My daughter and her family live ten hours away. When I visit, I encourage her and her husband to go out on date night. This visit, I volunteered to watch the girls overnight. It seemed so simple. Riley (1) has an early bedtime. Kaylee (3) is in bed by nine. I planned to put them in bed and enjoy a quiet night watching a movie. My daughter even suggested skipping tubby time because they had a very long one the night before.
My daughter asked Kaylee to babysit me and she’d pay her in donut holes in the morning. What a cute idea, right? No! She really thought she was babysitting me!
We were watching a Mickey Christmas show when Kaylee shouted, “Gigi, we missed tubby time!” Before I could shush her, Riley started stripping off her clothes and running towards the bathroom. It was ten minutes before her scheduled bedtime. This was not good. Her diaper was half off as I plunked her on my knee only to discover an unpleasant brown surprise on my knee.
Needless to say, we did tubby time. Riley splashed an inch of water on the floor. Kaylee poured water all over Riley’s head and emptied the lavender baby wash into the tub. Bubbles began to fill the tub. I could barely find them in the damn tub.
While I yanked Riley out and de-bubbled her in the sink, Kaylee disappeared back into the fog of bubbles. Within a few minutes, Riley was in her purple jammies and ready to snooze. I thought.
I ran back to find Kaylee completely covered in bubbles from head to toe. I turned on the shower which helped de-bubble her, but the bubbles at her knees started to expand. I grabbed her slippery, giggling body out of the tub. As she got her jammies on I mentioned it was her sister’s bedtime. Riley was now emptying a full box of multi color blocks in the living room. She danced and shrieked as she did this. This was not a tired child. “Bedtime, girls,” I sang, as they ignored me. “I said, it’s time to get ready for bed,” I raised my best serious voice.
Kaylee scolded me, “Gigi, you need to practice some patience!” as she stuck her neck out and waved her arms at me. Within seconds, she noticed pine needles under the tree and immediately had the grand idea to start a collection. She plucked pine needles, one by one, carefully stretching under the tree. Before long, she had a few hundred needles. I had no idea what she was going to do with them, but Mommy would be home in the morning and figure something crafty to do with them.
At 8:30 I gave Riley her bottle and rocked her in her room, hoping she’d go fast asleep. Silly me! She drank, smiled, giggled and danced in my arms. I hummed a song and she hummed along. This was still not a tired child. I, on the other hand, could barely keep my eyes open. I must have closed my eyes for a wink of a second. When I startled myself awake, she was running down the hall screaming with joy.
At 8:45 I decided I should try bedtime again.
At 9:00 I knew I was in trouble. The only tired person in the room was me.
At 9:15 Maggie, their puppy, was stealing dolls and chewing on their heads.
At 9:30 I put my pajamas on and had a glass of wine and sang Mickey songs.
At 9:45 I tried to rock Riley again. She pinched my nose and giggled more.
At 10:00 I was delirious. I had flashbacks of my kids never sleeping at that age. We sat on the couch and munched popcorn. If it came in turkey flavor with tryptophan, I’d have given them each a full bag.
At 10:17 They were both was thirsty. Naturally, it had to be in a certain cup filled with a certain drink. I flunked the perfect cup test.
At 10:30 I decided to take both of them into my daughter’s room and we’d have a sleepover, the three of us.
Riley was in the middle with her bottle, Kaylee and I were bookends. At first I thought I’d solved it. We are all going to sleep finally!! I was wrong. Every time they’d glance at each other, hysterics broke out. I tried to be stern, but I kept laughing. The sound of their cackling was contagious.
Kaylee scolded me again. “Gigi this is not working!” She threw her covers off.
At 10:45 nothing was funny to me anymore!
At 11:00 Kaylee suggested I practice that patience crap again and I snapped. “It is almost tomorrow. You two have to go to sleep!”
“Calm down, Gigi! It will be alright.” She tried to calm me.
“No! No! No! It’s not alright! It’s very late and we need to sleep. Gigi is getting old and grumpy now.”
She started preaching again, “Gigi, you just need to calm down. This is not working!” For the love! She was like a mini-minister!
I was ready to hang myself like elf on a shelf from the ceiling fan!
Finally, all was quiet. I took a deep breath and look at their sleeping faces and whispered, “Thank God!”
The next morning everyone slept late. I made waffles and fruit for breakfast. We were propped on the sofa chilling when we heard a strange noise. “Errr….errrrr…errrk CRASH.” I watched it in slow motion, speechless. The entire flipping Christmas tree just toppled over, including the base with a big circle of wood attached…everything. Ornaments, lights….whole damn thing belly went belly up. I looked up to the Heavens and said, “Seriously, God? Did this have to happen now?”
Miss OCD Pine Needle Collector sprung into action and scooped up approximately six hundred needles from the carpet. She looked like a gold miner. I’ve never seen such determination. For some reason this hit my funny bone. I could not stop laughing. It was like watching a ridiculous movie and I was the star.
When my daughter and son-in-law returned home, Kaylee collected her babysitting fee. I was prepared to tell them all went well (except for the tree laying in the middle of the room), but Kaylee spilled the beans. “Gigi needs to practice patience and calm down.” I snarled at her.
“What time did they go to bed?” she asked. Oh hell! There it was… the dreaded question!
“Oh just a little later than usual,” I lied. Kaylee piped in, “It was almost tomorrow. I had to tell Gigi to calm down. She has no patience.” Seriously, she ratted me out right in front of me!
My daughter looked at me and said, “Well, we had a great time. Maybe if you get more of that patience stuff and learn to calm down, Gigi, we can do this again.”
“I’d love to,” I told her and I really meant it.
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