Tuesday, March 9, 2010

My Adventures While Babysitting

This past week I was lucky enough to babysit three of my sister's kids while their usual babysitter was on vacation. And let me tell ya, we had some adventures.  For three days I had two 6 month olds, a 2 1/2 year old and two 3 year olds.  This scenerio may not have been such a challenge if these children weren't siblings and cousins.  Blood relation seems to be the right of passage to go all out on each other when there is a battle to be had.  But I won't start with telling you about the fighting...
We hadn't gotten the babies together for quite awhile so it was so cute to see them interact.  They are both sitting up on their own and just about crawling.  They were definitely interested in eachother and Cruz wanted to grab and climb all over little Josie every chance he got. They actually didn't get to see eachother too much because one or the other was usually napping. (Thank God for naps!) Here are a few pics of the duo.
Even these two enjoyed a little rough-housing...

They are just TOO adorable at this age :)
Then there's Sam.
Sammie is 2 1/2.  He is on the go ALL THE TIME.  The first interesting incident of my babysitting adventures was when Sam came up from the basement saying, "Here Sarah."  Then proceeds to hand me his diaper...full of poo...that he had taken off by himself downstairs.  Yes...downstairs...in Kelly's sacred basement.  I got Sammie cleaned up then ran downstairs to ask Bo and Landon where this all took place and scanned the whole basement for remnants of Sammie droppings.  None found, so we were in the clear when Kel got home :)  Here's another pic of sweet Sam after he let me comb his hair after waking up from his nap with a crazy hair-do.

The two older boys love to hate eachother.  They can't wait to see the eachother, then when they get together they pretty much fight 75% of the time, then when it's time to go home they both cry their eyes out. I don't get it.  These two really weren't too bad except for when Bo came upstairs whispering something about his foot being wet.  Then he proceeds to tell me that he and Landon peed on the wood floor downstairs.  WHAT?  The 3 year olds weren't suppose to do something like that. I would've expected Sammie to pee on the floor, but these two knew better.  They were just being ornry.  I had them help me clean it up, seeing that they didn't just pee, they made sure to walk around in it leaving footprints all over the place.  They were in timeout for quite some time after that stunt.  Here they are acting civil to eachother.
Yes, as you can see, Bo talked Landon into wearing his underwear all day too.

The last and worst crazy thing that happened I hate to even mention, but since everything turned out okay I can.  The older boys were in the basement and Sammie had just woke up from a nap and went down to play with them.  The babies were on the living room floor and my sister Kelsey had just stopped by for a minute and was sitting on the couch.  Sam runs upstairs and says he wants some jelly beans (I had given the older boys some when he was sleeping).  So I take him in the kitchen, give him a handful of jelly beans, he runs off and as I'm putting the candy back in the cabinet I hear Sam say, "Mmm, she like it."  Oh. Shit. He had given Josie a jelly bean.  I run into the living room and Josie is coughing. I check her mouth, but the bean had already gone down.  She's now gagging, so I get her in the position that you're suppose to when babies are choking. I scream at Kelsey to go get Kelly, he was working in the basement.  But before anything else happened Josie started crying and I knew the jelly bean had gone down and she was fine.  Holy crap.  It all happened in the blink of an eye.  Kelsey and I were shaking like leaves for quite awhile after that. Thank God she was okay.  It made me realize that I am not great in moments of chaos like that and that I need to go to CPR classes.  All I could think about through all of it was when I was a lifeguard in high school and learned what to do in when someone wasn't breathing.  
Whew!  That's it.  It was fun, but stressful.  And I was EXHAUSTED at the end of each day.  Daycare providers - How do you do it???

2 comments:

Mandy said...

Just about like that :)

Jenny said...

yup.. agreed Mandy :) You take one crazy situation at a time..deal with it, then move on to the next. Sounds like you did a good job Sarah!!