Monday, September 8

If it weren't for the bitter...

It is seriously hard for us to get a babysitter. The biggest obstacle is ourselves. First we have to convince ourselves that asking someone to do what we do for a few hours isn't taking advantage of some poor unsuspecting, unqualified greenie. Next obstacle: the wallet. How much is our childrens' care worth? Yikes, maybe we'll just bring them along. But how much is some time alone worth on our anniversary? Hmm. Maybe just this once. Obstacle 3: Finding someone who can a. keep all the kids safe, clean, fed, and happy; b. keep quiet when they are sleeping; c. love us in spite of our overabundance of carpet-covering toys and weird ghost-smells of diapers and dinners past.

We finally found a sitter for our anniversary. Our lovely new friends have offered to do sitting trades despite the fact that there is a hugely unfair kid ratio of three to one. I had no idea what Zach was planning, but I knew it was non-refundable, and I knew it cost too much in the first place by the way he freaked out when our new babysitting friends got sick. Insert horrified scream here. When I finally exhausted all my bright ideas of people I hadn't tried calling in the first place, Zach pulled out the bug guns and moved to PLAN B. Mass e-mail everyone in his med school class.

During his first year, every student and teacher who saw the girls' picture told him they seriously wanted to babysit. So we thought there might be some takers. There was one. A girl named Amy. Poor, poor Amy.

She came fifteen minutes before we had to leave, and we let the girls see her before we put them down for their nap so they wouldn't be scared when they woke up. The twins went down fine as usual. Mia decided there was no way she was sleeping now that her new friend had come to play. It was a little soon for her to be going down, so we told her she could try again in a half hour or so. When we got home Amy was kneeling in front of the twins, who were covered in sweet potatoes. Mia had refused to nap.

Off we went. Ten minutes later I saw the marquee and my eyes popped open, "Are you serious?!" We found our seats and quickly found my legs were too long to fit straight behind the seats in front of us. The theater was built in the twenties, back when "tall" people were 5'5". So I sat at an angle dreading the arrival of the occupant of the seat my knees were jutting into. A family arrived with two little boys and I almost jumped for joy. I asked the mom if she would mind putting someone small by me, since I was obviously having trouble fitting into the square foot of space our X amount of dollars had rented for the next few hours. She laughed and said that would be fine, and motioned to one of her boys to come to the other side of her.

Then we met the man with the smallest mind in the universe. The lady's husband. He said, "No, why don't you sit there," to his wife. And then he thought again. "No- you sit here, I'll sit there," he said, motioning to the empty seat behind the space-theiving knees trying unsuccessfully to hook over the ears of their owner. I was trapped in a position closely resembling an emergency toilet situation, and Zach and I looked at each other dumbfounded. Then he got a bright idea, and we asked the dad if we could sit on the other end of his family. Extremely reluctantly, he agreed to let his family act like normal people and a couple minutes later my knees were halfway into the aisle instead. Get this. After intermission, he came up and said the kids were having a hard time seeing, so they wanted their seats back. They weren't letting kids sit in the aisle, and we all knew trading seats would be absoultely no benefit to them. But his tone of voice wasn't asking, it was saying "I paid #$%^&*! bucks for these @&#*$*@! seats, so move it." I tried to feel sympathetic as I headed toward our original seats, but his surprised wife shushed him, and told us that they were fine. Yikes! Fun to be her...

It was actually kind of a nice reminder of what a truly, uniquely awesome husband I ended up with.

And not only awesome, but on the same brainwave.
The cards we surprised each other with:

PS. Zach wants me to say "The Lion King was incredibly awesome." It was incredible! Zach cried. Hee hee. Okay- so I did, too. Brainwaves...

10 comments:

Blog Stalker said...

The cards at the end were the best. Nice to know you really were meant for each other. Glad you had a 'good' night. And as far as the whole babysitting thing goes, we would never get a babysitter. At least we rarely did. Until we came home with the babysitter locked in my kids room on the phone with boyfriend and the place trashed with kids all hopped up on sugar!

Insert really mad face here. looking back, I can't believe we actually paid her!

Breezi@ Not Your Average Fairytale said...

Zach officially wins the gold star award for his awesome anniversary surprise!
Sorry you had to sit next to a poo-poo head. It's a good thing you didn't marry THAT guy. :o)

Marsie Pants said...

Ha! I love the cards. Awesome.

The Waits Gate said...

I'm sooo glad you were able to find someone to sit for you! I'm glad you were able to see the Lion King and come home in one piece.

Melissa said...

Just one more reason for me to be a little jealous. Three cute kids, attentive hubby, and The Lion King. I'm glad you got to celebrate!

Ally said...

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, the fiasco of getting a babysitter to watch twin babies and a rabble-rouser.

Not that your child is a rabble-rouser... I'm just saying!

Glad that you had a good night out (except for that psycho at the play! - how goofy is that?!).

I feel bad when I have people over to babysit for us. I know how hard it is to take care of twin babies/toddlers, and sometimes, I wouldn't wish it on a snake! (know what I mean???) ;-S

Kudos to Zach for planning the night. I really hope it was fun. And how interesting that you would get the same card for each other.

Almost like an episode of the Twilight Zone..... (tee hee)

(Love the new blog design, BTW!)

NatRat said...

Ohhh man...fun times. I feel bad for you. Finding a sitter is hard enough when you have family near by, but being in a state with no family, it makes it really hard. I am glad you got to go out and celebrate, sorry about the whole seat thing.

Tulsi said...

I had a bad experience with a babysitter when Brie was a baby. After we moved and Mikele was little, I would hire two sitters. One usually played with the older two while one had Mikele. We didn't go out much at all until Brie was old enough to tend. I'm not to trusting. But it's nice to get away.

The Garber Family said...

I wondered how babysitting ended up. Were you able to enjoy the show enough not to worry what was going on at home? From the sound of it, the show was incredible enough to take your mind elsewhere.... Awesome cards. Matt and I once got each other the same painting for Valentine's Day. Says you're doing something right that you still know each other so well in between diaper changes, classes, callings, etc....

Anonymous said...

What a great date!!! I have always wanted to see Lion King. I *love* the cards. That cracks me up. I still remember two years ago when I was in YW so we had one of them come and watch the boys for Valentine's Day. We were having her make hot dogs in the microwave for dinner. When we got home the entire house smelled of smoke so we asked what happened. She said she had a little trouble with the microwave. While Nick took her home I investigated and found the remnants of a hot dog in the garbage. I have no idea how long it was on fire in the microwave, but it was completely black and the insides were hollow!!! The microwave stunk for about 6 months every time we used it after that. Ever since then we are really hesitant to leave the kids with a sitter.