Babysitting round two

Believe it or not, we babysat again, for the child of someone who read my last post, no less. It surprised us to be asked as much as it's probably surprising you. Needless to say, we jumped at the chance to give babysitting another shot.

The scenario:
A 2-year-old boy needed to be fed, kept safe and entertained while his parents were out to dinner. The job would last 2-3 hours, and shouldn't require anything as complicated as oh, say, calming a baby and putting her to sleep.

Advantages on our side:
The child is known for being well-behaved and easy-going. An added bonus is that he considers us family. When he lists his family members, we're right after the grandparents and before the aunts/uncles. Not sure how that happened, but I think it helps that his mom and I look similar and we live in the area whereas his extended family lives out of state.

The babysitting job started disastrously. Apparently, the child had recently been frightened by a dog, and, seeing our cats as mini-dogs (something they would be shocked and appalled at), cowered in his mother's arms as soon as he saw them. We rounded them up and herded them into various upstairs rooms to stay for the duration of his visit. Crisis averted, the parents left for their dinner as the child was beginning his.

We crossed our fingers. No tears. We began the tricky process of figuring out how to babysit a two-year-old.

First up was feeding. We knew we needed to convince the slightly picky child (it turns out, pregnant women and two-year-olds have a lot in common when it comes to eating) to eat all or most of his food, and avoid giving him his milk, which it seems he could drink all day, until we absolutely had to, because one sippy-cup-full was all he would get (this was his mother's advice). We also needed to fix our own dinner at some point, etc.

Within 5 minutes the child had convinced me to give him his milk, had rejected his pasta and raisins and was going after tiny, slippery bits of peach with a fork. Very impressed that he managed to carefully stab each peach piece and get it into his mouth, I was eager to "help" (read: see if I could do it, too). It took me a couple of tries and slightly annoyed the child because I'd taken his fork away, but the result was successful, and I even gave him his fork back once I'd fed him all the pieces that he truly wouldn't have been able to get. While he was so distracted, I managed to take his milk away for a little while (don't worry--he asked for it again and soon had it finished). I also slipped him some pasta and raisins, so he had a fairly complete meal.

Then it was time for us to eat, and also experiment with holding our own conversation while still being dutiful babysitters. Yes, he was something of a practice child during this time. Fish Tank once again got MVP, as it's right there in the dining room and fascinating to this particular two-year-old. He also entertained us with his singing caterpillar toy--we're still singing along days later. And Matt and I managed to have something of a conversation--not bad!

As a side note, we wrestled with the question of what good babysitting really constitutes. We often found ourselves sitting there staring at the child--not doing anything, just staring. Was this necessary?

The child's mom had clued us in that his favorite game nowadays was to sit in a couch-cushion fort and hand stuffed animals back and forth. Matt thought this sounded like great fun, so he headed upstairs to bring down our plethora of extra pillows while I cleaned up dinner. He then delighted the child for more than an hour with an awesome, tunnel-like fort, and we dutifully passed the stuffed whale and stuffed turtle back and forth until my pregnant self had to quit crawling around on the floor.

Our minor mishap was a bump on the head, caused by a non-child-proofed end table. We did not abuse the child! The child fell on his own! Any bruises are not our fault! He's a tough kid, though, and didn't even cry. Personally, I would've demanded ice cream.

The evening ended with a reading of Fox in Sox by Matt. That's a really in-depth book! I'd forgotten there was so much to it, so I listened in, too.

But wait...was the evening ended? It wouldn't be over without one final catastrophe and lots of tears. Fortunately, it happened after the parents had returned.

The incident involved the couch-cushion fort. The guys/child were still playing in it, and...oops!...it fell in on the child. That in itself wouldn't have been a huge problem (it had happened earlier in the evening), except things got a little tangled and the child couldn't push the cushions, blankets and pillows off of himself. Hysterics ensued. Once he was on his mom's lap and had a graham cracker for each hand, he felt better. (I, again, would've demanded ice-cream.)

Overall, I think this is one that might've earned us a call-back. Meanwhile, I'm trying my best to figure out how to birth a two-year-old instead of an infant.