The Babysitter

 It’s been 2 weeks now since my charge left me for a three-week vacation to the land of her birth. I’ll admit being most hard-hit by her leaving coupled by the fact that the other two most-loved ladies of my life also left with her.

What could a babysitter do if the baby’s gone? Well the first thing that had some bit of urgency was to clean up the house, which usually is cluttered with her toys. There were also a lot of soiled clothes upstairs which needed the services of the washing machine, and these I dumped in for the cleaning spin.

When the time came to bring in the laundry, folding them became a bit complicated. Complicated in the sense that I’m not used to folding tiny clothes, and also because I started to miss her the more with only her clothes to touch and… smell. I managed to salvage a lot of emotion through the process by reminding myself that only babies cry and that I’m a full over grown macho man now.

Bedtime has been the hardest of times these days… I mean nights. My usual bedtime activity is letting this baby transform me into a horsey while she rides on my back and we gallop on the bed until I’m exhausted. After that she has her final bottle of milk while one leg is propped up on my neck. With her “patchy” – stuffed toy puppy, covering her eyes she would slide into a deep sleep while I contemplate on my luck to see her off to dreamland every night.

What does a babysitter do without the baby? Yeah right! Make a blog entry describing the loneliness while punctuating it with photos of the two of them from albums of the past and start the countdown to her arrival. 

10 . . .  9 . . .