash all the way back across the store to the bathroom. An important note here is that when Peyton does something that he perceives as wrong or bad, he says, "It's ok", "It's ok" =^) That's your clue. So, when we get in the bathroom, the only open stall is the handicap one, so I put him down in there and he looks at me like I'm crazy. "I need a little boy potty", touche', the toilit is almost as tall as he is. So, I put him down in a regular stall and turn around because I am talking to Leigh on the phone. That's when I hear it. "It's ok. It's ok." Oh no. I look in ther and he has peed EVERYWHERE! I mean, the walls, the floor, EVERYWHERE! I don't know what to do. I am laughing my butt off and I pull his pants up and wash his hands. When I turn around from getting paper towels he is bent down looking under the stalls!! Now I am about to fall over laughing and I just pick him up and run out of the bathroom! After we leave Target we go to Chappy's deli to meet up with Louise and Leigh for lunch. This goes pretty good but he is getting tired. SO, I still need to go by Best Buy on the way home so Louise goes with me to sit in thje car with him while I run in. Please note here that I am not leaving out where I took him to the bathroom at the deli. He didn't ask, so I didn't think about it. We leave Best Buy and are sitting over the interstate at a red light when he says, "I gotta go potty" Hmmmm. We are not going anywhere for the next 60 seconds and we're only about 2 miles from their house so I ask him (yes, now I know how silly this sounds...key word NOW) if he can hold it. He says yes. In about a minute (we're not even to the light yet) he says, "It's ok" "WHAT is ok, Peyton?" "It's ok, it's ok" Oh geez. We get home and of course, there is pee everywhere. I take TOTAL responsibility for this. I'm sorry Peyton. So I go in and change him and we lay down on the couch for a nap. About 45 minutes later (I haven't heard a peep from him in about 30 minutes), he says, "It's ok, it's ok". "WHAT is ok Peyton?" "I pee pee in my pants. It's ok". "When? Just now? Or earlier in the car?" He says, "Yes". Oh, in the car. "Yes, it's ok Peyton. Really not a big deal. You need to go to sleep though." "Ok." Fast forward an hour and a half of a very bad nap and he sits up and says, "New pants." WHAT? You guessed it. No wonder he didn't sleep good, I made him nap in wet underware! I know.

Maybe I'm not the expert in child rearing that I thought I was. So what? I'm not giving up. At the end of the day he was still healthy and happy and he even loves me. Not a bad two days work :^)