Man vs. Baby

We call her Ace.  She’s two weeks short of her first birthday; she barely walks; and she can only speaks a handful of words.  I was asked to babysit her for an evening.  Alone.  By myself.  Just me and her….

Pssst.  How hard could it be?

Lesson One:  If you are not being disturbed by a baby, its because she’s doing something you don’t want her doing somewhere you don’t want her being. 

I’m sweeping.  I’m not watching her.  CRASH!  My stone coasters hit the hardwood floor.  While I’m checking to make sure that they aren’t broken, Ace moves onto the next great attraction: the VCR.  She’s less than two feet away from me, and she manages to push the VHS into the VCR and is now jamming her hand in the slot in attempt to get it back.

Easy fix.  She has this tall alligator toy thing that makes a nice barricade.  I slide it between her and the VCR.  The gears turn in her head as she looks at it with disapproval.  Then, she grabs the thing and shoves it aside like King Kong pitches a parked car out of the way.

As I’m pulling her out of the VCR again, I happen to look at my beautiful 37” LCD television to find that the bottom third of it is covered in hand prints…

I wipe that clean and bring her into the bedroom to pick up.  Ace finds the laundry basket and keeps herself busy by eating a sock.  A minute or two later I glance over to see that she’s put on one of Tonya’s tank tops. 

Now, Tonya told me that if she did anything cute, I should take pictures.  So I go get my camera.  While I’m fiddling with the settings, Ace walks over to the doorway, where she decides that she doesn’t want it on anymore.  It gets stuck on her head; she struggles; flails about; and falls backwards.  CLICK!  Her head hits the door, the door frame, and then the hardwood floor. 

There’s tears, and crying, and it’s the end of the world...  And then she’s at the laundry basket again like it’s a toy box, and stuffs another sock in her mouth.

Once that fiasco is over, I decide to do dishes.  Let me tell you, a baby will find everything that she possibly can, even if you had no idea that it was there, or that she could reach it, or that it was even a problem.  Outlets are really popular.  So is the microwave stand with its metal baskets.  It’s like a buffet for her.  Dig in, pull out as many paper plates you want, throw them on the floor - plastic silverware, plastic cups, napkins, shoot me, trash bags…

I give Ace this baby cup with plastic flaps over the lip.  You’re suppose to fill it with cereal, and the flaps will keep the food in.  Ha! 

What Ace does is she hold down the flaps and shakes it like tambourine, and Cherrios go flying everywhere!  Or she dished them out like a flower girl doles out rose pedals at a wedding.  When she’s done, it looks like she’s made a trail of crumbs that Hansel and Gretel could use to find their way back home.

Clean that up.  Made dinner, which went well.  Now the bath…

The first two nights we had her, Tonya gave her a bath in the kitchen sink, and she loved it, except for that moment when bath-time’s over, at which point there’s screaming. 

I thought, “What the hell.  Let’s give her a bath in the tub!”

Bad idea.  Ace doesn’t sit in the tub.  She wants to stand; and walk around; and fall; and crack her head on the side of the tub.  Now she’s crying, but she’s still determined to stand, and fall, and crack her head a second time…  And then stand, and fall, but I manage to grab her arm this time around. 

I force her to sit, which makes her cry even more.  Then, she gets soap in her eyes.  By this point, her sole purpose in life is to stare me down as I’m washing her and scream in my face.  Regardless, when bath-time’s over it’s somehow still a tragedy, and she’s going off like a tornado siren.

As I’m dressing her, she starts playing with something and suddenly she’s giggling and happy.  Just like that.  Snap of the fingers and she goes from an exorcism to happy trails.

I lay her down with a bottle, and the most exhausting four hours of my life are over.

When Tonya got home, she asked in a chipper voice “How did tonight go?!”  I described it as being similar to when Luke Skywalker meets Yoda for the first time in The Empire Strikes Back:

Oh, and in the morning, it turns out the diaper wasn’t on right,
and she peed all over her pants and the crib.

Go Jon!