Babysitting story number three for the blog:
Kelli and I babysat two girls in our dorm room tonight. Kelli had them for the first hour and I had them for the next two hours. At the end of the night, crushed cheese crackers were ground into the carpet and scattered all over the futon and rug. Paper dolls and real dolls and coloring books and crayons and juice boxes littered the room. As I sat on the futon with two girls sleeping on my lap while waiting for their mother, I was mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted.
After only three hours of sleep the night before and a long day spent with a friend from high school, I was beat before the girls even arrived. When they arrived, I headed to the library to start on a seven-page paper while Kelli babysat, ran into a good friend, and failed to even start the paper. Needless to say, I came back to my room completely unprepared for two wound-up, sugar-high little girls. We spent about an hour wandering the halls of my dorm building, and Jenna and Emily said hello to EVERYONE. All their new "friends" thought they were adorable, but Jenna's endless questions..."What's that? Well why do you have that? Why doesn't Kelli have that? What's your mom's name? Can I have that? What are you doing? Where are we going? etc..." ...got old fast. At the beginning of the night, I answered the majority of the questions, but by the end of the night, I was simply nodding 'yes' and 'no' to questions that required an answer other than 'yes' or 'no.'
So, at the end of the night, I'm thankful for a quiet room, a vacuum cleaner, and the years I have left before I will have to answer all those questions for my own children. Sure, it's awesome that children are inquisitive and curious, and I'm sure I'll love answering my own kids' crazy questions, but for now, I'm simply drained.
Lesson learned: Patience is a virtue... seriously.
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