I definitely feel like I’ve been thrown into the deep end of a swimming pool and for a second, flipped out because I hadn’t swum (?) in so long, only to discover that I can do all the strokes. This is a metaphor to parallel the first day I’ve spent on this mini adventure taking care of 3 kid (4 year old twins and an almost 6 year-old) for 4 days.
It actually began yesterday afternoon; I came over around 12:30pm and had to pick the twins up with their parents pretty immediately. And then the parents left for Paris and I stayed here to look after their children and home. Fun. Isaac and Lucy are the twins; Thomas is the almost 6 year old. My senior year of high school, I took care of him once a week while the twins slept. So this is a bit different, although there were a few times I babysat all three of them at the same time.
Yesterday went well and I got them bathed and to sleep fairly easily. The sole casualty was teeth-brushing for the twins (oops!!). But we remembered tonight. I chilled here by myself last night which was a bit boring but not bad. I did have my new phone (iPhone G3S…!!) to play with, so that was fabulous.
Then I awoke this morning quite early for what I’ve become accustomed to (6am?) and woke Thomas up. The twins woke right after him though. They ate breakfast and Thomas was only a few minutes late getting out the door (a neighbor took him to school) and the twins and I were early leaving to drop them off. This is the fun part.
First of all, I’d like to say that part of why all of this is so crazy to me is how starkly is contrasts my daily usual life from the past year. Which has been incredibly self-focused. I don’t have to think about anyone else (ironically since I’ve been “volunteering”) and I have somewhat enjoyed it but also gotten sort of in a rut and I have times where I feel like I can’t even take care of myself (making a proper dinner, etc can be challenging for me…lame I know). I knew I could do this because I’ve done it before, but still it’s really been about 3 years since I did the whole gamut of child-care, as in making dinner, bathing, putting to sleep, driving them around. So it’s taken me a bit to get past the deer-in-headlights phase. The preschool was the focal point of this. Seriously, parent-culture is creepy. There’s something about going into a preschool–for one thing, I think people can tell I’m sort of out of place, but I’m not so young I’m clearly not the kids’ mother. So I feel sort of awkward, which probably makes other people more uncertain as to who I am or what I’m doing. Or maybe I’m making all of this up. That’s also totally possible. But it was just very bizarre taking these kids to school and dropping them off, as if I were their parent.
I went grocery shopping after and then came home and took a NAP which was lovely. And then at 12:30 it was time to pick the twins up already…! This afternoon was really nice though–it was pretty rainy, so we watched some shows/movies (some ABCs thing, Scooby Doo, which is awesome and I very much had forgotten this). The parents called from Skype and we chatted for a bit (they were surprised everything was going as well as it was, so that’s good I suppose) and they (or dad at least) got to talk to them on speaker phone, although they were in the middle of watching Scooby, so they weren’t so interested in what their dad had to say about getting to visit the Eiffle Tower. But after the screen time, we got out some crafts and did that for a bit before I made hot dogs and broccoli (yay! a kind of real meal!). But I finally felt this afternoon like everything is just smooth and I’m not nervous. These kids, too, are troopers. They are really secure I think–they aren’t freaking out about their parents being gone (which in my mind means they trust they’ll be back, not that they don’t care). They’re kids, but they’re basically angels–we’ve really had no discipline problems to speak of. I certainly haven’t had to use any kind of real punishment (I just knocked on wood…we’ll see how the rest of the time goes).
Anyway, I’m about to go watch Glee! which, if you haven’t seen it, seriously is hilarious and amazing.