Babysitting

Until this past year, I hadn’t had much time to get to know my nephew because he lives a 6-hour plane ride away. And let’s face it, very young babies aren’t usually too interesting — by the time one of them gets used to you, your visit’s just about over.

But now that P.T.’s almost 3 and has firmly developed a personality, I’ve begun discovering the joys of being “Auntie Jane.” So when my sister said she and her husband had a business trip in New York, and would I be able to come down and babysit him for a day, I agreed.

I was nervous, of course. I’d never even changed a diaper, and though P.T. was theoretically toilet-trained, I knew that, like most children his age, he wasn’t able to give too much notice about any impending bodily functions. As my sister had darkly warned, “If he says he needs to poo, that means he needs to poo NOW and you have to get him to a bathroom immediately. You won’t have much time, so you better make sure you know where the closest bathroom is.”

Armed with that advice and an overly-ambitious itinerary, I arrived in New York and met my sister early in the morning at her hotel room. She had a sleepy, jet-lagged, grumpy child clutching her legs as she hobbled toward the bed.

“He just woke up,” she said.

P.T. took one look at me and started crying. “Mommy, you stay,” he said in Chinese. “Don’t go to work.”

Mommy had to go to work, however, so after about 15 minutes of eating breakfast, getting P.T. changed into outdoor clothes (“Not that shirt,” he dictated. “No, not that one, either. OK, that one’s fine.”), and brushing his teeth, she managed to convince him to at least walk with us to her office.

Once we got to her office, she waved goodbye to us and bravely marched off, leaving behind a wailing child and a very nervous aunt in the office vestibule.

“P.T., do you want to go to the toy store?” I suggested. “I’ll buy you a toy you can bring home!”

“WAH WAHHHH,” was P.T.’s response.

“You can choose your own toy!”

“WAH WAHHHH,” he said (or perhaps it was “You can take your toy and stick it up your junk!”).

At that moment, a female security guard came over to us. “What’s wrong?” she asked P.T., in the kind of voice that made it clear I was supposed to answer, and my answer better not involve an attempted kidnapping.

“He’s upset because his mom had to go to work,” I explained, trying to convey a reassuring, “Yes, I know him, and I am not kidnapping him, although he certainly does look like he hates me.”

“Aw, it’ll be OK,” she told P.T., who was unmoved by this argument and continued crying.

“Do you want a lollipop?” she asked, and held one out to him.

P.T. kept crying, but some instinct in him made him reach out and grab the lollipop.

“Thanks,” I said casually, unaware that this was the moment during which our luck had changed.

Having been unsuccessful in persuading P.T. to willingly accompany me, I resorted to picking him up and walking out of the building, all the while keeping up a soothing (I hoped) patter of nonsense. “So we’re going to the toy store now and we’ll just look, and you can pick out a toy and then you can bring it back to Mommy to show her, ok?”

Response: “WAHH WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHWAHHHH!” (“Didn’t you hear what I said before about where you can stick your toy?”)

I carried P.T. and he carried his lollipop for two long New York City blocks, during which he cried and wailed for his mommy and I realized that I needed to step up my weight lifting at the gym, because I was exhausted and I’d been babysitting for approximately five minutes.

Suddenly the crying stopped.

“Look, there’s a subway station,” he said conversationally, in Chinese.

I was startled, but did my best to act as though nothing unusual had happened. “Yes, and there’s one there too, see?”

I seized my chance and put him on the ground. My arms were aching. “Let’s just walk for a little bit, OK?”

I half-pulled, half-led, P.T. down the street. Remembering that my sister had said to try to distract him, I pointed at various store windows decorated for Christmas. “Look, see the dog in that window?”

P.T. nodded slowly, beginning to unwrap his lollipop. He studied the window carefully.

“And there’s a mommy and a daddy, and their baby, see?”

He licked his lollipop.

“And look over there! See, there’s a big lollipop in the window, just like yours!”

P.T. gazed at the window, looked at his lollipop, and then looked at me as though I were stupid. “I don’t see it,” he announced.

Admittedly, the lollipop in the window was quite large, and therefore appeared quite distorted, but I was just happy that P.T. had finally stopped shedding new tears. If it took appearing stupid to a 3-year-old, so be it.

In this manner, we made our way to FAO Schwarz; me pointing out sights on the street, P.T. sucking on his lollipop.

We arrived a few minutes before the store opened, which gave us just enough time to look at the Apple store across the way (“IPod,” P.T. announced, staring at the building) and for one of us to finish his lollipop.

As the store opened and we filed in, P.T. was overcome with the sight of all the toys, particularly the Jack-in-the-Boxes. He wound up about 10 of them, one after another, and never failed to be surprised when the toy inside popped out.

Eventually P.T. selected a toy, with very little prompting from me, though I did try to steer him away from the 6 feet long stuffed snakes because, as I told the uncomprehending P.T., it was unlikely Samuel L. Jackson would be on his plane ride home to California.

P.T.’s toy of choice was a little model of a NYC taxicab.

“But he already has something like that,” his mother said, when I called her from the store in one of the many, many calls I placed to her that day (“Is it normal he keeps saying he wants to see you?” “Should I just ignore him when he starts whining?” “Shouldn’t he need to pee by now?” etc.).

“Oh no,” I said, disappointed. I scanned the back of the toy package. “But does his old car have a trunk that can be popped open so passengers can place their luggage inside?”

“No,” she admitted.

“I THOUGHT NOT,” I said triumphantly.

P.T. and I then made our way to a restaurant, where Cousin Terry was waiting to have lunch with us. P.T. was hungry, and once his noodles arrived, was in a good mood.

And then he became quiet. He stared down at his noodles, which he’d nearly finished.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him.

He mumbled quietly, “Tong-tong.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I said to Cousin Terry.

“Did you say ‘tong-tong’?” Cousin Terry asked P.T.

He nodded, still focused on his noodles, though he had stopped eating.

“Oh, his stomach hurts!” Terry told me. “P.T., your tummy hurts?”

He nodded again.

“Do you need to poop?” she asked him, in Chinese.

He hesitated. He considered the question. Then he nodded his head.

OH MY GOD, IT WAS GO TIME! THE MOMENT I’D BEEN TRAINING FOR!

I snatched up P.T. I hurtled past the faces of startled diners. OUT OF MY WAY PEOPLE, I HAD A TODDLER READY TO EXPLODE!

Once in the tiny restaurant bathroom, as per instructions from my sister, I immediately took off P.T.’s sneakers, unbuttoned his pants, and removed them. In doing so, I dislodged his socks slightly.

I was pulling down his underpants when P.T. pointed at his socks. “These need to be fixed,” he said.

This was no time for sock-fixing! But P.T. refused to get on the toilet.

“Fix,” he said, pointing again.

I straightened his socks. P.T. inspected my work, and deemed it acceptable. And then…finally…I plunked him onto the toilet.

“Turn around,” he ordered me. “Don’t look.”

I turned around and faced the bathroom door. But P.T. was sprawled so precariously on the toilet that I was afraid he was going to fall in, so I quietly turned my head, hoping to peek at him and make sure he hadn’t fallen. But he was on to me.

“No looking,” he said severely to me.

And then he began talking to me in Chinese, something about police cars. He looked expectantly at me when he finished, waiting for some kind of response.

I had no idea what he wanted, and realized that I had also forgotten to bring the wipes with me.

“P.T., will you be okay if I run and get Terry? I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

He looked surprised, and nodded matter-of-factly.

I ran out of the bathroom and to our table, where Terry was texting someone, probably her boyfriend, and probably about how her crazy cousin Jane was freaking out over baby poop.

“Terry!” I exclaimed. “I need Chinese translation! Also, I don’t know how to wipe him when he’s done!”

Terry, thank goodness, immediately jumped up without stopping to question me.

We ran back to the bathroom, with me stopping briefly to explain to the confused waitress, “We’re not leaving, we’re just having a bathroom emergency!” (In retrospect, this may have confused her further.)

P.T. was sitting calmly on the toilet when we burst through the door.

“Smelly!” he said immediately, in Chinese. “It’s smelly in here! And turn around!”

Terry and I turned around obediently. Terry began questioning P.T. about what he’d been saying to me earlier, but I was getting nervous. It was nearly the dreaded wiping time and I still wasn’t sure I totally understood the procedure.

“Terry,” I interrupted her, “will you be OK if I go pay our bill? And call P.T.’s mom?”

“Sure,” she said, and then, I am ashamed to say, I abandoned her.

The only explanation I have for my behavior is that the pressure must have been too much for me. I went back to our table, paid the bill, called my sister and checked about how to wipe (answer: look at his butt), and generally panicked.

By the time I made it back to the bathroom, Terry was just putting P.T.’s pants back on.

“I wiped him three times,” she said. “But I have no idea if he’s clean.”

“Did you look at his butt?” I asked knowledgeably.

“I tried to, but I couldn’t see anything!”

Terry and I surveyed P.T.

“Maybe we should…”

“Yeah, let’s just check one more…”

Terry unbuttoned P.T.’s pants.

We bent him over.

We examined his butt crack.

We tried to locate his butt.

“I don’t know where his butthole is,” I whispered.

“I don’t see it either,” Terry whispered back.

“His butt’s too tiny,” I muttered.

P.T. did not appear to mind our close inspection, which was good because frankly, Terry and I were beginning to feel like perverts.

“Well,” said Terry finally, “the toilet paper came out clean so…”

“Yeah, he’s probably fine,” I said.

“Anyway, his mom can take care of it later,” decided Terry.

“Exactly,” I nodded.

Hey, babysitting was easy. As long as you had a Cousin Terry to do the actual wiping, and a mom you could turn the kid over to at the end of the day.

Posted by: Supersonic Jane | February 3, 2010 | 1:32 am
Posted in: This Life