The last two weekends were spent babysitting my brothers FOUR kids while he and his wife were in Hawaii. We have Nathan age 10, Hailey, almost 8, Brooke around 5, and Ryan a very active 2. I was a little nervous about this. I am the youngest and had very little babysitting experience, Jared on the other hand is a pro. Overall it went really well. The kids were relatively well behaved. The biggest problem was the two year old. He is very active but the real issue was that he is a boy and doesn’t like girls. He is also very attached to his big brother, Nathan. So much so that he wouldn’t leave his room in the morning unless Nathan was the one who got the door, even though I told him that Nathan was asleep. I was very impressed with how Nathan handled this. He was such a good big brother. He played with him, put clothes on him, and even read him stories at night. I don’t know if we did much fun things. Jared showed Nathan some computer games, I watched movies with the other kids. On Saturday we took the kids geocaching. They didn’t last that long though because there  was snow on the ground and soon their feet were wet. Overall, I think it went rather well. If we babysit again we need to think of more things to do though to make it more exciting.

One person asked us if this experience made us decrease the amount of kids we are planning on having. The answer is no. For one reason these kids are actually pretty well behaved and since they very in ages the older children get to help the younger ones and it’s not too bad. The second reason would be they would be our kids. I can’t help thinking how much different parenting will be from babysitting. For one, I will be the mother and they will want to come to me. I know there are daddy’s boys/girls, but they still go to their mom every once in a while. The second reason it is way different is they will be my kids I will know their little quirks and be ready for them. The third reason is we will be in charge of disciplining. It is always weird to jump into someone’s life. For example we don’t know how harsh they are about certain things. Maybe something that is a big deal to us is a small deal to them. So that is why it doesn’t phase us to babysit or maybe we are just being naive.

Anyway, Hurray for babysitting!’

Ryan had so much fun with this balloon. So much for expensive toys

Ryan loves to run straight at the couch and dive on it. He doesn’t get hurt and loved doing it again and again.

Brooke

Here we are geocaching. You can see why the kids didn’t last long.

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