The Best Nephew EVER

Since I can't do anything but wait and see if the Irish jerk presents our conversation to the administration at the hospital where I work, and I can't remember what all we talked about anyway, I'm moving on to other happier posts.

I babysat my nephew overnight for the first time last night. Brother and wife went off for romatic night on the city of Baltimore and Collin and I discovered all the fun we could have in a studio apartment. The duration was 5 hours last night and 4 hours this morning. He brought a teddy bear, some playdoh, 2 movies, 4 books and the usual essentials (diapers, blanket, etc.) As a traveller, I have very few kids toys, but we managed to make due.

We played alot with my exercise ball. The cool thing about a corner apartment with brick walls is you can kick a ball "in the house" as hard as you can, and no damage (physical or noise) is done. We wrestled alot. We jumped on the bed a bit (carefully, in the center, only when dancing and holding my hand-- just in case Beth is reading!) We sat on the window sill and watched buses, trucks and cars go by-- we never got to see a fire truck but we heard them in the distance. We played with teddy bear, and flashlights, and my stuffed dinosaur that sits above my doorway. Our game there was to sneak up on the dinosaur, peak around the corner, scream, then run across the room and hide behind the bed. This lead to throwing koosh balls at said dinosaur until it fell off its perch. That game lasted about an hour and was quite fun. We drew on the entire refridgerator with erasable markers-- we drew a shark eating Nemo and then Collin scribbled on the shark to save Nemo's life. Wheeew, it was a close one! We celebrated the saving of Nemo by eating dried pineapple rings and cherrios.

I was under the mistaken impression that if I put on a movie and tucked him in, he may fall asleep. Afterall, we had brushed teeth, changed diaper, PJ'd ourselves, and read 4 books-- we should have been primed to sleep by 8pm. At 9pm I'm still telling him to settle down and keep in bed-- he kept "forgetting" stuff-- "I forgot teddy!" "I forgot to put my cup up", "I forgot to put my toothbrush away!". At 9pm I made the rule that he must stay on the bed-- this led to much rolling this way and that way attempting to get comfortable. I turned off all the lights, read another book to him in hushed whisper, then put on my sleep music (some Bach and 100 years). By 10pm he was snoozing.

At 11pm Cheria called. Ha! He didn't wake up- thank god for deep sleepers! When I finished the conversation and went to bed I noticed he had turned himself sideways and was somehow, in all his 2.5 feet splender, taking up the entire queen size bed (bed hogging denies both physics and deminsions). I picked him up and turned him back the right direction without too much ado. Had to do it again twice that night when I found his foot in my face and then in my stomach. They need to buy this kid a circular bed. And I need some border patrol!

The only bad part of our time together, other than the very stinky diaper this morning that needed (count them) 3 wipes to clean up, was an incident with my front door alarm. I have something that goes under the door that goes off if it is manipulated. I told collin that the door had an alarm and not to open it without me. This morning while I was cooking he zoomed over to the door, I thought to his bag, and then zoomed back when the alarm went off at 140 dbs. Tears and clinging followed for about 10 minutes. I gave lots of hugs and rocking and told him "wow, that was loud, we should open the door together next time so I can turn that alarm off". He did NOT try to open the front door again, and when we were heading out he asked me to make sure the noise was off. I assured him it was off. Lesson learned. It was really funny, but I managed to make sure he never saw me laughing silently!

It was a great time. He's constant energy but behaved nicely for me (except for not going to sleep and trying once to go out the front door). Brother and wife have done a good job.

Did I spoil him? Well, we ate pancakes for dinner and I let him pour his own syrup. Maybe I spoiled him a tiny bit. But he DID have to try one bite of chicken before we got to watch Willie Wonka-- and that took 45 minutes of stubborness.