Adventures in Babysitting
I am updating from someone else's laptop while the dishwasher hums. Yes, that's right, I get PAID to do this. However, tonight wasn't all tip-tapping the keys and enjoying fizzy drinks.
When I first arrived, Adriana answered the door in a glittering gold formal dress with some poolside flip flops. She looked radiant. I helped tie up her dress in the back while she reminded me about bedtimes, showers, spelling lists, piano practice, and cell phone numbers. They took off, with vague calls of a midnight return.
And so there I was with these new kids, Marissa and Brighton. How to crack the ice? Luckily, Brighton dispensed immediately to go upstairs and mess with Legos so I only had the little lady to consider. I began by asking her to show me her room, a trick I've found to work with pretty much every child I have encountered who had a bedroom to speak of. We went through her entire American Doll's wardrobe before I suggested we begin preparing dinner.
Little Marissa completely surprised me with her fine vegetable chopping skills and even a mature appreciation for mushrooms in their raw form. I finished making dinner while she practiced on the piano for ten minutes at most before becoming disillusioned.
Brighton set the table and I nervously served my creation to these fellow humans. The ingredients Mom had laid out for me seemed too sophisticated for a child's dinner. Some bulk mushrooms, a few bright tomatoes and a raw chicken breast. I did what I could with some spices and noodles and hoped for the best. With not a little hand-wringing I put out their plates, and again to my surprise, Marissa was bowled over with it and kept exclaiming the dish "delicious" and "sooo good!'" WTF, I thought.
After dinner Brighton took up on the piano and was actually making good progress before Marissa and I rudely interrupted and declared an urgent need to go to the neighbor's birthday party in time for the 7:30 cake cutting.
I was greeted by a scene I had not readily anticipated. There were not three, not four but five native children in the house, all running in different directions, hooting and hollering. I was amazed by the dining adults still at table, so composed, for whom this was obviously business as usual.
A lot of kids are cute but this lot was actually stunning. (Add in two doctors for parents... The gene pool is fine, come on in!) I immediately took a shine to Camille, who looked like a teacup but acted like a steamboat. She is high, high, high energy. As soon as we entered her room, she put on the Captain Underpants soundtrack at a raging volume while thrashing her head around and jumping to and fro the top bunk of her hot pink bed. It got overly rambunctious so we took the action outside, where the other kids realized they were missing out on a real romp. I became enemy number one in our thieving game so before I could straighten my glasses my legs were being pulled in two different directions by matching little boys in shiny soccer jerseys. I eventually escaped the sweaty dog-pile and made my way back to my little girl friends, Marissa and Camille.
'Show her Meg! Show her Meg!' Marissa kept insisting, yanking on Camille's shirt. I followed them to the screened patio to find a massive guinea pig making its home among the hay there. I laughed in disbelief as the small pig endured what surely must have been torture as the girls took turns pushing it through the cat door face first or sending it down a too-small chute, again head first, which inevitably ended in her rather large bottom wiggling, stuck. I didn't make any attempts to stop this progression because with an owner like Camille i was sure Meg had seen worse.
We were drawn out of our games by the call to sing and have cake, which was just lovely with all of the children huddled around the candles, faces bright with firelight and anticipation. The girls and I took our dishes to enjoy outside, where Camille immediately got rid of her spoon and attacked the ice cream straight on with her mouth. Within seconds there was a creamy white puddle covering fully the lower half of her face. As she tilted the plate upwards to create a stream effect with the melted goods, a runaway creek dribbled down her shirt. When I pointed it out, she simply said, "Who cares?" A truth or dare moment resulted in my being made to kiss Meg the guinea pig directly on the lips.
After the ice cream social, my own charges and I returned to the house across the street where I also let them have popsicles so long as they didn't tell their parents. I have always felt that kids whom you only babysit once in a great while deserve to be treated as adults insofar as its possible to do so. That means, if they want popsicles after ice cream, who am I to stop them? I'm no mama and I secretly delight in letting kids get off the hook, even as I scold and finger-wag them all the way up to their beds, far past bedtime.
Now its calm. The meter is running. I still haven't decided how much to charge this fine family for my services. My base rate since college has always been $10 an hour, for one child, so for two...? It's hard to quantify these things. Brighton was so well-behaved that I would feel wrong to charge every $5/hour more for his presence. Whatever they pay me, it really is too much because tonight, haven't I been fed, chased, hugged, kissed... What more do humans really want?
When I first arrived, Adriana answered the door in a glittering gold formal dress with some poolside flip flops. She looked radiant. I helped tie up her dress in the back while she reminded me about bedtimes, showers, spelling lists, piano practice, and cell phone numbers. They took off, with vague calls of a midnight return.
And so there I was with these new kids, Marissa and Brighton. How to crack the ice? Luckily, Brighton dispensed immediately to go upstairs and mess with Legos so I only had the little lady to consider. I began by asking her to show me her room, a trick I've found to work with pretty much every child I have encountered who had a bedroom to speak of. We went through her entire American Doll's wardrobe before I suggested we begin preparing dinner.
Little Marissa completely surprised me with her fine vegetable chopping skills and even a mature appreciation for mushrooms in their raw form. I finished making dinner while she practiced on the piano for ten minutes at most before becoming disillusioned.
Brighton set the table and I nervously served my creation to these fellow humans. The ingredients Mom had laid out for me seemed too sophisticated for a child's dinner. Some bulk mushrooms, a few bright tomatoes and a raw chicken breast. I did what I could with some spices and noodles and hoped for the best. With not a little hand-wringing I put out their plates, and again to my surprise, Marissa was bowled over with it and kept exclaiming the dish "delicious" and "sooo good!'" WTF, I thought.
After dinner Brighton took up on the piano and was actually making good progress before Marissa and I rudely interrupted and declared an urgent need to go to the neighbor's birthday party in time for the 7:30 cake cutting.
I was greeted by a scene I had not readily anticipated. There were not three, not four but five native children in the house, all running in different directions, hooting and hollering. I was amazed by the dining adults still at table, so composed, for whom this was obviously business as usual.
A lot of kids are cute but this lot was actually stunning. (Add in two doctors for parents... The gene pool is fine, come on in!) I immediately took a shine to Camille, who looked like a teacup but acted like a steamboat. She is high, high, high energy. As soon as we entered her room, she put on the Captain Underpants soundtrack at a raging volume while thrashing her head around and jumping to and fro the top bunk of her hot pink bed. It got overly rambunctious so we took the action outside, where the other kids realized they were missing out on a real romp. I became enemy number one in our thieving game so before I could straighten my glasses my legs were being pulled in two different directions by matching little boys in shiny soccer jerseys. I eventually escaped the sweaty dog-pile and made my way back to my little girl friends, Marissa and Camille.
'Show her Meg! Show her Meg!' Marissa kept insisting, yanking on Camille's shirt. I followed them to the screened patio to find a massive guinea pig making its home among the hay there. I laughed in disbelief as the small pig endured what surely must have been torture as the girls took turns pushing it through the cat door face first or sending it down a too-small chute, again head first, which inevitably ended in her rather large bottom wiggling, stuck. I didn't make any attempts to stop this progression because with an owner like Camille i was sure Meg had seen worse.
We were drawn out of our games by the call to sing and have cake, which was just lovely with all of the children huddled around the candles, faces bright with firelight and anticipation. The girls and I took our dishes to enjoy outside, where Camille immediately got rid of her spoon and attacked the ice cream straight on with her mouth. Within seconds there was a creamy white puddle covering fully the lower half of her face. As she tilted the plate upwards to create a stream effect with the melted goods, a runaway creek dribbled down her shirt. When I pointed it out, she simply said, "Who cares?" A truth or dare moment resulted in my being made to kiss Meg the guinea pig directly on the lips.
After the ice cream social, my own charges and I returned to the house across the street where I also let them have popsicles so long as they didn't tell their parents. I have always felt that kids whom you only babysit once in a great while deserve to be treated as adults insofar as its possible to do so. That means, if they want popsicles after ice cream, who am I to stop them? I'm no mama and I secretly delight in letting kids get off the hook, even as I scold and finger-wag them all the way up to their beds, far past bedtime.
Now its calm. The meter is running. I still haven't decided how much to charge this fine family for my services. My base rate since college has always been $10 an hour, for one child, so for two...? It's hard to quantify these things. Brighton was so well-behaved that I would feel wrong to charge every $5/hour more for his presence. Whatever they pay me, it really is too much because tonight, haven't I been fed, chased, hugged, kissed... What more do humans really want?