Mommy for a Day

This weekend (Saturday only), I had the pleasure of babysitting my friend’s three-year old son. I’ve known him since the day he was born. In fact, I helped take him home from the hospital. I’ve always offered to babysit for my friend because that’s what friends do and I can imagine that it must be difficult for parents to find time alone once they have kids. She never took me up on my offer to babysit so that she and her husband could do dinner and a movie or just straight up get away. Imagine my surprise when my friend calls me late on Friday to find out if I can watch her son the next day. This is like three years after telling her I could. Anyway, I was surprised but I said okay. In fact, I looked forward to it and dreaded it all at the same time because this little boy is all about his mommy. What caused the need for my services? My friend needed to get her hair done desperately and her husband was out of town. Cool. I asked her to come by my place and I would hook her up with my people who are good for last-minute situations. As we dropped her off, her son started to scream and I’m not kidding when I say scream. His face was red and he didn’t stop screaming. My friend looked like she was about to get back in the car but I convinced her to go ahead. There are not too many people that do ‘ethnic’ hair in my area and she’d found someone at the last minute. It would have been her loss if she didn’t seize the opportunity.

Anyways, I drove off with her boy screaming my head off. Then it occurred to me that I needed to strike some kinda deal with this little man. I turned around and asked if he wanted me to turn around and get his mom or if we should go to the park instead. Surprise, surprise, he chose to go to the park. I asked if he wanted us to pick his mom up before we went to the park or if we should just go now and he said he wanted to go now. I asked if his mom would be okay with us going to the park, he said he was pretty sure she would say yes. Nice! I called my friend to reassure her we were okay because I figured she’d be worried since her son was in all kindsa states when we left her. From that point on, the day went smoothly. It’s amazing how you can get children to behave. I had several stops to make before we could get to the park (relax in my crib for like 5 mins, go do amebo at my sisters', drop off my drycleaning, and go to the African store). The whole time, I let him know exactly what was coming next and when we would be going to the park. We finally made it to the park and I let him have his time. He did his thing on the swing and then got all kindsa dirty in the sandpit. It wasn’t until he was neck deep in sand that I realized that my friend might not appreciate me bringing him back dirty so we had to quit the sandpit. Other than that, we had a blast.

All in all, it was a good pretend-mommy day for me. A couple of times, I forgot to buckle the thingy on his car seat. Yeah, I had my Britney moment, but I parked to the side of the road and fixed it quickly. Then, at the store, I caved in and bought him some candy but apparently, his mommy doesn’t give him candy. Dunno how I did that. I probably wouldn’t have bought it for my kid either but I figured it was the nice thing to do since he’d been such a good boy the entire time. Besides, right before picking up his mom, I figured I could get in one last errand. We were at Bed Bath & Beyond buying trash bags and he said I didn’t buy anything for him so I caved in and bought him the candy he'd picked up. What else? Oh yeah. I wasn’t really aware of the whole eating thing. He’d eaten a burger at 3 o’clock and had some goldfish crackers and juice so I thought he was okay. However, by the time we were all back at my house at 7pm, he was pretty cranky and hungry. Go figure. I guess you need to keep those machines well oiled. One thing I did notice was that he was way better behaved with me than with his mom. Apparently, kids know who they can take advantage of and they do so without missing a beat. When we were at the store, I asked him to help me with one of my bags and he obliged. By the time we’d picked his mom up and were carrying all my stuff into the house, I asked him to help me with a bag and he took it and promptly handed it to his mother. I guess he knew when the gig was up.