Adventures in Babysitting

When Eve was younger she used to think that she was going to do a ton of babysitting once she was old enough because she loves kids, and money. It hasn't quite worked out that way because of a few factors, the primary one being that we just don't know that many people with younger kids who are within babysitting distance. There's also the fact that she needs fourteen hours of sleep and doesn't like to stay up late. The few times she's done it have gone swimmingly, so she may have gone into this one a little cocky. My friend has a pair of adorable four-year-old twin girls and she messaged me Thursday night to ask if Eve was interested in babysitting them Friday. I was in Barrie, but I hooked them up, and Eve went over Friday evening.

The texts I got were as follows:

"I'm here. All good. Parents haven't left yet."

"Bedtime is going kind of badly. It was supposed to be lights out at 7:20." (It was now 8:45)

"They're supposed to sleep in their own rooms. Kat wants to sleep with Gwen. Gwen doesn't want to sleep with Kat. Neither of them wants me to leave the room. I have to stand outside in the hallway so they can both see half of me."

"They asked for more milk and I got it. I think that might have been a tactical error."

"I also said may have said something about me not being able to come back if they didn't sleep which I wouldn't have said if I'd realized they were literally never going to sleep."

"Like, I said would you rather go to bed or risk never seeing me again? Gwen picked never seeing me again!"

"At like 8:45 I came up with this whole 'giving you my big girl bravery through my brainwaves' and we put our heads together and it almost worked buuuuuut ultimately failed."

"It was fine, we sat in the hallway and played with Snapchat filters and had fun. It was just bad that we were still having fun at 9:30."

"I'm not sure I'm ever getting asked back here."

"Update: I am home. They never slept."

I assured her that the mother would not blame her for the girls not sleeping. I then got this text from the mom:

We consoled Eve with telling her about the time that Matt's youngest brother was babysitting Angus at Christmastime so we could go see whatever Lord of the Rings movie had just come out. He was likewise on a hot streak of easy Angus experiences, so it came as a rude surprise when three-year-old Angus proved somewhat less biddable than two-year-old Angus of the year before. He demanded libations and multiple book readings, and then, Jeremy said "he wanted to change into different pajamas". "Oof", we winced, "you fell for the jammie switch? That's a rookie mistake, bro." Apparently the culminating insult was Angus stating "you're not making me very happy, Uncle Jeremy".

Eve survived her rite of passage and was way overpaid. I feel like I handled the whole remote coaching thing not too badly, considering Zarah and I were high as balls and doing a really difficult puzzle.