Weekend Plans Post: The Alternate Babysitter

One of my dear friends called me on Wednesday and opened the conversation with “Jaybird, can you spend the night at our house tonight?”

In the space of about 5 seconds, several propositions coalesced:
This is an extraordinary request.
This request would not have been made if there were not an extraordinary need.
Holy cow, his wife is pregnant.
Okay, there is something going on.
I do not have anything pressing, I don’t think… I’ll have to check with Maribou but no red klaxons are going off.
Wait, Maribou got her Covid Booster yesterday and she’s recovering… but she’s in the last half of recovery and I already talked to her and she didn’t need much of anything…

“Sure, I can stay at your house. What’s up?”

Okay. His wife, as mentioned, is with child. Like, *GREAT* with child. I figured that the baby was going to be born on Saturday or Sunday.
As it turns out, nope, the birth was scheduled for *THURSDAY*.

And their scheduled helper person fell through and everybody else that they could ask was already scheduled up to help and so they had everything they needed except for a very small window.

What they needed was simple. They had the evening covered. They had the night covered. But Momma had to be dropped off at the hospital at 5:30 in the morning to get stuff started. So they needed a babysitter between 4:30AM and when Papa got back from dropping Momma off. You know. In case the house caught fire or a war started or something.

So they needed a babysitter for about 90ish minutes but it was, like, at an awful time.

So I called Maribou and told her what was up and she said “absolutely, have fun, you know, I’d go too…”

I get over to my friend’s and he meets me in front of the house with the BinaxNOW Home Covid-19 Test. He opened the box, we read the instructions, and I put the swab up my nose and twirled it for 15 seconds while going around in a circle. Then I did it to the other nostril. HOLY COW THAT WAS LIKE PUTTING A SWAB UP YOUR NOSE THEN TWIRLING IT. Then we finished up the test and began to wait for 15 minutes. We discussed the events of the day, what happened with the babysitter who fell through, the usual… and, yes. There was no second line on the test after 15 minutes.

So we did some light prep, I said that I needed to go home and get my stuff, and I went home and got it and made sure that Maribou had dinner set up and was poised to be ready for tomorrow morning as well.

Then I went over and the little girls yelled “UNCLE JAYBIRD!” and it became my job to run interference on behalf of the adults by reading stories and discussing the nuances of becoming a big sister. “She won’t know animal noises yet”, I pointed out. “You guys will need to teach those to her.”

As these conversations were happening, my friend was frying up bacon and then panfrying halloumi cheese in the bacon grease. We also had chicken and tomatoes, but the halloumi was the star of the show.

I was then informed that everybody was going to bed at 8PM so it was time to start getting ready for bed soon and so we all adjourned upstairs and Momma gave the girls a melatonin chocolate drop. She offered me the bottle and said “take two”.

I read the first book to the girls. Beast Feast. I did voices and everything. Very good.
I read the second book to the girls. Another Book About Bears. I didn’t need to do quite as many voices, mostly the bear voice. Very good.
RIGHT AROUND HERE THE MELATONIN KICKED IN AND HOLY COW IT FELT LIKE IT WAS 11PM.
I read the third book to the girls. Lights Out, Leonard. Oh, I was dying. We got to the end and it was Lights Out, Jaybird in the guest bedroom that was soon to be The Baby’s.

I woke with a start around 3AM and had to pee. I got to the bathroom and almost lost it because the girls had this shower curtain:

SO THERE WAS A LIFESIZE ANNA AND ELSA STANDING UP AND STARING AT ME AT 3AM WHEN I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE UP.

Anyway, I didn’t need coffee after that. I used my phone until 4:30, made some hummus toast for Momma for the road, then settled in at the computer to putz around with Steam games that I didn’t have at my own house… but I ended up playing Lords of Waterdeep because, you know. I didn’t have a whole lotta brain. About 10 minutes before Papa came back, one of the girls came downstairs and turned the corner and told me that she wanted to watch her show.

So I queued it up just in time for Papa to come home and get the girls ready to go over to Gramma’s for a couple of days.

We dropped off the girls, got some breakfast and I went back to work to do stuff and become re-contaminated and thus require another Covid test if I wanted to see them again for the next few months and check my phone every five minutes to see if there were any updates.

And, until a little bit ago, there weren’t any updates of note. But then I got a text and THE BABY IS HERE.

Whew. I’m exhausted.

So, this weekend, I’m going to recover and act as UberEats for the happy couple. I won’t be able to interact, really. I mean, I’m going to go to stores and the gym and whatnot. But I can leave hot food on the porch and yell stuff from the driveway.

Golly, that was enough excitement for a whole summer.

So… what’s on your docket?

(Featured image is “Frozen Rain” by 1sock and is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)