we were like dorothy in the land of oz, except we had no yellow brick road to follow and our ruby red slippers were replaced by a few bottles of milk...
my weekend started out normal... friday night i had date-night with mike. we went to baggataway tavern in conshohocken, as we often do as our date-night activity. it's a good place to go... generally, we just grab some tasty beers, good food, chill for an hour or so and then head home. maybe watch a movie. date-nights are great nights! then, saturday i woke up nice and early. around 7 i guess. i got dressed, left the house to meet up with my friend liz at the schuylkill river trail in pottstown. we ran two miles and walked two miles. and i went home. the rest of the day, as far as mike and i knew, was wide open to do with it what we wanted...
that's when it happened. simultaneously, mike saw a facebook post his sister, jen, had made while i was chatting with her via facebook's little chat gadget thing. we both realized that she needed someone to watch her daughter, alexa, for the night. the girl that was supposed to watch alexa had to bail. so, mike and i discussed it for a minute and then i chatted with jen about it and then i discussed it with mike some more. eventually mike and i agreed that we could watch alexa, as long as jen could drop her off with us.
we were setting ourselves up for a big night. considering that neither one of us had any prior baby sitting experience. seriously - none. we were up against a big opponent. you see, before we 100% committed, jen had warned us that alexa was refusing to down for her normal nap. which meant that we might have a very tired, and likely very cranky, baby to watch. and in addition to a possible cranky baby, jen had also warned us that she wasn't sure if she would have her pack n play for alexa to sleep in. meaning that we would probably have to sleep with the little peanut in our bed at night... nothing good can come of that... not when you sleep like me; tossing and turning all night! whatever the case - we bit the bullet and committed!
my plan was to call my friend sara to see if i could borrow her pack n play - god willing she didn't need it herself. at the same time, i was also hoping that sara would be around for the day with her baby, jaden. that way i could set up a play date with the two babies and maybe tire alexa out. a cranky baby that is a tired baby needs to sleep, don't they? and the more tired a baby is, the earlier they go down... hopefully. and the earlier she goes down the less time mike and i have to go crazy trying to take care of a cranky baby. i thought it was a decent plan!
most of the plan worked. i was able to get sara's pack n play and set up a play date. but instead of being close to home, it was at sara's parent's pool. this meant i had a bit of a drive with alexa - not part of the plan. but we were going swimming. so that would be fun! after alexa got dropped off, we quickly hit the road for our pool play date. what. a. ride. alexa cried and wailed the whole way there. she hated every second of that car ride. but once we got there, she loved the pool! i would say it was worth it, because she got tired and slept the whole way home. things seemed to go well for the rest of the night... you know... we basically ran around the house trying to keep alexa out of trouble, read a couple of books, ate some dinner and eventually put her to bed. now, putting her to bed was a little tricky. but i learned that a clean diaper and a bottle of milk does wonders!
then, at 3 in the morning, what some consider the witching hour, alexa was up... and crying. i don't really know why she was up. but i do know that lucas was in the room with her and it was a likely possibility that it was all his fault. so, super-tired jessica got up and took upset-crying alexa downstairs. it took about an hour. but after changing her diaper, two episodes of barney, feeding her some yogurt and then giving her that magical bottle of milk, she eventually fell back to sleep. she and i slept on the couch the rest of the morning. that is until we were woken up at 7:15 by two crazy dogs. wonderful. but after the initial waking, the rest of the morning was fine. we ate breakfast, farted around, got washed and dressed and then dropped alexa off with her mommy around 12-noon at their mom-mom's.
we only hung out there for a bit before we eventually left to go about the rest of our day's plans - child-free. when leaving after dropping alexa off, mike and i just looked at each other for a moment. we both had this look of extreme relief and total exhaustion.
i'm sure we'll do it again some time :-) but going from not having any kids, or ever having baby sat before, to having a 1 year and 3 month old over night is crazy - balls to the wall, crazy!
.............jfk..............
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