Last week I babysat for my brother and sister-in-law while they were off on their grande European adventure. So I soloed it with Finley plus their five kids. Yes, you read that correctly. I was a single mother of SIX kids - three boys, three girls - all under the age of ten for an entire week. Did I mention I was by myself? Luckily Charlie and Brook have good schedules in place for their kids and I got there with enough time to learn how and when everything happens. So when you insert Fun Aunt Bridget (I'm calling myself that in hopes that it catches on) everything pretty much went along with their normal routine. Except I let them stay up late and eat a ton of junk food. And also, I think Sam (almost three) got sick of me after the first 45 minutes.
I also happened to be there on my first Mother's Day so they had a babysitter come one day and I took off for an hour long massage. It was a fantastic surprise and a lovely break from the little kiddos. Plus I told Brad that he still owes me for Mother's Day - so we just delayed it a week. He totally thought I was gonna let him off easy. Yeah right.
Anyway, I tried to take pictures among all the chaos but I didn't get as many as I thought. But here are favorites which give a long pictorial summary of the week:
Things Fun Aunt Bridget let them get away with:
- Not practicing their piano the full amount of time
- Introducing them to "cheesy popcorn" (aka white cheddar popcorn) and letting them eat it on their parent's bed while we watch a movie way past their bedtime
- Letting them have a treat whenever they asked, which was often
- Allowing Ethan to wear his pajamas all Saturday
- Eating cold pizza and popcorn for lunch after church
- Laughing after Morgan ate several spoonfuls of sour cream straight from the tub (don't worry after the shock wore off I told her it was unsanitary and clogging her arteries and made her stop, I still have standards)
- Brought Morgan home from school halfway through one day because of an ambiguously itchy rash and a case of head lice that she swears she's had "since 2007," I'm telling you that girl is going to be a comedian
- Let Sam drink as much chocolate milk as he liked, even right at bedtime, and also only fruit snacks and crackers for the first two days I was there
This picture was taken about thirty minutes after Brook and Charlie left. There I was in the kitchen and my little entourage came in and just stared at me with the expression, "What now lady?" And I honestly had no idea.
We made several trips to the local park so the kids could get out of the house - I found out too late that letting them play in the volleyball pit results in an extremely sandy van. It got so bad I had to vacuum it out before Brook and Charlie got home.
Abby is the quintessential oldest daughter - and she was such a huge huge help. Honestly I couldn't have done it without her. One night I let her stay up and watch a movie with me until after midnight and it was so much fun. It made me excited for Finley to get older so we can talk about American Idol (is there any chance it was still be on in 9 years?) and watch movies.
I was making sandwiches for a picnic one afternoon and found twist-ties baked into the bread. Not smashed-in or stuck-to. Literally baked inside about six different pieces. I ended up throwing the entire loaf away lest I injured one of their kids. I'm not sure why the twist ties are with the bread during the baking process at the plant but this may be a mechanical error that Home Pride should figure out.
This is the only picture I got all week of the five kids together - they do love those computer games. Left to Right: Sam, Ethan (in orange), Logan, Abby, Morgan.
I still took some time to get close-ups of Finley. I'm sorry, it's what I do. I just love a good close-up.
I left Sam watching Max and Ruby while I put Finley down for a nap one day and came back in the room to find him shirtless. No particular reason, he just felt that eating pretzels was a shirtless situation.
Here are the two babies. They are two months apart and were pretty much at war the entire time. Except on Sunday when another woman at church held Logan and they reached their arms out and "talked" back and forth - it was adorable. Other than that hour of cuteness they were constantly taunting, pushing, and smacking each other. Logan is used to standing up for himself but Finley had to learn pretty quick and she did. They were often found vying for the same toy. In this picture I was getting them ready for a bath and they both wanted to play with the hot water nob. It looks all cute, like they might be playing nice, but they were actually screaming at each other to move over. But just look at those cute little diaper bums!
It definitely had it's moments of craziness (like the first 5 minutes of church where the three littlest kids decided to start crying within seconds of each other - don't they know I'm only one human person?!) but overall I had a good time and felt several moments where everything went smoothly and I felt a surge of Wonder Womanesque pride. I'm not ready for six kids - but as my mom said there's a reason that nature doesn't allow most woman to get that many all at once.
Well she's a rascal. A scoundrel. And a ruffian. Today she methodically took all the tupperware off the shelf and then took all of the coke cans out of the box and had herself a little party. You know, what we all do for fun.
She was on a mission that made total sense in her mind. A clarion call, if you will. It consisted of putting all the tuperware in the box and ripping off pieces of that box.
And then stacking all the cans inside the leftover tupperware. Genius.
Maybe we'll both win tomorrow.
