Adventures in Babysitting

I had a similar experience to Telima's last night. But I was the babysitter. Rad and Jenny asked us to watch their kids while they hit a temple session. Jenny dropped them off at 5:15 or so, I figured they would hit the 7:00 session if they were lucky, but didn't want to count on that. Cassie and Grayson were fine. Heather loved playing with them. They were totally terrified of Taffy, but that was solved by locking her in the garage. Heather and Cassie made matching friendship necklaces and Grayson watched Jacob play rockband. At 8:30 I sent all of my kids to bed and settled Grayson and Cassie on a couch watching Cartoon Network.

All of this was fine and actually easy, so we'll move on to the nightmare. Seven month old Kaitlyn. She smiled at me and wiggled with happiness the way they do when we were introduced. She even smiled as I held her and we walked Jenny to the door. Then the other shoe dropped. I was not her Mommy and that was unacceptable! She screamed until 9:00. Mostly off and on, but every time I thought I had calmed her down, she would look up at me and her face would crumple and she would start to scream again. She refused to eat and refused to relax enough to sleep. I'm sure that the fact that she didn't recognize anything around her didn't help. Also, Erica and Lillian were determined to 'help' me calm the baby down. On Lillian's part this meant she kept poking the baby, I think she was trying to tickle her. I managed to explain to Erica that the baby missed her mommy. So she went and immediately drew a picture of the baby's mommy so the baby could look at it and calm down. (It didn't work, but it was so cute that I tried hard to keep her from realizing it.)

Once, the baby was being held downstairs by Benjamin while I was taking care of something upstairs and Lillian followed me. She tugged on my shirt and said, "You not baby's mommy?"
I said "No, I'm not the baby's mommy." Then she nodded and said, "You MY MOMMY." And threw herself on me, forcing me to hold her until I took the baby again.

After everyone was settled for the night, I took Kaitlyn into the theater room and rocked her in the dark until she finally relaxed and fell asleep. From there she slept until Rad and Jenny came to pick them up, around 10:30. That was about when I had expected them. Jenny had to feed her poor abandoned baby before they could go home. She is NOT a bottle baby!

So that was my Thursday evening. Tonight we have the young women's fundraiser at the church. We've already gotten our ticket, so we just have to show up, and I don't have to cook tonight!

Love ya all!