Babysitting my niece and nephew
Tonight, I looked after my sister’s two kids. When I brought in the saw that I had borrowed from my brother-in-law, I saw the small tent I had in my trunk. It’s a small tent 5×6 feet. The person in the picture is a child–either they wanted the tent to appear bigger or the tent is meant for a child. Well, I bought the tent for Rachel and I next spring. It’s light and more of a backpacking tent.
So I brought in the tent and Ben knew how to put the tent skeleton together. After we put it together, we played “camping” for over an hour. We took plastic cups and plates and camped in the living room. We even real had wind (ceiling fans) and therefore had to remove and re-apply the rainfly numerous times. Ben did most of the work, thankfully. We went on a hunt for treasure and found lots of treasure in the kitchen from which we brought out booty back to the tent and filled up half the tent.
We took one intermission from camping and played games in Ben’s room. One game was catch the ball while jumping up and down on the bed, that one was hard so we played catch the ball as it rolls down the tilted mattress. After that Ben and I had a pillow fight.
Everything went smoothly until I tried to put Adah in her bed and she kicked and screamed. I let stay up another 15 min. Then, I put her in her bed again, and she kicked and screamed again. She screamed for her mama which of course wasn’t there. The crying actually worried Ben who came in and announced that she normally doesn’t scream. That made me feel better. :-) So I stood there for a few minutes until she finally got tired of crying and fell asleep to the ceiling fan. I played a few more minutes with Ben and then told him it was his bed-time. He then cried and screamed at the bottom of the stairs. I told him that I wouldn’t read him any stories if he didn’t come up the stairs. He finally came up, crawling and moaning all the way. I then read him two stories. One was about numbers and shapes and colors. The other was about occupations. Overall, things went well tonight. For one thing, I didn’t have to change any messy diapers.
It will always be an ordeal though getting children to go to bed. It was me. I remember riding my mom’s leg and not letting go, because I didn’t want to go to bed. I also remember screaming and kicking my bed over and over until my parents came in and threatened to spank me, because I didn’t want to go to bed.
In all honesty, I still never want to go to bed.
