Babysitting Is Child’s Play
Wednesday - June 25, 2008
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Del.icio.usThe other week, my brother-in-law’s wife called me at work to ask a favor. That Saturday, she wanted to know if I would babysit their twin 6-year-old boys for the entire day. Normally they would ask my wife, but she had a known commitment so they went for the second team.
Lately, I’ve become the favorite playtime uncle to the boys, mostly because I spoil them like crazy. It’s the grandparent syndrome where you can cater to the kids to make them really like you, but at the end of they day you can give them back to their parents.
We love the boys dearly but they can sometimes be a handful - the Hulk’s handful. I knew I was in trouble when I was told they would drop the boys off at our house on Saturday morning at 6:30. It was going to be a long day so I enlisted the help of our 11-year-old daughter, who the boys adore.
Our first order of business was to decide which Saturday morning cartoons to watch. The arguing started and I put my foot down and said we would watch my favorite, Sponge Bob Square Pants. It wasn’t too long before the boys asked if I was going to make them breakfast.
They were demanding pancakes, and while I think they were testing me to see how far I would go, I opted for the breakfast of champions, cold leftover pizza from the night before. I made sure my wife didn’t see this as I knew I would be scolded for not providing them a proper meal.
The next order of business was to decide which video game system we would play. Again, fighting ensued and I had to step in and dominate the gameplay on our daughter’s Nintendo Wii. So far, I was having a pretty good day.
Then I decided we would all go out and see a movie.
Kung Fu Panda had just come out and the kids wanted to see that but I was cartooned-out, so I said we would see Speed Racer instead. Of course, they didn’t know that I used to watch that all the time as a kid. Our lunch that day would consist of popcorn, candy and soda. I had no complaints.
We were all really enjoying the movie as it’s a visual feast and the storyline was pretty true to the original series. Just before the big final race scene, one of my nephews told me he had to use the bathroom, badly. I asked if he could wait because the best part of the movie was about to start.
He held the universal pose that he had to go, so I took him to the restroom. By the time we returned to the movie, I missed the big race and the revealing of Racer X. I went into a tantrum. We went home and that evening their parents came to pick them up. They asked how the boys behaved that day.
Before I could answer, my daughter exclaimed, “They were fine, but Dad was acting like a spoiled brat!”
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