kids

This weekend, Brad and I had our first adventure in babysitting.

Some friends of ours were visiting from out of town, and stayed the weekend with us.  They have two little kids; an 8-year-old boy and an almost-7-year-old girl. The parents had a meeting on Friday evening, so Brad and I offered to watch the kids while they were gone (since they were staying at our house anyway).

The first thing we learned: kids are loud. LOUD.

Going from having 2 adults and 1 kitty in a house to having 2 adults, 1 kitty, and 2 children is like going from living in a quiet remote part of the country with no neighbors within miles of you, to living in a house located in the middle of an airfield; like on the runway. loud.

The kids were both fascinated with and terrified by our grouchy old lady of a cat, and spent a large part of the weekend following her around. She was not a fan of that.  But instead of running and hiding upstairs like she does when we have parties, she sat and meowed and stared them down. At one point I caught the cat sizing up the youngest child.  The little girl is maybe 3-foot-5-inches tall, and I'm pretty sure the cat thought she could take her.

For the first little while during our babysitting adventure, we parked them in front of cartoons in the den while Brad worked on his computer and I played with my Kindle.  That worked for about 30 minutes.

And then it happened.

The XBOX red-ringed. If you don't have an XBOX, I'll tell you what that means. It's also known as the red-ring of death. It means the XBOX has gone to a better place. Dead.

Kids that age change gears quite often.  That's the 2nd thing we learned. After the cartoons were gone, we asked them if they wanted to draw. No. Play a game?  Wait, we don't have any kids games. Go outside? Dad said no because it had been pouring rain all day and everything was soaked. Uhhh...shoot.  What's left?

Mr. Brad being the coolest adult alive (according to the 8-year old), came up with a genius idea: Paper airplanes.  And of course he then built the best ones. They spent the next little while building planes and flying them across the length of the living and dining rooms.

Lesson 3:  Kids move a lot.  You will not get a non-blurry photo of them without telling them to stop and look at the camera. And even then it's iffy.

After paper-airplanes, we decided to take the kids to the park.  Everything was still a little wet, but we expected mom and dad back soon.  For the sanity of myself and my husband, we decided we needed to get outside and burn off some energy. 

 We took them to a local park that has a pretty new play-set.  We also took a towel with us to wipe off the wet slides and swings.  The swings were my favorite.  Though being a full-grown person makes them not quite as fun.  After a few swings back and forth, I felt like puking.  Getting old is lame.

Despite feeling a little unprepared, Brad and I had a good time with the kids.  They brought a whole new sense of excitement and energy into our house.  Because when you're 7- and 8-years old. Everything. And I mean everything is AWESOME.  Our basement is awesome. The wooden coasters Brad made out of a small log in the basement were awesome. Our house is awesome. Our grouchy cat is awesome. And paper airplanes are AWE.SOME. 

Especially paper airplanes made by Mr. Brad.