Kid Person Post-Kids???

Having a second baby has given me all kinds of false confidence as a parent. Being two deep (as my husband likes to say) has me in the "If I can do this, I can do anything," mentality. Wrong. This past weekend I babysat for the first time in my life. I offered to help out a friend with a new baby by taking her daughter off her hands for a few hours - and she took me up on my offer.

At first I wasn't worried. Our daughters were good friends and they would keep each other amused, right? My confidence began to crack the night before B-day (babysitting day) with one long, continuous nightmare - the kind you attempt to stop by waking up, but are sucked right back into when you drift off to sleep, no matter how hard you try to think of something else. Highlights of the dream: I didn't know when they were going to pick her up and it was getting later and later... I gave her a bath and they were upset and offended... they came to pick her up but they were lecturing and criticizing me and wouldn't leave. All in all it was a long, tedious, stressful dream - just like I imagined watching someone else's kid would be.

I had forgotten (seems to be the theme of my blog) that pre-kids I was not a kid person, and it seems that post-kids I am still not a kid person. The ugly nasty truth is that I am a kid person only for my own kids! Sure, I can appreciate a cute kid, even laugh over silly kid quotes and stories, but to actually take care of someone else's kid - to feed them, correct them, tease them, tickle them... I'm not sure I have it in me. This is probably the reason I've never put Little Beauty in daycare. She has been with me her entire three and half years of existence. Somewhere in the back of my mind I imagine that whoever would be taking care of her would only be tolerating her, and that's not good enough.

Still, I would hate for my friend to think I was only tolerating her daughter. We all enjoyed her visit. She and my daughter made a fort in the living room and unstuffed one of the throw pillows that had a hole in it. Then they cooked the stuffing up as fish inside their fort and my husband happily crawled into the fort and ate the pillow stuffing, I mean fish, that they served him. Little Handsome was a bit more skeptical because of the insane noise level created by the girls. He's a quiet soul, like his mama. I'll admit I did run and hide in my bedroom a few times. My husband would tease, "Don't forget that you're in charge out there." But then the teacher in him would kick in and he'd go take over for me.

Hopefully, other people's kids are like an acquired taste, and it time, with more adventures in babysitting, I'll grow to love babysitting them.