pipistrellafelix | Aug. 14th, 2006

I babysat the kids today--Fiona & Erin--& man, was that tiring. They're not difficult--except for one episode today where Erin got whiny & upset, they mostly get along really well for siblings three years apart--but wow, they have a lot of energy. They ran about & yelled & started tickle fights (& I'm losing my anti-tickle spirit! I don't know where it's gone! I need to find it again to deal with these two.) We played Monopoly for a while, which was fairly quiet, but they got distracted by the beds they'd made up on the couches in the living room & decided they wanted to "play sick"--which meant, essentially, that I had to bring them lego-food from the playroom whenever Fiona banged on a tin pie pan to summon me. (Hello, my name is Kenna & I'll be your waitress today. Or possibly maid.) I managed to get them to eat lunch by letting them take it on trays to their "beds" & I managed to get them to eat protein by shoving ham onto their plates--otherwise lunch would have been nothing but jam & honey sandwiches. Then they decided that they wanted to do nothing but go play on my truck (that's what I get for driving there I guess). They grabbed their dolls & brought them out & buckled themselves in to the jumpseats in the back, & demanded that we pretend to drive to Magnuson. (I did discover that if you play with the wheel too much while the car's off, it locks on you. I did not know this.) Then they scrambled back out & into the bed of the truck & began a new game--truck hopping. Like train hopping, I gathered, but in a truck.
I admit I have forgotten a little about the games of pretend that kids play. Or not forgotten, exactly. They've transmogrified into something different--something subtler, I think, something more tied with writing things down than with playing them out (though those two are mostly inextricable for my brain nowadays), something with more rules to play with & more paramaters to bend. Is that what happens when you become an adult without growing up (or is that grow up without becoming an adult...)? I still have dreams & fantasies & games of pretend, but they're not really the same anymore.
Also I once again marvel at parents. Does motherhood come with a built in energy boost or something? 'Cause otherwise I'm not sure I could take it.