Babysitting & Babies

Drew and I babysat this weekend for the first time together since high school for our friends' 5-month old baby.  I was nervous but Drew continued to remind me that we would AOK and that we were fully capable.  Whew.

I had babies on the brain all weekend (not my own) because my Nell had her little cutie nugget on Friday night.  I shed several tears over the past few days to Lindsay because I was so sad to be missing out on such a momentous occasion, but...it's just part of it I guess.  Our friends John and Nat in Amsterdam had their baby on Wednesday.  Cait had her baby in December and Steph had hers in November and several more are having their's this summer.  I'm sad to miss all that.  Blah.

Anyways, babysitting was a pretty good time, though the baby stressed us out a bit.  She was perfect and cute and wonderful about 60% of the time, and screamed bloody murder the remainder of the evening.  She appeared to be tired but every time we'd try to put her down she'd scream and cry, and you can't just let someone else's kid cry it out/cry themselves to sleep, can you?  We didn't, anyway.  Initially Drew was the perfect model of a baby-whisperer and calmed her down and calmed ME down and made her laugh, but then when the screaming continued, the calmness wore off and panic ensued.  SHE WOULDN'T STOP!  So when that started, so did the tempers and snapping at each other.  Whoops.  We clearly have a lot of work to do on our patience with each other before we have kids.

Calm Drew and the cutie culprit.

I've also realized I have several other things I need to take care of before I have children.  Things dealing with like...anxiety and fear and what not.  For example, my fear of flying.  Imagine: we're 35,000 feet in the air and the plane starts bumping its way over some very unpleasant turbulence.  My 5 year old looks at me fearful and wide-eyed.
Kid: Mommy, why is the plane doing that?  I'm scared!
Me: Well sweetie......it's because there's wind and turbulence and it means THE PLANE'S GOING DOWN AND WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE GOD HELP US!!!!
(And then I proceed to run around the plane a la Kristen Wiig in 'Bridesmaids'.) 

Another scenario: Drew's working late and my child runs into my bedroom late at night, scared because they heard a noise outside their window.
Kid: Mommy, I heard something outside!  I'm scared!
Me:  Wait, seriously?
Kid: YES!  What if it's a bad guy or a monster or something?
Me:  My God.  You could be right.  Quick!!  Get in the closet and hide with me NOW!!
(And we proceed to hide in the closet together under a blanket until Drew gets home.  At which point I'll have a great deal of explaining to do.)  

I cannot project that fear shit onto my kids.  I won't do it.  So therefore I must take care of it now before I even entertain the idea.  Sigh.  I've got a long road ahead.

I need to can all this baby talk because my in-laws get here today and one in particular is alllll about the babies.  So that talk stops now and the fun BEGINS!

I'll get back to posting more pics of their trip and about my life in general.  Sorry for my absence.  Seee ya!