Babysitting

On Saturday night I watched kids during a wedding and wedding reception. (It was actually a friend's wedding but she forgot to invite me and I was the only Nursery worker willing to work. I'm totally cool with it but a bunch of my friends saw me there and were like, "Hey, what are you doing back here? Oooohhhhhhh...I see..." Needless to say it was weird but well within the spectrum of things I find totally hilarious so like I said, I'm cool with it.) There were eight kids ranging in age from...to be totally honest, unless the kid is old enough to open their mouth and tell me how old they are, I don't have clue. Seriously. I can't tell you what age kids start walking (I assume around a year but that's only because our friend Emma started walking shortly after her 1st birthday), talking, holding their heads and/or bodies up. The parents bring 'em and I entertain 'em until church is over. This usually involves me giving airplane rides, initiating somersault trains, running around and screaming, reading books, distributing crackers (while sneaking a few of my own), and hoping that no one needs their diaper changed. The Nursery people and Children's Church people are always bringing up the topic of curriculum for the babies/toddlers and I think that's just crazy talk. They have music CDs and workbooks and who knows what else buried in the cupboard so we can teach the kids about how much Jesus loves them and all of that good stuff. Is it just me or does this seem a little ambitious? I can't get them to sit down and listen to five sentences out of My First Bible let alone Lifeway's 0-2 year old lesson plan. But I digress...

We had one infant who liked to spit up every 90 seconds. The last words out of his parent's mouths were, "Watch out! He's a spitter!" My 15-year old helper (I know that's how old she is because she can tell me with her words) didn't really know what to make of that. I didn't think children of his size and mobility were able to spit at people. And why would he feel the need to spit at someone? He's not exactly self aware enough to know when someone warrants spitting on does he?

And then he totally puked all over us. I get it now. His parents were just being cute.

Then we had our little friend Emma who loves to run around and play and smile and laugh but was much to overwhelmed by the remaining six kids who ranged in age between 4 & 10 (again I know, because they used their big kid words to tell me). So we turned our fellowship hall in to the "roughhouse room" for the big kids. At this point I learned that I had taught a new word to a few of the boys who previously did not know what the word roughhouse meant. I'm pretty sure I could get in trouble for that. Their mom's didn't strike me as the type who allowed roughhousing in their homes.

I'm tired just thinking of those five hours spent feeding, entertaining, having serious talks about why we don't climb on chairs stacked 10 high (note to self: have a serious talk about the person who stacked the chairs in a stairway configuration making it easy for a four and seven year old to climb over 6 feet into the air.) After that, we passed the evening watching movies and bribing them with chocolate cupcakes which they promptly dropped onto the floor, icing side down of course.