This weekend found us keeping our just turned 6 and 8 yr old grandsons. We cannot say that we babysat the 16 year old, because he would never speak to us again, but we did manage to have him here with us Saturday night and a few hours Sunday morning before he ran off to “go study his music”. At least he didn’t tell us he was going back home to clean up his room as we knew that would have been a total fib. But because we were so busy trying to entertain the little ones and at the same time try to look like the “cool and hip” grandparents that doesn’t get worn out keeping kids for 36 hours, we were almost glad when Jaden told us that he needed to go home to practice his music. Yea, one kid down and 2 more to go. It all started Saturday morning when our kids left town for their anniversary. We figured that we would take them to a movie to kill a few hours, but the only movie on was the Avengers. Jaden told us that he had gone to the midnight showing and that Caleb and Noah would love it and he would even go again with us. So after getting Chick Fila for the gang, we headed over to the movies. Jodi had told us that if Noah got bored because it was a long show, that we could put him in the child care there at the movie house. She said you just go show your movie ticket and they let them stay and play there in the play room. Randy suggests that I take the kids to the Dollar Store to let them buy candy for the movie. So off we go when the kids tell me that they prefer to buy their candy at Walgreens. Why is candy at Walgreens better than candy at Dollar Tree? But being the great Nana that I am I find a Walgreens where they select their candy and of course see the red noses for sale for $1. Each of them got one. On the way home to pick up Randy to head to the movie, Caleb’s nose broke and now there is one red nose that they begin to fight over. I take the one nose away to avoid further arguing. We meet Jaden at the movie and find a seat 4th row from the front. It is packed. Movie begins and I know within the first 5 minutes that I am going to hate this movie. Noah’s eyes get as large as saucers and he leans over to tell me that he wants to go. Well, no problem, I will take him to the child care center. So Noah and I leave the movie and proceed to the child care center where they inform me that if I didn’t have a rsvp, they are sorry but the child care is full and they cannot take him. Noah tells me that if I give him money, (after already spending over $40 to get us all in) he will just play games in the game center until the 2 1/2 hour movie is over. I tell him I don’t think so. So we go back into movie and tell Randy for he and Caleb to ride home with Jaden. We are out of there. So Noah and I head to the Dollar Store where he proceeds to find a hula hoop and several other little toys. Because we are having Jodi and Eric over for dinner when they come back to town on Sunday night, Noah and I head to the grocery store. I went in for 5 items, came out with about 15-20. I had forgot what it is like going grocery shopping with a 6 year old. So we come home with 2 packages of cookies, a carton of ice cream and sodas that I had no intention of buying Saturday.
The boys come home from the movies, but with my energy level quickly disappearing, Geno’s pizza sounds like a winner. But Noah informs me that he just had pizza Thurs night. But that he would take a Sonic corn dog. So Jaden, Noah and I head out to sonic, get the corn dog and then drive to Geno’s to pick up the pizza. We have a nice dinner and bedtime cannot come quick enough. But…the boys tell me that they had been promised that we would all play 5 Crown. Jaden is a trooper for doing all this with us; and we play cards until 9:30. Sleeping arrangements are a little weird. Jaden claims the guest bedroom and Randy agrees to sleep on the couch. Caleb and Noah end up in bed with me. Noah and Caleb refuse to sleep by each other because they claim that each of them kick. They didn’t lie. I end up sleeping between them and have feet in my face and back along with grinding teeth sounds. It is amazing how one can survive with only 3-4 hours sleep, but I just kept saying that if I could get through until Sunday night, I could sleep then. Because they all wanted different foods for breakfast, I made 4 different ones. Caleb and Randy wanted pancakes and bacon.Noah wanted cinnamon-sugar toast and apple juice. Jaden wanted Sister Schubert Rolls. Because I was so busy trying to get the kids fed and dressed for church, I forgot to eat until we were almost ready to leave so I made me a peanut/jelly fold over. Didn’t want my stomach growling during church. During the “down times” when the kids were not watching PJ Mask on cartoon network, they made paper airplane. Lots of paper air planes. about 25 or them. Our house had white paper airplane every where. The paper cuts on the bottom of my feet will hopefully heal quickly.
It is now Sunday afternoon and the kids are running all over the house with the planes, with cartoons blaring in the background. Knowing that their parents will be back around 5 to come to their anniversary dinner here at the house, I suggest that we run to get some balloons and anniversary cards. Of course this means back to the Dollar Store where we achieve our goal, plus find a few other items they can’t live without. As soon as we open the back door to come back in the house, the balloons escape and we run trying to catch them. We couldn’t catch them, so back to the Dollar store for more balloons. They got so upset seeing the balloons fly away, I just didn’t have the heart to not go get more. By this time, we have had conversations about them calling me something other than Nana. Telling them that I think it makes me sound old, Noah suggest that I be Corn and Randy be Dog as Corndogs are his favorite food right now. Caleb thinks I need to be called Lolli and Randy is Pops, but I tell him that we already have those names for some in-laws in our family. So Caleb decides that make I should be called TT because I drink tea all day but then they start cracking up saying that it makes me sound like I’m going potty all day. (They dont know how right they are) So we are back to square one on what my name should be.
Jodi and Eric make it in town and we had a great dinner, celebrating their anniversary, but really, Randy and I were celebrating that our babysitting weekend was drawing to a close. We survived. No emergencies, no melt downs, (us or the kids) and the kids actually looked a little sad when they got in the car to go home.
We have decided that in spite of being exhausted, it was great knowing that the kids had a great time and that hopefully the memories that were made, will be remembered for a long time. Maybe in about 6 months when we are rested up, they can come spend the night with us again.
Tag: Babysitting
24
There are many out there who remember the television series 24. We were so hooked on it that we used to have dinner parties with friends at the beginning and end of the season so that the show became quite a huge tradition of watching this great show with close friends so that when we got together, it certainly gave us much more to talk about than the latest doctor visit. As you remember, each hour of 24 was marked with a tragic happening that could only be saved by one man…..Jack. Each hour was so jam packed with the CTU task force trying to “rescue” certain folks or trying to figure out plots which would destroy the world. Well, this weekend was our own little 24 show. It has been a while since we babysit for a 4 year old for over a few hours. All I can say is that we are ready to call in Jack. Each hour, I felt so lucky if I could come up with a chore that Noah could help with. His mom had told me that Noah loves to “help” so I thought of the chores which take me the longest, thinking that this might help me gain some time to cook (or even just brush my teeth.) if precious little Noah could go dust, water plants, or vacuum. maybe I could at least get the bed made or toast a piece of bread without having to go change the TV channel, turn on the bathroom light or come see the 357th bird he was drawing. How can one four year old, drain you? By the end of our 24 hour assignment, I felt like I was my own CTU task force, but reinforcements nor Jack ever came.
On Friday evening we even considered going to both the 4 and 5:30 Good Friday service since the church was having the nursery open for kids 5 and under.
On Saturday, we broke a promise to ourselves that we had made years ago that we would never, never go near another Chuck E Cheese, EVER! We stayed for 2 hours. Then at lunch, the cute little hostess at Chick Fila finally had the courage to come tell us that they needed our table after we had sat there for over an hour. We told her she had mistaken us for the people before us and that we had just arrived. Truth be told, we were still searching for Noah’s shoes in the play area that he had taken off the minute we arrived and didn’t remember where he put them. I told Randy that I was not going to climb up the tunnel slide to retrieve the shoes! This time it was his turn to do that. Besides, last time I got stuck and the manager had to come rescue me from the tunnel. That incident reminded me of the slogan “a moment on the lips is forever on the hips” and why it should be my motto.
I love grandkids as much as the next Nana, but I’m thinking that we might have just discovered the idea behind Martin Luther King’s famous quote by the end of our 24 saga. As we drove away from dropping off precious little Noah (and yes, we did wait until his parents were home to do that although we were tempted at one point to just give him some Benadryl for a possible runny nose and sit him in front of a 4 hour movie at his house to wait for his parents to come home. Instead we bribed him with Baskin Robbins every Saturday for the rest of his sweet angelic little life if he would just let us lay down for 15 minutes!), I looked over at Randy who “put the petal to the metal” as he began the famous speech, “free at last, free at last, thank God we are free at last.” I just wonder how many grandkids MLK had kept the day before that famous speech?
Grandkids, Grandparents & Guns
This weekend our 10 year old grandson, Sevy stayed with us for 4 days. Both Randy and I thought about when our kids were young, how we would take a sack filled with Matchbox cars, or Barbi’s to grandmas house to entertain the little darlings for the weekend. The grandparents felt fortunate if there was a new Disney movie just coming out that they could take the kids to which would then take up a couple of hours.
We want to be sure that other grandparents out there learn a few new guidelines of how to spend 4 days with a 10 year old, without getting stressed out enough to double up on Geritol (or something stronger) or just “accidentally” leave the kid at Dave & Buster’s.
1. Forget the Barbi’s and Matchbox cars. Just be sure you have enough power strips in the house that will handle all the sweet childs “toys’, so you don’t blow a fuse and end up without any electricity. Be aware that any grandchild over the age of 6 will probably tell you that they can and do try to fix anything on your computer or television that will give them access to more games and cartoons. We are now doing research on how to get our tv and computer back to our settings.
2. If you don’t have the cartoon network; GET IT…even though you might have “SpongeBob Squarepants” song embedded in your brain for the rest of your life, just having it on will give you time to shower and get breakfast ready. And….FYI, luckily for all of us grandparents, you will be glad to know that they are 13 Seasons of SpongeBob, each season having 18 episodes..Ain’t life grand?
3. There is no need to “tuck them in bed and read them a story”. All they want to snuggle with is their Ipad, cell phone and Xbox controllers.
4. They have an uncanny way of finding any chocolate that you have hidden away for those times when you need just something to tide you over until the next football practice, which will give you 2 whole hours of quiet; but cannot seem to every find the other shoe that will allow you to be on time for their golf lesson,or football game.
5. When you ask them if they might want to play dominoes or cards, they will probably ask you if that is an app on your phone!
6. Accept the fact that you will gain 5 lbs the weekend you have the little angel s in your home, due to the fact that you will be eating fast food the entire time. If it doesn’t come from Chick Fila, McDonalds or Pie 5, they don’t want it.
7. Do not ever believe, I repeat, “DO NOT EVER BELIEVE” the sweet little innocent darlings when they say that they wish you would take them to Academy “just to look” at any thing. They are lying. They know when they look up at you and tell you that you are the best Nana in the world, that you will end up carrying out what ever it was that they came to “just look at”.
8. And last great lesson for the weekend; be sure that you are in good standing with your neighbors. You don’t want them calling the cops when you are out on the driveway, having target practice with the air rifle that they “just went to look at”. Also be aware that sometimes those pellets ricochet and can hit objects that were not intended to hit…thus the new dent in the car.
9. Be sure that you go to bed by 10. Their day begins about 6 a.m. and they like cartoons on the minute they go downstairs. They do not ever like the house void of background noise, so neither should we. After all, if there is quiet, they might hear you tell them to do a chore.
10. Take lots of pictures of them with your phone. One day you will need some evidence to embarrass them to bribe them to come see you in the nursing home.
So these are the lessons that we learned over the last 4 days. I leave Tuesday to fly to Phoenix to babysit 3 more grandchildren. Will write the new lessons I learn there, when I return.
Babysitting With Candy Crush
It is getting serious. My daughter just called for our morning visit. As always, I ask how her night went and what they did. She reminded me that she babysat her friends two children, which told me that son-in-law kept her kids, while she went to keep the other small children of her friend. So when I ask about how Eric did with staying home and keeping their kids while she was down the street babysitting, she told me that she took Jaden, 11 and Caleb, 3 with her, leaving the 1 yr old, Noah with Eric. That way she could be sure that Jaden got his homework done and use Caleb to help entertain the other 3 yr old. When I expressed that that was a great idea, she finally confessed. Her friends children began to chase Jaden around the house, so that also kept Caleb busy. When she noticed that all 3 kids were then occupied with chasing Jaden, she took advantage of this and sat back and played Candy Crush. She said that her only job then was to look up every once in a while and yell, “quiet down a little, you’re getting a little to loud.” Apparently they were distracting her from being able to complete a new level. She was finally able to complete 2 new levels. She was so proud. Of course, the kids had a great night. Jaden didn’t have to do his homework, and the younger ones were late getting to bed, but that was insignificant to the fact that she was able to play CC without interruption. She convinced herself that it was good for Jaden to learn responsibility of taking care of younger children. I guess she will begin to use him to entertain Noah, giving her more time to complete lever 70. Honestly, I thought I did a better job of raising her. Note to self “write a little note to Jodi encouraging her to seek help for her CC addiction.”
I am so glad to I know that I could quit CC any time I wanted. I only play while watching tv, relaxing or in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep. I’ll get that note written to her as soon as I finish this next level.
Chocolate Castles 