Babysitting
The other day I had the pleasure of babysitting little Simon Long-Concatenated-Family-Name-Smythe while Leslie went to the dentist.
He’s a cute little guy, very engaging and good-natured, even when he bumped his head under the dining room table when we were playing Peek-a-boo - which I think is a childish name, so I call it ‘Hello!’.
He’s not really a born heller, but he is active and curious. I figured the whole gig was gonna be a doddle; put him in the playpen with a rattley-bell thing and watch Judge Judy. No play pen.
So I had to pretty much pay attention the whole time. =;]
He was actually fun to look after. He’s friendly, in that he didn’t make strange once with me after Leslie left and being a little primate, he’s into everything. His current credo appears to be ‘If it ain’t food, it’s a toy, or vice reversa’. I’m paraphrasing, of course.
He climbed the stairs once and a half, giving up about halfway on the second try. I was right behind him with my hands at the ready just by his ribcage, and he kept looking to make sure I was there.
We played in the backyard, on the front porch, on the kitchen floor, in his room (cool animal puppets which he loves - so do I), on the porch again, in the living room, in the backyard again, up and down the hallway, and on the return air grate in the front hall by the door (it’s got tin-foil on the bottom, hell, even I think it’s cool).
When we heard heavy equipment on the street we went out to the sidewalk and saw a backhoe and a dumptruck just down the street so went as close as I dared, which was when he started looking distressed at the level of the noise. He adjusted quickly though and we watched until the backhoe left.
We went for a walk with him in his stroller to find other heavy equipment, but I think it was their lunch time because, even though I knew there was more road repairs (etc) going on in the neighbourhood, we couldn’t find any activity. We were gone for about 40 minutes, Simon fell asleep twice, after making a pleasant little cooing noise a couple of times.
Leslie was home when we got back. I hung around, hung out and chatted, then stayed for dinner (kedgeree, mmm) and got some interesting information on my spider from Peter and his books.
I slept like a really tired rock that night, and now my shoulder and back are sore from lifting and carrying Simon around, but hell, it was fun and he’s a great kid.
Oh, and the parents are pretty cool too, but not as much fun to hang out with.
=;]