Babysitting

We babysat for Sara and Kevan on Friday evening so that they could attend a fireside—they serve in YW and YM, respectively. We couldn’t really say no since we find their kids hilarious and they promised to save some dinner for us.

Dinner happened to be enchiladas, which goes against all tradition. We’ve had dinner at their place three times previously and each time we’ve had burgers, so tradition dictates that we should have had burgers again. I guess since we were just eating leftovers, and not actually “eating over” per se, tradition still reigns.

Kevan offered some sour cream and salsa to top our enchiladas, which we accepted, mouths watering, while Rachel sat at the computer with Sara happy to have a captive audience. American-style sour cream and salsa are not readily available here and we were excited for the luxury.

We sat down at the table and Andrew put some sour cream and salsa on his enchiladas while mumbling some comment about how he’s “putting salsa on his lasagna because he can.”

I ignored him for the time being and remarked how absolutely happy I was to have real tortillas! He ignored me for the time being and made some remark about how he shouldn’t have put salsa on his lasagna. The thought was starting to gross him out, but he had been so excited to have salsa back in his life that, caught up in the moment, he put it on his “lasagna” anyway.

He pushed it around on his plate with his fork, bemoaning his rash decision. I let him suffer for a few minutes before I let on that dinner was actually enchiladas.

“These are enchiladas!” he choked out, a little too exited for words.

Does anyone out there actually put sour cream and salsa on their lasagna? I wouldn’t be surprised to find a few sour cream toppers out there. Salsa is another case entirely.

Dinner aside, we had a wonderful evening throwing paper airplanes around with the kids. We were a little taken aback by Jacob’s knowledge of plane parts, paper airplane models, and air strike terminology. Megan and Emma seemed, similarly, stunned so we just went along with whatever he monologued for us.

Bedtime in their household is typically 8 o’clock, but they had been given permission to stay up later—at least until we couldn’t stand them. Things were going so well, but bedtime is bedtime and around 8:02 Megan started to get a little teary. She started bawling over everything and when I told her that certain little girls who couldn’t stay awake and be happy at the same time might have to go to bed, she got even more upset.

I suggested a “teeth-brushing contest” as a way to get Megan ready for bed without thinking she was actually getting ready for bed. That backfired.

Emma raced off to brush her teeth leaving moaning Megan in the dust.

“No!” wailed Megan, “There is no contest! And even if there was a contest I’d still be upset because Emma won! I lost the contest! I said there wasn’t a contest and I still lost!”

I took Megan into the bathroom to brush her teeth and tried to be sympathetic. This also backfired.

“Do you know what, Megan?” I told her, “I have two big sisters and a big brother! How many big brothers and sisters do you have?”

“I have two *sniff* big sisters and *cough, sniff, cough* one big brother, too!”

“Wow! That’s so cool!” I said. And then we continued to talk about trivial things like how long I’ve had glasses and why Rachel can’t borrow Emma’s toothbrush and why Megan was so sad.

“It’s hard to be five, isn’t it?” I said, trying not to laugh while pulling my most genuinely caring face.

“Yeah, it is…but I hope you mean that it’s hard to be five-and-a-half because I’m actually not five I’m five-and-a-half!” Megan was wailing again.

I’d completely forgotten about the whole quarter/half/three-quarters thing that kids care about until they get so old that they’d rather subtract any given number of years from their age than tack on an extra half of one.

We eventually got the three youngest in bed, leaving Jacob up reading silently. Rachel was also getting up, wired as ever. I tried to put her to sleep but she would have none of it, so we let her stay up. She was still up when the Lewises got home and was plenty hyper. We stayed for ice cream (and to use the internet, borrow some DVDs, and talk books and politics—and to think our parents were worried about us coming out here. We’re being taken care of) and watched Rachel run around like a crazy monkey. She showed off all her tricks, ever grateful for her captive audience, and was still awake when we got home.

She put up as much of a fuss about going to bed last night after 11 PM as she did going to bed tonight at 8 PM. I think that girl would stay up all day and night if she was given the opportunity…