Children

Life is just so interesting at times. This week I've managed to land myself two substantial babysitting jobs and I paid a visit last night to a friend who had a baby on last Saturday (9/10), so my life is rather full of young children at the moment. And that means that I get to enjoy the viewpoint of the very young on a frequent basis for awhile, which is a great blessing.
Last night's 4-day-old... how do I describe the experience of holding and being with a baby that young, especially after not seeing a tiny baby like that for a long time? I could have watched his newborn grimaces and smiles all night long, as I did with my own babies. All the craziness of the world comes to a screeching halt; all those tasks that seemed of the utmost importance before I walked into the door of that house fade into a whirr of unimportant background noise off in the distance, in the presence of this exquisitely lovely new soul.
Tonight's babysitting stint (one could hardly call it work) was another opportunity to enter the slow and relatively unspoiled realm of child-life. A 4-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl were my charges for the evening, and they were a joy, though in a whole different way from last night's infant. They were so full of energy, and they wanted me to participate in their play. They danced a lot, and it reminded me of my kids and how they liked to dance. They were very physical. At one point they decided that jumping onto my lap from the pillows next to me on the sofa would be a good idea. Another time the little girl asked me to do a handstand, and I found that I really can't do that anymore, or maybe I just have lost my nerve. Their curiosity was fun, too -- they wanted to know if I had children, and even though I explained as best I could about my grown kids, they just couldn't get their minds around it: I have children that don't live with me, how weird! They came back to this topic a couple of times during the evening. When I tried to explain that all of my children live a long distance away from me, that didn't make sense to them either, so I didn't even go into the fact that I have a married child!
There was more, but I am too tired to re-type it now: I had lots more in here, but somehow it got lost when I previewed the post... the learning curve on this is a little steep, sometimes. Maybe later.
All blessings!