Baby Love

Okay, well there’s no news on the job front. Except that I hate my current one, but is that news? No, it’s not, cause I say it every day.

Tonight I go see a movie about Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan. Who else can be fascinated by this? Others I suppose, they did make a movie of it.

But the big news of today, and I will skip a picture description for it (don’t cry, it’s cool, they’ll be back when I have to write them or write about my job I hate), the big news of today is that John and I babysat last night.

The baby in question is John’s niece, Lauren. And for a starter babysitting, she was the model baby. She’s 8 months, and about as smiley as one baby can get. Neither John nor I were very familiar with babies and gave each other disturbed looks when asked about diapering, which neither of us had done before.

When I arrived home around 6, John had been with Lauren for an hour, and to preserve peace and safety and understanding between couples, I will just say, he was a bit frazzled. Lauren had been a bit weepy (to say the least) and John was, flustered. He had just burped her and she had quieted down and I went to walk her around the room a bit, and she was quiet and smiley once again.

After spending a thousand hours and a thousand thrown cheerios later, I finally had managed to feed her and John had managed to feed us. (With a mighty good dinner might I add, he held up well under pressure).

After an extremely brief discussion about how we understood how babies break up husbands and wives, we quickly took Lauren out for a skinny dip in the two-ring pool we had bought. She splashed and played and had a grand old time, while John and I sat soaking wet and preventing her from eating leaves.

We put her in her little walker stroller thing which pretty well prevents her from grabbing something she’s not supposed to grab or running into something she’s not supposed to run into. We did pretty well trying to watch Hell’s Kitchen and between us got most of the story of what happened to Chef Ramsey and the crew.

She finally started rubbing her little eyes after hours of play and we were quick to put on her “nighttime” diaper, which hung at her knees and an interesting minute or two of putting on her pajama top. I cannot express how patient this little girl was, staring up at me as I tried to force her arms into two tiny little holes.

And of course, the best part, walking her around the bedroom and feeling her tiny little wriggly body slump into sleep on my shoulder. She was asleep. John and I had done our job and done it well, considering the circumstances. John had even made enough food for me to take for lunch today, and he cleaned the kitchen, so as to make us feel like we could handle two things at once.

And although we were successful, and although feeling a warm soft little body fall asleep on your shoulder was one of the greatest feelings ever, an even greater feeling has been with me today, knowing I can go home, with my feet up on the couch, and only be responsible for not letting myself bump into the walls.