Babysitting & Big Fat Losers

For the past couple days, I have been watching Suzie's little girl, Elliot for about 3 hours a day. This is going to be a semi permanent gig while Suzie is going back to grad school. I was worried that I wouldn't bond to her because even though I love her and think she's cute, I have heard that it's hard to do in home daycare when you have your own kids. I hear that you don't love the kids and you come to resent them for taking time away from your own kids or from your family or housework or whatever.

Well, Monday was rough. Elliot cried quite a bit and I tried holding her and bouncing her and rocking her, and she would fall asleep but then wake up immediately any time Alice got right up in her face and very excitedly jabbered or said, "BABY!!" to her. Go figure.

Tuesday was better. Elliot had a bottle although not much of it, and Alice went down for a nap about an hour before Suzie came to pick Elliot up, so we had some time to ourselves. I also wore Elliot in the baby carrier that day which really helped me to bond to her because I got to feel her so close and any time she would wiggle, it reminds me of how you can feel the baby move when you're pregnant.

Today, I decided that Alice would be taking a nap at 2:00 every day. That gives Elliot and I about 2 hours of time when we don't have to worry about toddlers being "helpful" and shoving pacifiers into baby mouths or patting baby on the head a bit too roughly. Don't get me wrong--it is adorable. I have a very willing assistant who is unfortunately not as skilled as she thinks she is.

I'm hoping that tomorrow will be good, too. :) She's such a cute little thing! Here she is *almost* laughing at a little vibrating toy that she loves:



Tonight, I made spaghetti for dinner and sat Alice down in her chair with a bowl of chopped up noodles and her spoon. She started eating and immediately said, "mmm... mmMMmmm...MMmmm" over and over until I acknowledged her and said, "is it yummy?" Later in the meal, she informed me "I toot" and when I didn't say anything, she proceeded to tell me 2 or 3 more times until I realized what she was saying and asked, "Did you toot?" She said yeah and gave a little grin and I said, "Oh, excuse you!"

She's starting to put words together into sentences. Yesterday, Sarah and David were babysitting, and Alice grabbed Sarah's hand and brought her over to the stairs, said, "I get you!" and then started running up the stairs, hoping Sarah would follow. It was so funny because we have played like that with her, but always say "I'm gonna get you" or something like that, so her saying "I get you" is really amazing to me because it means she's putting the words together on her own, and knows at least somewhat of what they mean.



I've joined a biggest loser friends edition blog with Amy and Brad and Sam. All of you friends should come and join us! The rules are that you weigh in once a week (wednesdays), you have to post at least once a week, and that whoever loses the highest percentage of weight by December 24 (Christmas Eve) is the winner! If you join, then you will have rights to contribute to the blog. So far, even though it's only been 1 day, it's fun to be contributing to a group blog. COME AND PLAY! Even if you only have 5 lbs to lose, we'll help eachother stay motivated. :)