Adventures in Babysitting

Day two of my adventures in babysitting is over, and I must admit it's a pretty easy job. If I can do this instead of teaching, I would be a happy camper. Yesterday we stayed at our house all day besides a trip to the neighborhood swimming pool. That caused some stir-craziness and the kids really started to get on each other's nerves. But today we went to a free movie at the theater, the library, and the ice cream shop and things went much more smoothly.

If I were a stay at home mom...

I know that babysitting for 10 hours each day isn't like being a stay at home mom, but from this experience I can predict some obvious things that would be benefits and drawbacks. I'm thinking the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks.

One big thing that I wasn't looking forward to was the extra mess and my house looking like a day care, but I have found it remarkably easy to keep things clean. Now this has a lot to do with the kids being older, but even so I think I could keep the house fairly clean. While I was teaching, however, not so much. If I went back to teaching with a baby or with any aged child, I can promise you our house would be a disaster Tuesday through Saturday.

Now about having my ideal four children...

I can not believe how much these siblings fight. It really drives me nuts. I am trying to teach them how to communicate a little better and work out their own problems instead of tattle taling, screaming and retaliating. Ha! If I had to deal with all the fighting during all the waking hours for at least a few years of my life, I would absolutely lose my mind.

I'm thinking if we have four children, they will be spaced apart a bit more. And definitely not three. The same little girl always gets left out.