Comedy in Babysitting (or Surviving An Afternoon With A Crying 2 Year Old)

Yesterday, I was babysitting for a friend of mine, and the afternoon was something crazy. I was watching her 2-year-old (who I’ve watched since he was born), and he was full of drama!

Right when my friend was getting ready to leave, her son jumped into his stroller. He wanted to go for a walk, which was fine with me since it would distract him from his mom leaving and he might take a nap in the stroller.

First of all, I do want to talk about the stroller. I’m not a mom, so I’m not a stroller expert, but my friend had a Bob stroller, and that thing was amazing! Super easy to push and the handle was at a good level for me. I know that those are supposed to be expensive strollers, but that thing was great!

So I’m pushing the stroller out the door with my friend’s son, and all of a sudden he realizes that his mom isn’t walking with him. He starts screaming “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” at the top of his lungs and I just kept going. My friend drove right by where I was walking and she encouraged me to keep going (I think she also thought he’d fall asleep quickly).

Well, he didn’t.

I pushed him around for about 20 minutes with him screaming every second. Other people in the neighborhood were starting to look at me like I was a kidnapper or something! Finally I decided that he wasn’t going to fall asleep and I headed back to my friend’s house.

The kid was so excited to get back home, because he thought his mom would be in the house. And once he searched everywhere and realized she wasn’t there, he had a nice crying temper tantrum.

He was shrieking and crying and flinging himself across the room. Occasionally, he would lie on the ground with his arms crossed in front of his head and sigh really loudly. Then he’d look at me and see if I would react. When I didn’t, the tears came again.

Eventually, he fell asleep on the couch and stayed asleep until my friend got home.

Honestly, the whole thing was pretty funny. I just feel horrible letting the kid cry it out (but that’s what I need to do). I’ll be back there babysitting again tonight, so I’m hoping to not have a repeat performance from yesterday.

But you know what makes babysitting totally worth it? When the kid, completely unprompted, yells out “Bye bye Jen!” as I’m leaving.

Totally cute.

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