I am a child-care provider

On Wednesday night, I had a friend of mine call to ask what I was doing the following Saturday night. I don't really speak to this person a whole lot, so I was a little hesitant in telling my plans. (Which were...nothing.) So of course, he jumped on the opportunity to ask if I could see it in my heart to babysit his 2 children. Since I had nothing to do, I agreed to do so. And after I said yes, he asked if I could possibly find it in my heart to have them stay overnight. This made me step on the brakes a little. So I told him I'd have to talk to Husband, and I'd call him back.

I called Husband, and we talked about it, and he said, "Well, whatever you want to do, I'll back you up on." Gah this isn't what I wanted! I wanted him to make a decision for me, since I didn't want to make it! So finally I decided that we could do it, we could have these children sleep over. And don't worry, I did warn my friend that we don't even have any beds here, but he assured me that they'd be ok sleeping on the floor or couches. I was told that they'd be over on Saturday afternoon, these 2 children, ages 8 and 10 (one girl, one boy).

Saturday afternoon, here they come, and introductions made. (I should also point out, we had not ever met these kids. Woo!) We did a little tour of the house, and what did the kids zero in on? Our workout equipment. So of course, they start climbing all over the elliptical and the treadmill, and trying to work out. After a lecture about safety, we all just kinda hung out downstairs for a bit, and then the parents left. We let the kids work out for a while (they just wanted to...weird) under our supervision, and then we came upstairs. We watched a few minutes of TV, then the kids kept wanting to work out. They would go down, and we would listen to make sure everything sounded ok, and would go down to check it out every few minutes to make sure no one was dying. Then we got dinner - pizza of course, and then off to a movie. We let the kids choose, which meant we saw Alvin & the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. It wasn't too bad, actually, I kind of enjoyed it. Those dang cute chipmunks!

After the movie, we came home and played MarioKart for a while. Well, the boy and I played MarioKart, I think the girl worked out more (what the heck, kids?!). So finally at 11, I was getting tired, so I told everyone it was bedtime, and off we went. This morning, we all woke up, and had breakfast - pancakes. We had to specially make the pancakes for the gal, she doesn't like thick pancakes. And for her, the definition of thick is anything over the thickness of a crepe. Finally at about 10, the parents came to get them, and our night of being parents was over, thank goodness. It's not that it was tiring, its just that they really mess up your schedule, kids. Maybe it's different if they're your own though, you don't have to worry that much about entertaining them.

There were a few funny things. I actually call Husband husband in real life, so at one point in the evening, the boy forgot his name, and yelled out 'Husband!' since that's all he could remember, it was funny. And the amount of sugar they ate...crazy. Of course, it's probably not a good idea that I gave them all the sugar, but they seemed ok still. But we survived, none worse for the wear. And I could be open to babysitting in the future - except I think I should tell the kids that really, I just want to watch movies...it's so much more low key!