Two kids are tougher than one

BY KERRY WILLIAMSON

I knew I was in trouble when the girl burst into tears every time I caught her eye.

Here I was, sitting in a strange house with two babies who weren't about to make it easy on me.

And every time I looked at the girl, tears would spring from her eyes, and an absurdly piercing scream would burst from her lips.

I knew I had been thrown in the deep end. And here I was, going under.

Looking back, I'm sure it was a set up. The first I found out about my babysitting duties came last week, when the wife meekly announced that she'd signed me up to look after the neighbour's kid.

I'm still not sure how it happened. The wife gave some excuse, said she was sorry, said all the right things. But in the end, all I could think about was that I was about to look after two babies ... for several hours ... without any help.

Now, I struggle to look after one kid at the best of times. But two? Give me a break. I'm not Super Dad. Not even close.

And anyway, why is it that when you have a kid, people suddenly think you could run an orphanage?

But there was no way out. The neighbour needed to get a wisdom tooth pulled and the wife agreed to help out. Then she realised she had to work, and kindly offered up my services without a single word of consultation.

That's how it works in wedded bliss sometimes.

The upshot of it all was that I ended up popping over the fence to the neighbours' and immediately doubled my level of parenting responsibility.

The girl was fine when I walked in. She's the same age as the boy, born just a couple of days after he arrived. She's a cute kid, but a little on the princess side.

She struggles when she's not around her mum, and isn't a baby-of-the-world like our boy.  So as soon as her mum left, she burst into tears.

And that was that, for close to three hours.

The boy was fine. He crawled around the house, exploring new territory.

He tipped over the girl's toy-box and proceeded to try and eat all of her toys. He found a new dog to terrorise, a new mat to throw up on and some new couches to climb.

I left him to his own devices and concentrated on the girl.

Tears were actually squirting from her eyes as she sobbed uncontrollably. Her cries began deep in her stomach.

And when her wails hit their crescendo, I'm surprised they didn't shatter glass.

I tried giving her toys. I read her a book.

I held her in my arms and sung to her. I bounced her on my knee. I pulled funny faces and did all I could to make her smile.

But I wasn't her mum, and therefore she wasn't about to stop crying. She looked at me as though I was a monster, and sobbed some more.

I realised there was little I could do. So I called the wife and put the kids on speakerphone. If I had to feel bad, then she did too. After all, it was her idea.

Sometime during my longest morning, the girl stopped. I'm not sure what I did, but for a few minutes the house was in silence. Then just as I breathed a sigh of relief, the boy started up.

It was time for his nap but he was a long way from his cot, and there was no way he was sleeping anywhere else. So he cried. And because he cried, the girl cried. And because they both cried, well, I felt like crying.

It was quite the scene - two screaming babies and a frustrated mess of a dad. But I sucked it up, because that's what dads do.

I picked up the girl and ever so gently bounced her on my knee.

She looked up at me, and for the first time she didn't cry. So I kept bouncing, and soon her eyes were closed.

The boy was crying at my feet, so I picked him up while trying not to rouse the girl, and sat him on my other knee.

I bounced, and he closed his eyes as well.

It was a miracle, but it presented a new problem.

Now I had two babies, both asleep, in my arms. And I still had 45 minutes to go until the neighbour arrived home. My back began to cramp, my arms began to ache and I knew I had to do something.

So I ever-so-gently placed the girl on the couch, and then I ever-so-gently placed the boy beside her.

Incredibly, neither of them woke, their eyelids didn't even flutter.

I stood up and I admit, I gave an almighty fist pump. I was the baby whisperer!

The neighbour got home shortly after, mouth swollen from her trip to the murder house.

She looked at the two sleeping babies, and looked at me in amazement.

"How were they?" she asked, incredulously.

"No problems," I replied.

"Barely heard a peep out of them the whole time."

Yeah, I'm awesome.

 

- © Fairfax NZ News