Babysitting - December 21, 2021

 The Little Rotten Baby showed up at my house about 9:30 yesterday morning, wearing her Christmas finery.  She'll be a year old next month.

I managed to position my decrepit self down on the floor with her, and we rolled a ball back and forth while her parents slipped out the door.  It took only a few minutes before she looked around and realized that her parents were not in the room, but I distracted her with the ball, and the expected hissy fit did not happen.

During most of her previous visits, she's been confined to our living room and kitchen.  It was time for a tour of the entire house.  We went into all of the bedrooms and bathrooms, looked at ourselves in mirrors, flicked light switches off and on.  As we went into each room, she looked around with something akin to wonder, and pointed at various objects that caught her attention.  Before the day was over, she acted like she owned the place, wandering from room to room at will.

We read every baby book in the house.  She loved the farm animal pop-up book.  As I made the noises for each animal ("Cock-a-doodle-DOOOOOO!"), she'd whirl around and look at me like I'd lost my mind.  But we learned, "Where's his nose?" with little taps on the animals' nose and her nose and mine.  By the time she went home, she knew where everybody's nose was.

I was scheduled to pick up a grocery order at 1 p.m., but I do not have an LRB-sized car seat.  To solve the problem, Granddaughter #1 (who can drive) and her younger sisters came over to babysit while I went to get the groceries.  After that, we made Rice Krispy treats.  Don't tell her parents, but I fed the LRB tiny bites of the treats.  She seemed to approve of them.  ;)

Her daddy came to get her about 4 p.m.  Before they left, I pulled out the farm animal book and showed her the cover.  "Where's his nose?"  She tapped the noses of all three animals on the cover.

The LRB is a genius.  :)