A somewhat easy babysitting job
Last Friday, Kelvin’s brother and family were staying at the Four Seasons in (East) Palo Alto for some sort of conference or corporate event (which is kinda silly, since they live a few exits down from that place). He asked us to watch Naomi for the 3 or 4 hours they’d be at dinner. Not a very long time, plus the parents were just downstairs in case of any emergencies, so totally easy babysitting job. In return, we got to chow on room service and spend quality time with our favorite niece.
And by quality time, I mean watch Dora the Explorer and Totoro videos with Naomi. Having experienced babysitting my cousin when she was two a long time ago and hearing stories of people babysitting Naomi, I was pretty sure she was going to freak out once she knew her parents weren’t around. So we let her zombify in front of the television as a distraction. And it worked pretty well, since she didn’t once get stressed out or start crying for her missing parents. With all her TV watching and brain rotting, she probably thought her folks just left the room (which was pretty true anyway).
The only task we had to do is order room service and feed her food. Our lone task was pretty difficult: if she watched TV, she wouldn’t eat, and if she didn’t watch TV, she was all over the place. Feeding her was quite a challenge. The room service food was okay, but overpriced of course. And instead of giving us apple pie a la mode, we somehow ended up with a banana split. But this turned out to be a good thing, since it means feeding Naomi more bananas and less sugary fatty desserts.
Halfway through our babysitting, we noticed Naomi was starting to smell not-so-fresh. Despite reassurances from her mother that she had gone twice already that day, she still managed a third one. Without checking her diaper, we text messaged Susie asking where the wipes were, and instead of answering the message she just came straight up. When she arrived, we asked Naomi if she pooped, but she kept saying no. Then she reached into her diaper (probably wondering what was so soggy), got her hand slimy, and slimed her mom with her… stuff. Her mother freaked out and ran to the bathroom to clean up, while I ran with in the corner to hide with Kelvin. After she freshened up, Susie went through the daunting task of changing her diaper, and boy was it a doozy. From the corner of my eye, I could see she had an explosion in her diaper. How could she not know she did that?? Susie cleaned her up real good, but she said that’s one of the worst she’s seen. And Naomi getting her mom with her poop was apparently a first, too. Yeah, I don’t think I’m ready for parenthood anytime soon.
New thing I learned today: Highway 101 is not the border between Palo Alto and East Palo Alto. The Four Seasons we went to was on the Stanford/west side of 101, yet it was still The Four Seasons of East Palo Alto.
