the sandwich dream and other people's milestones

I went in to E's room early this morning and woke her up by mistake. She sat up in bed and started searching for something in the covers. "Sandwich?" she said, "Sandwich??" I laughed and said, "No, there's no sandwich. Go back to sleep." And she did!

She went to bed late last night, for a good reason. We babysat a 20 month old who had never had a sitter before other than his grandmother. I felt so honored and grown-up and wise as I reassured the mom before she left and congratulated her after she came home. The little boy did just fine, never cried for her. All he cried about was me trying to change his diaper. That's a really strong little boy. We ended up saving that smell for mommy as a coming home present.

I couldn't make it a perfect experience, but I felt like I helped them both have a relatively good first-babysitter experience. E was surprisingly tolerant of the "baby". Once I asked her to go see what he was doing and report back to me. She went off on her mission to the next room and said something like, "Baby, what you doing?" Then she got distracted and I never got my report. Later, several times, she would come up to me and whisper, "Checking baby..." and she'd go look at him and get distracted again. We were at his house, which has an excellent toddler set-up.

It was also an excellent distraction for me! If you ever need to take your mind off your problems, borrow two toddlers for a couple of hours.