Last night Fistula and I went to see Traffic and left Littleput with a real babysitter. It was the first time she'd been looked after by someone whom we paid and who's not related to her. What's more is I'd never even met this girl before, I'd only had her recommended to me by Mrs. Neighbour. I called the babysitter, whose happyboxname is Puffy, on Wednesday and wrung my hands and worried all day Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I only relaxed when we were actually in the movie theatre. Then, so many terrible things were happening on the screen that I figured nothing that was going on at home could possibly be all that bad, so I relaxed.
From what I can tell, Littleput loved Puffy, though admittedly I can't tell much. All I know is that she didn't cry when we left and she was happy when we came home, though not, alas, asleep. Puffy said that she had tried to put her to bed but that every time she said "It's bedtime!" Littleput would start to cry. Well OF COURSE she started to cry, nitwit, you're not supposed to suggest it, you just do it. But Puffy's young, just 12 measly years old, so I can't expect her to be the hardass I was at the end of my babysitting career, at sixteen.
There was this one 2-year old I babysat a handful of times, during the final stretch of my babysitting days, who just wouldn't go to sleep. Her parents had had absolutely no luck and she ended up staying up as long as they did and falling asleep in front of the TV every night at around eleven. But I wasn't really all that interested in having her stay up half the night with me, when I wanted to watch a sex and violence-type movie on TV, so I decided I would force her to go to bed. The problem was that she had just moved into a regular bed from a crib. Whereas with a baby in a crib you can let them cry their fool heads off until they eventually fall asleep, with a big kid in a bed, they simply get out of bed and come into the living room if they don't feel like sleeping. If they're cunning, as this particular one was, they'll hide and watch TV for a while before you even notice they're in the room.
Do you want to know what the magic technique was that I used to force her to stay in bed? I sat on the floor next to the bed and didn't let her get out of bed. That was all it took and in a half hour she was asleep. I'm not saying she didn't scream and yell and cry, and I'm not saying I enjoyed that half hour, but I got her to sleep by nine o'clock, which was more than her parents could do. They made me tell them exactly what I did so they could try it themselves, the poor simple fools. I don't know if it worked for them, though, they were kind of softies.
Anyway, enough bragging. I'm quite excited about the new opportunity this babysitter thing affords us.We can go out together every weekend if we like! Oh, and also Fistula dropped out of grad school and got a full time job in an office so we're rich and we can afford to go out like normal people.
Tune in tomorrow when I'll talk about my holidays in Victoria and explain all the ins and outs of being the wife of a grad school dropout.
