little monsters

i babysat my director's two kids last weekend. oddly, whenever i tell people this they get this puzzled look on their faces and say something to effect of, "hm... i'm trying to picture you as a babysitter..." or "wait... you know how to take care of kids?"

okay, i'm no mary poppins, and i can be pretty cynical... but does that mean i can't take care of two little rascals for a few hours?

as a testament to my childcare prowess, i offer the following story of how i devised a game to keep Hugh quiet while Will was falling asleep:

this game basically involved me holding Will in one arm, motioning excitedly to Hugh to indicate that he should sit next to me on the bed, and using my free hand to walk my fingers up his arm like the itsy-bitsy-spider. without warning, i would say "trapped!"and pull him down to the bed. in a burst of creativity, i called the game "trapped!"

Hugh liked this game so much that he even made up his own variation, "trapped forever!", which meant that i held him down even longer. and of course, when he was "trapped," he didn't say a word. quiet brother, sleeping baby -- sometimes i'm so clever i amaze myself.

another half-hour of the evening was devoted to me saying "can you show me the spin/roll/power ranger landing?" and then watching Will jump from one bed to the other while either spinning in the air, rolling around on the second bed, or jumping directly onto the aforementioned power ranger toy. for the record, no action figures were harmed during this babysitting adventure.

the one slip up i had was when Hugh asked me to put his toy power ranger's hands back on the handles of his airplane for the 25,303,493th time, and i thought "man, i'm really tired of fiddling with this little action figure. it's time for some reverse psychology." "i BET that you can't do that yourself!" i said, to which Hugh answered, "you're right. i can't!"

blast. i thought no kid could resist an all-capital-letters BET.

in the end, i got both kids to sleep and they're still alive and well, so i'd say it was a pretty successful night.

okay. this is getting a little too michael jackson. time to sign off.