Babies, babies everywhere

I did my first long (24+ hours) babysitting stint in a long (15+ years) this weekend. In my heyday, I watched up to 10 kids at once, all by my lonesome, though the usual number was more like two or three.

I've lost my touch.

It wasn't that the two girlies, who are seven years and 13 months, were naughty, or needy, or even stinky. I think it's that I'm old. As in, set in my ways, tire easier, farther away from being a kid myself. I do not know how people do it. You have to keep them alive, and clean(ish) and fed and clothed. And then you are also supposed to educate them about the ways of the world, and how to add and subtract, etc. Plus keep yourself alive. And your house clean. And be patient, because it's not kids' faults that they can be self-centered and annoying, and babies know zero about the world, but you know plenty.

I do not get to be much of an auntie to the babies to whom I am genetically related. The last time I saw them my nephew turned from looking out the window and pressed his forehead to mine and gazed into my eyes and smiled, like the Babcia used to do. That and the way his deliciously chubby sister kicks her legs out and grins when you hold her over your head made me want to run out to the sperm bank immediately.

But I bet if I spent 24 hours alone with them I'd feel the same way I did at the end of this weekend's babysitting stint: like my biological clock had gotten a cold dose of reality.

Of course even though I was exhausted and a bit stinky and I had to sleep and sleep and sleep when I got home, I would do it all again, because that my friends is what love is.