Mommy Blogging

When my friend Alia asked me to babysit her three year old son Sam I thought, “sweet I can finally cash in on the Mommy blogging.” I think everyone on the internet knows that the easiest job in town is writing about children for the owners and operators of other children. This parent blogging niche is the fastest path to blog stardom mostly because a lot of stay at home parents are so starved for adult interaction that they’ll willingly listen to other parents blather on endlessly about the size of little Timmy’s morning doodie. I have a job where I talk to other adults for hours everyday but I read mommy blogs anyway – sometimes you just can’t beat a good doodie story.

ANYWAY -- babysitting. As we all know children can teach us revealing life lessons so I came ready to learn. More importantly I came ready to blog. I figure I hang out for a few hours waiting for Sam to say something profound/hilarious so I can write it down verbatim and be done with the day’s blog post. Wham Bam Thank You Sam (wow, that last sentence might be wildly inappropriate).

The evening started with a debate over which activity would be more fun: dinner or watching some cartoons. I was a staunch advocate of the dinner route and since I was the only person in the house tall enough to reach the portable DVD player I won. So “we” cooked dinner. To be honest I did all of the work while Sam provided dinner entertainment in the form of 5-8000 renditions of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” despite not hearing this song in at least 15 years I remembered all of the words – clearly my brain has made some interesting prioritization choices when it comes to memory usage.

While eating our macaroni and cheese Sam spontaneously asked me if he could “smell the sugar,” turns out even toddlers are partying harder than me. Ever the enabler I handed over the sugar bowl and he took a big whiff and then announced “it smells like sugar!” I think he was high. He returned to eating dinner without further comment until mid macing on a dish known as “the cheesiest” Sam requested a piece of cheese proving that he is a toddler of discerning culinary taste since everyone knows that dairy is the most delicious of the food groups. Either that or he had a bad case of the munchies. I followed his lead and punctuated my mouthfuls of cheese coated pasta with bites of Munster. I felt satisfied if a little phlegmy.

The rest of the evening was devoted to worshipping The Bear in The Big Blue House. The ritual bouncing on the couch and singing along with the theme song was punctuated only by the call of nature (the answering of which required the removal of ALL clothing) and one request that I literally KISS HIS FEET. Sam caged this request under the auspices of injury but I don’t think the symbolism was unintentional. As he toddled back to his cartoon evangelism there was the jaunt in his step usually only seen in the walks of cult leaders and dictators (Baby Doc?).

As expected this was the simplest blog post I’ve ever written. Children: The Easy Mac of the blogging world. Heat and serve baby.