I love kids, but...

I am reconsidering my dream family of four kids.

This comes on the heels after having had the, um, special privilege of babysitting Pastor Dave and Janelle’s brood Sunday night. Oh, make no mistake about it, I love their kids immensely. But their energy level only seemed to increase exponentially as the evening wore on.

A little background information is in order, though – Sunday was Janelle’s birthday and her parents were in town, so Pastor Dave approached me and Tim after worship service:

Pastor Dave: Hey, how would you guys like to spend a romantic evening on the south shore -

Me: Pastor Dave, you want us to baby-sit your kids, don’t you?

Pastor Dave: (a little sheepishly) Um, yes.

We heartily agreed to help them out so they could have an evening off for a quiet dinner.

7:00 pm
I felt a little antsy as we were driving over, thinking we should have arrived a little earlier so they could leave right away to make their dinner reservations. But I shouldn’t have worried. The kids had just presented Janelle with a birthday cake they had helped decorate and she was opening gifts as we got in the door. I surveyed the scene: 7-year old Micaiah was doing handstands and cartwheels. 3-year old Hannah was galloping around on her brand new pony stick, which she had aptly named “Pony Girl Stick”. 1 ½ year-old Miah was toddling off to the bathroom to try to climb up the toilet tank. And 1 month old Samuel was screaming, rather shrilly. I looked over at Tim and had to suppress my laughter at the shell-shocked expression on his face. His experience with children was minimal at best; made even more apparent as his initial interaction with the kids consisted of calmly saying “Hello” as they cast him a disinterested glance and proceeded to run away. I sighed.

7:40 pm
With the picture taking session over and all presents opened, they decided to have some birthday cake before they leaving for dinner so the kids could enjoy it too. I had been playing with Miah, so I went to go look for the other girls and found them upstairs singing for their enraptured audience - Tim. Cute.

8:00 pm
Pastor Dave called to restaurant to let them know that they were going to be late, and we got dinner on for the kids. I know – birthday cake before dinner doesn’t seem to work very well with kids. “I’m not hungry!” declared Micaiah after one spoonful of her noodle soup and as her parents began to explain to her that she had to finish it and that they had to be leaving soon, she burst into tears. Preoccupied with trying to feed Miah her dinner while keeping an eye on Hannah as she happily slurped her soup away and a pool of her dinner began forming under her chin on the table, I don’t exactly remember at what point Micaiah stormed away from the table. Janelle’s parents started clearing away the dishes. Tim, in the meantime, was busy eating birthday cake.

8:35 pm: The Lewises and Janelle’s parents were finally on their way out the door. Pastor Dave had already put Miah to bed since it was already somewhat late. So technically, we were down to two kids, two babysitters. (A 1:1 ratio...should have been a breeze, right? Right...) Janelle had spent the last twenty minutes talking to Micaiah in her room and got her ready for bed as well. And she had calmed down considerably after I promised her we could play Monopoly – somehow I had been able to decipher her description of the game in between her sobs. All in all, it looked like it was going to be an easy evening. “We should get them to bed at 9”, I told Tim, whose arm Hannah was hanging off of. She seemed to have taken quite a liking to him.

But first the kids wanted to show us their toys in the basement. We obliged, and were subsequently treated to a grand tour of their brand-new Barbie train, a detailed non-working demonstration of an Easy-Bake oven, and introductions to a variety of stuffed animals and dolls. I headed off in search of Monopoly and returned with it to find Hannah and Micaiah giggling and showing Tim how a ¾-length skirt on Barbie could double as a strapless minidress, much to his apparent amusement.

“Oh, that’s not the right one!” Micaiah exclaimed when her eyes fell on the box in my hand. “We have to play the kid’s one!”

“But I didn’t see any other one,” I replied, secretly hoping she would just forget the whole thing. I don’t particularly enjoy playing Monopoly, and kid’s Monopoly doesn’t seem to be any more appealing. But she took me by the hand and we went to search for it in the closet. “It’s not there,” I told her, after I gave the shelf a half-hearted scan, already feeling slightly relieved at the prospect of not having to play.

“THERE IT IS!” she squealed with excitement, and after I had extracted it from the depths of the closet, I made her promise that we would only play for ten minutes and it was time for bed. I glanced at my clock anxiously. It was 9 pm and I was sure it was past their bedtime already.

9:20 pm
The game finally got underway after 20 minutes of dividing the money, sorting out the colored markers, trying to figure out the rules because the rules sheet appeared to be non-existent, and realizing that there were no property cards to be had. How the game of Monopoly, even the kid’s version in which the corporate take-over of an amusement park seems to be the prime objective, can be played without property cards is beyond me. So we decided to simply roll the dice and advance our markers; most of the chance cards only gave instructions to roll the dice a second time anyway. So now the game was reduced to stripped-down version of seeing who could roll the highest and get their marker all the way around the board first. I'm sure the Parker brothers would have been thrilled.

The second emotional outburst of the night occurred when it came Tim’s turn to roll midway through the game. He was preoccupied playing with Hannah, who at the had lost all interest 10 seconds into the game(surprisingly, considering she was all of three years old), that he didn’t realize it was his turn. Micaiah chewed him out: “Timothy, you can’t play with Hannah anymore, you have to play Monopoly!” (For reasons unbeknownst to me, the girls kept calling him “Kim” at first, until I told them his full name is "Timothy”.)

Within one second, Hannah had flung herself face-down into the nearest cushion and began to cry vehemently, her tiny frame heaving with every sob. Alarmed, Tim and I looked at each other. “What’s wrong, Hannah?” I asked in the gentlest voice I could muster.

“M-M-Micaiah s-s-said he couldn’t p-p-play with meeeeeee!” she bawled. As Tim picked Hannah up to comfort her, Micaiah turned to me and said in a loud whisper, “I think she loves him!”

9:35 pm
With the game of Monopoly finally behind us, we got the girls ready to sleep. We all settled into Hannah’s bed, first to read from a word book at Micaiah’s request (which nearly put all of us to sleep, as reading names of zoo-animals is sometimes apt to do), and then to read them a bedtime story, complete with color commentary from both girls. Then the girls said their bedtime prayers. During hers, Micaiah said “…and please God, I hope I can sing two songs before I go to sleep tonight.” Who could say “no” once a request like that has been brought before God?

10:00 pm
After dashing downstairs several times to get Micaiah her stuffed sheep and both girls their glasses of water, tucking them both in, putting on their CD to listen to, saying good night and heeding their strict instructions on which hallways lights to keep on and the exact angle the door had to be kept open at, Tim and I crept out. “Wait, I have to go to the bathroom!!” Hannah shouted, and she jumped out of bed and rushed off to use the facilities. Naturally, Micaiah followed that up with a “ME TOO!!” and leapt out of her bunk bed with acrobatic ease and took off for the bathroom as well.

10:10 pm
Tim and I wearily made our way back down to the den, flopped onto the couch in sheer exhaustion and flipped on the TV. “And you say you want to have four kids one day?” he said, sounding rather defeated. I was too tired to answer him.

11:15 pm
“You put my girls to sleep at what time?!” exclaimed Janelle, after I recalled the events of the evening to her and Pastor Dave. Luckily, they were more amused than anything.
“They walked all over you, didn’t they?” Pastor Dave chuckled, slapping us consolingly on our backs. I tried to explain that I thought the girls usually had some play time after dinner.

“Oh that’s OK,” Janelle said, laughing at me. “Most nights I get them to bed by 7:30.”

I went home and slept very well that night.