Babysitting

About a week ago, my boss Cory and his wife Christine asked me to watch their 14 month old daughter (Sage) for an hour and a half. They told me that it would be during her nap time, so I could just hang out. I agreed to babysit.

When I arrived at their house, Christine had just put Sage down for her nap. Christine told me that this would be a breeze. I literally wouldn't have to do anything unless Sage woke up before they got home, at which point I should just give her a bottle and play with her in the living room. "You won't even have to change a diaper." Christine told me.

Before she left, Christine told me that the day before, Sage had gotten her leg stuck in the bars of her crib after taking her diaper off and peeing in her bed. Christine didn't know who else to call as everyone she knew was unavailable, so she called the fire department. 4 fire men showed up to free a naked 14 month old from the cage that was her crib. The point of her telling me this story was to explain how I would get Sage out if she got stuck again, but somehow I knew this babysitting job wouldn't be quite as easy as everyone thought.

After Christine left, I wrote some e-mails and worked on a few things before sitting down to watch some TV. Not long later, I heard noises from upstairs. Sage wasn't crying, but she was definitely awake. I wasn't sure if she hadn't gone to sleep yet, or had woken up early, but Christine had told me that when Sage was up, she would start crying. I decided to wait.

The noise stopped, so I had good reason to believe that Sage had gone back to sleep. 5 minutes later, she was making noise again. Not crying, just noise. I stood at the bottom of the stairs listening, and hoping she would go back to sleep. The process repeated. She would be quiet for a few minutes, then stir for a little, then quiet. After about 20 minutes of this, she started crying. I admitted defeat and started heading upstairs. It seemed like Sage was up for good, and only 45 minutes after Christine had left.

I walked up the stairs and opened the door. Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see. Sage was standing in her crib, holding her diaper in her hand, and there was poop...everywhere. I'm serious. It was all over the crib, all over her hands, and even on her face...It was on her shirt, on the floor, in her hair, you get the idea. She was like a little monkey flinging her feces festively. It was disgusting. In an entirely calm but disbelieving voice I said "oh no...Sage...what have you done". She looked excited and happy to see me as she held her arms out requesting for me to pick her up. I didn't want to, but I knew I had to.

Thinking back, I'm guessing that I haven't babysat in almost 10 years. Even then I only babysat for kids who were potty trained. I have very little baby experience, and yet...I didn't panic. Looking at the situation as a whole would have been far too overwhelming. I decided to take it one step at a time. Step one: get the poop off the baby.

I didn't know how in the world I was going to clean her up, I was so unprepared for this. What I DID know was that I needed to get her and myself out of that room because it smelled awful. I picked her up, held her at arms distance, and walked downstairs with no discernible plan for step 1.

All of a sudden the bathtub caught my eye. It seemed logical, give the baby a bath right? Well yes, but I had never given a baby a bath before. Could I even do this? Was this inappropriate? It didn't matter, it was my only option.

I put her in the adult sized tub next to the little baby tub for her. I started warming up the water while I tried to get her out of the rest of her clothes. She was handing me toys in a playful manner, clearly unaffected by the situation.

Bath time seemed to be a treat for her, for me it was awkward and scary. I had to remind myself that this wasn't something I was doing out of choice, it was out of necessity. I didn't read too much into it, I simply treated it as a problem that needed to be solved.

Every little thing was new to me. I looked around for baby soap and found some. It seemed kinda watery so I wasn't sure if this is how baby soap is, or if Sage had dumped the soap out and refilled it with water. I just went with it.

Step 1: check. Step 2: dry the baby off. This may seem like a no-brainer to most of you, but I had to think about it. Sage isn't stable enough on her own two feet for me to simply stand her up and dry her off like a dog or something. Don't worry, I figured it out. I "swaddled" her in a towel, and made my way over to the changing station. Yes that's right, Step 3: diaper.

On any other day, this would have been a bit more overwhelming, but after giving Sage a bath to get her own POOP off of her, a diaper didn't seem too far fetched. I grabbed a diaper, logically decided which side was the front, and then started looking for other diaper necessities. Do I need to wipe her? Am I supposed to use baby powder? I found a box of wipes and decided "better safe than sorry". I couldn't find baby powder, which was a relief because I wouldn't have known what to do with it anyway.

Step 3: check. Step 4: clothes.

I brought Sage upstairs, back into the poop room, and started looking for clothes. I wasn't sure which articles of clothing fit her and which didn't. I attempted to find a matching outfit, but quickly gave up on that. Finally I found a pair of jeans that looked like they fit, and started to figure out how one clothes a baby.

After all of this, I hadn't even considered how I would clean up the poop mess. If it had been any other situation, I would have figured out a way to multi-task, but this was a baby. I couldn't exactly leave her in the bathtub to bathe herself while I attended to the disaster in her bedroom. She's 14 months old...I've got enough sense to know that you can't leave those things alone in a bathtub.

Luckily I didn't have to tackle the rest of the mess alone. Cory got home a little earlier than I expected, and after finding me no where downstairs, came upstairs to look for me. I was busy putting elastic waist jeans on a baby. He came in the room and asked "what's up?". I replied "we had a little accident". He exclaimed "holy crap!" I added "literally", and thus I was saved from cleaning up the mess alone.

Cory and Christine were quite proud of how I handled the situation, and looking back on it, so was I. It was trial by fire, but I made it through. It's amazing how God seems to be continually initiating me into manhood; teaching me things that I had never considered something that I'd need to know. Ya learn something new everyday.