Babysitting Tip #1: Keep Eyes on Children ALWAYS

So... I had quite an eventful night babysitting this evening.  Normally, the kids at this particular house are pretty good and pleasant to be around.  Tonight was no different, but with a twist.

As I reached the door of the house and the mom had greeted me, she informed me that her niece had been there all day and that I would have to watch her for a few minutes until she was picked up.  That was fine.  What was one more kid, anyway?  Instead of watching three kids, I was now watching four.  Again, this didn't bother me until the next thing the mom said: "She's very stubborn.  You may have to be firm with her, because she doesn't listen very well."  Oh great, I thought to myself, now I have a difficult child to work with.  Oh well, it couldn't be helped.

When the parents left, everyone was happily seated on the couch watching Barbie: A Mermaid Tale 2.  (I found it quite disturbing how brightly colored everything was.)  After about ten minutes, however, the two youngest children grew tired of the movie, and I can't blame them, so they went to play in one of the bedrooms.  I could still hear them, so I assumed everything was fine, until five minutes later when I went to check on them.  What did I find?  In the time they had been left alone, they had succeeded in flooding the entire bathroom and the water was quickly working its way into the hall.  I felt like I was the mermaid then.  I could have slapped myself.  This was not what I needed 15 minutes before bedtime.  So this was what the mom meant by "stubborn".

I set straight to work cleaning: the two kids were totally soaked, so I had to get dry pajamas for the boy and wrap a towel around the girl (since she was the niece and didn't have a change of clothes); I tried to mop the water off the floor with towels until I could really mop; and of course, I drained the whole sink and wiped down the cupboards, which were literally sopping wet.  Of course, right as I was in the middle of all this, the niece's mother walked in and took her home in a towel.  That must have made a good first impression.

After the initial damage was dealt with, I got the youngest in bed and tried to have the middle child also get in bed.  Of course, small children always want a snack at the least convenient times, so I ended up feeding everybody before they would go to bed.  So, after the youngest was in bed a second time, I set to work on the middle child.  She simply refused to sleep unless I read her a story, so I obliged in this while her sister took the mop and helped clean up the water that still remained.  All I can say, is thank goodness for firstborn children.

Finally, after both of the girls were in bed and I was alone, I had to finish cleaning up.  Thankfully, the mop did most of the dirty work, but I still had to make sure everything was dry.  After everything was done, I finally wrung out all the towels and hung them up to dry, along with the clothing of the culprits, and I sat down on the couch to read until the parents came home.

It's funny because when I left the house before I arrived, I was just hoping the kids would go to bed without complaining tonight.  Well, that's exactly what happened, except I had to flood the bathroom to get it.  The moral of the story?  I'm not sure.  Maybe the moral is that you should never let two 3-year-olds out of your sight.  Or you should never watch Barbie movies unless under torture.  Or even that you should wear waterproof clothing every time you babysit.  Regardless of the lesson learned,  I know that when I go over next time, I will not be the one who turns mermaid trying to clean up messes gone haywire.