Baby-sitting the wee one
Last week, I had a new adventure! I took care of one a child aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall on my own for the very first time.
The child was, of course, one of my nieces. This time it happened to be the baby niece, we’ll call her the younger niece (YN) – as opposed to the older niece (ON). Hmmmm…
… ON is sort of a bad abbreviation for blogging. I guess she will have to go back to being M for Munchie.
Anyway, Texas Seestor called me on Tuesday night of last week. I was due to drive up to their home on Wednesday in the late afternoon already; we had made previous plans for me to help out while Trainwreck went on a business trip overnight and potentially into the next night too.
While on the phone on Tuesday night, she told me that YN would have to stay home from daycare all day the next day (Wed) due to pink eye. I knew Texas Seestor had at least one important meeting, but she had already started thinking about how she could call in from home. TX S’s meeting was in the afternoon, so I offered to just come early and take care of YN for the afternoon, and she decided to take me up on my offer!
Mind you, I had never, and I mean never, ever, taken care of kids for babysitting on my own. Even when I was a teen, I was absolutely not interested in babysitting. Consequently, I’d never changed a diaper. I had a cursory knowledge of how to tell the front from the back, and that wiping with baby wipes was involved, and that it is necessary to always keep one hand on their tummy and/or distract them, depending on their age.
I had fed a baby with a bottle (YN) for the first time ever the week before. Due to timing of visiting and the wealth of family around when M was a baby, I’d never fed her a bottle, oddly enough.
So, I arrived early to learn the tricks of the trade.
And just to be clear, I’d also never prepped the “solid” (i.e. mushy) food for a baby in a high chair, fed a baby in a high chair with a spoon, prepped a bottle with a bottle warmer, and what else….
… well, that seemed to be plenty of stuff that I had to learn in a short period of time.
The timing was right for Texas Seestor to show me how to prep YN’s mushy, rice/oatmeal baby food using breast milk. Then I learned how to feed her the food. YN is an exuberant eater – big surprise when you are talking about a female in our family, eh? 
She is still learning how to not spit out the food in her mouth by accident, but she is getting better.
The baby bird resemblance is really cute. You know what I mean right? I’m talking about the big open mouth when a baby is ready to have food put into her mouth.
And I learned how to use their bottle warmer.
And, once again, the timing was right, because YN ended up with a poopy diaper before Texas Seestor had to leave for work. So, I got to see how to deal with that too. Luckily, YN is so young, and she is pretty much only eating milk and this small amount of rice/oatmeal and small quantities of various pureed vegetables and fruits. Thus, her bacterial flora in her intestines hasn’t really kicked in yet to produce a lot of methane gas. Translation: it doesn’t smell much.
There was just enough time for me to eat lunch while Texas Seestor dealt with about 5 chat conversations at once on her computer. Then TX S. did one last run through of potential timing of eating/sleeping, I took notes, and off she went.
Thus, I was Home Alone with YN.
It was a really nice day, albeit tiring, due to my slight nervousness about doing stuff.
She napped for about 45 minutes at one point, drank a bottle, ate solids, played in her exer-saucer, played on her mat, and did her kneeling version of attempting to crawl. I was able to get a fair amount of video of her attempts to crawl, which was a fun way to pass the time.
I did have to change another poopy diaper and a couple of wet ones. But that was all easy-peasy.
One thing I already knew about her is that if she isn’t completely chipper and smiling, to check her diaper. She is such a happy baby, that it is relatively easy to guess that there is something wrong if she isn’t smiling. And it is either that she is hungry or that her diaper needs to be changed.
One challenge was that she was less than chipper at one point in the afternoon. I had just changed her diaper, and it was 0.5-1.5 hours until her afternoon bottle, so I was rocking her, b/c I thought YN was just tired. Luckily, Texas Seestor called around the same time and after we discussed amounts eaten earlier in the day, we started thinking YN might be hungry. Also, since I had YN in my arms, Texas Seestor heard YN’s vocalizations and recognized the sounds of hunger. Thus, even though it was early-ish, we decided that I ought to prep a bottle.
Now I’d already prepped a bottle earlier in the day with one hand while holding YN. But this time, I had to aliquot out a smaller portion of the breast milk in the fridge so as to not waste it; this was just in case YN only drank a small amount. And aliquotting bottles that are really sealed tightly shut is not something that I could do one-handed. I had to place YN on her mat, and she got a little fussy while I did that step. But she was aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall good once she got her bottle.
And of course, she ended up drinking everything – including the aliquots.
She slept for about 10 minutes after that, which was just enough time for me to get my hopes up and think I could take a 15 minute nap too. But that wasn’t the case.
Oh well. It was fine that I didn’t nap. I was just a little less energetic that evening.
And one other thing that is worth noting, because it was fun is that Texas Seestor and Trainwreck have a fantastic backyard with lots of windchimes and things that move in the breeze amongst their landscaping. At one point during the early afternoon, I took YN out there and we looooooooooked and looked at each thing for a while. She really loves being outside, and the areas I took her to were shaded. It was really nice – for me too.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos of those. Maybe later I can at least take a shot of the windchimes.
YN’s joy of the outdoors, even in the summer, is an indication to me that she is certainly a Texas girl at heart.
All in all, I’d do it again, easily. It was fun.
And that is really the end of the story.
Oh, one postscript: They had caught her pink eye early enough that when I arrived, I couldn’t even see any inflammation. Other than her altered eating schedule, it didn’t seem to be affect her at all. She went back to daycare the next day.
And now, that is really the end of the story. For real.