Category Archives: Family

About half-way through my last babysitting excursion with my niece and nephew, I looked down at Noah and recognized a glint of mischief in his eyes. For a quick moment I thought of my Uncle Roberto looking back at me. Noah looked up, gave a slight smile, and I saw the end of a stone he had put into his mouth. After wrestling that away from him (and recovering from a mini-heart-attack), I thought back to my Uncle, and whether this was karmic retribution. I always assumed it was my brother who would now be paying for a wild childhood of incessantly-active and occasionally-crazy behavior – it never dawned on me that I had my own karma to overcome. And as an Uncle – with the same sometimes-ornery disposition as my own Uncle Roberto – I have a niece and nephew who may prove to be his last act of vengeance upon me.

I was a hellacious nephew. At times I was awful. My brother and I wreaked so much havoc with our Uncle that it’s amazing he even spoke to us. We couldn’t help it. We were kids, and all we wanted was his undivided attention. Sometimes you have to resort to bad behavior to get it. Above all of that though, we loved him – dearly and obsessively, perhaps because he was always so elusive, and lived so far away. For the first ten years of my life, my Uncle was separated from us by oceans – first the Pacific, then the Atlantic – as he moved from the Philippines to Israel before coming to the United States.

The twins have known me from birth. There will be no mystery, no distance of years or many miles, and for that it will prove different in ways both good and bad. Meeting my Uncle for the first time, on that snowy day at the Albany Airport – the first time he had ever seen snow in his life – was an event. It was magical for all those reasons, but now that he is gone, I wish we’d had more time together. I wish he had lived closer, that we could have visited him on our own, that he was there for the simple uneventful days instead of just holidays or weddings.

That’s what I have with Emi and Noah. Yes, I’ve been there for the big events – birthdays and holidays – but it’s the in-between moments that matter more and make up a childhood. Like a mid-morning summer stroll or a ride in their Radio Flyer. There will be time for magic too, and I’m pretty good at creating an event out of nothing, so these twins will have their own special moments with their Uncle Al. I’ve already had a few with them – it’s not every day I meet a little man with a stone in his mouth and a twinkle in his eye, or a little lady with as much interest in shoes and jewelry as me.

Somewhere my Uncle is smiling, I’m sure of it. Maybe he knows what’s in store for me, maybe he doesn’t – but he’s definitely getting as much of a kick out of his great niece and nephew as I am.

God, you don’t know how long I’ve been wanting to use that post title and mean it… Yes, I officially babysat my niece and nephew on Friday. (Full disclosure before anyone calls the child abuse hotline: my parents were in and out of the house, so there was back-up in the event of a diaper disaster, but more on that later.)

I’ve been left alone with them before, while my brother ran a few errands, but they mostly slept through it, so I really thought it was going to be a cakewalk. I had babysitting visions of sitting idly on the couch finishing a book, writing a few letters, lazily changing the TV channel, throwing a few Cheerios their way and calling it a day. That’s not the way it works.

At fifteen months they can walk. And they do. Especially where they’re not supposed to walk. They can also see. Everything – especially what you’re trying to hide from drool-spewed hands, i.e. a camera. Whatever happened to the rumor that babies couldn’t see beyond ten feet or something? Didn’t I read that somewhere? Anyway, total bullshit.

And speaking of shit, let’s just get the diaper issue out of the way. I thought I might be able to get out of it. 9 AM to 2 PM is, granted, a decent amount of time, but I figured if they were changed right before I got there, and if we could limit the intake of food and drink, then maybe I could get away without one. Go ahead and laugh.

I’d seen my brother change Noah before – but he was only wet. At first I honestly thought it would be all right, but then everyone started to warn me about ‘surprises’, and God knows I don’t like being surprised, so I started to worry. I had a genius idea of partaking in some outside summer fun when and if the diaper-change moment came up – simply hosing them down and not getting near the disaster area – but other parents I spoke to poo-pooed that idea (thank you Sherri and Skip). Apparently babies don’t like icy water shot at them with a garden hose. I thought it could be a fun summer-splash kind of moment, but no one agreed. Fine.

My Mom helped out with the first one. (Yes, by ‘first’ I mean to imply that there would be a second…) She showed me how to lay the new diaper out under the old one, then quickly take the old one off, wipe everything down and fasten the new one. It all went so fast I was mildly disoriented. The fact that babies don’t sit still didn’t help. So, the clock is ticking, the baby is squirming, and my Mom is mentioning something about a ‘surprise’ again. She finishes with Emi before I can even undo Noah’s belt buckle.

Now, I love my nephew, but at this point I am just praying that he knows how much I don’t like surprises. He must have, because I swear at that moment he gave me a mischievous little smile, and when I unfastened his diaper ‘Surprise!!’

I’m not going to lie. I’m not going to paint myself as the diaper-changing champ some people thought I would be. And it pains me to say it because I can do just about anything I set my mind on doing. This just wasn’t it. Not yet. I reared my head back and told Mom there was a surprise. She quickly started wiping and just had me hold his legs up. And I have to say, it wasn’t that bad. But again, no cakewalk.

I thought for sure that was it. We were halfway through the day, I got through a diaper change, I took the twins out for a ride in their Radio Flyer, and they finally settled in for a long nap.

I don’t know about you, but when I wake up the first thing I do is hit the snooze button. About ten times. Then I slowly begin to adjust my eyes to the world around me, taking the time to reacclimate myself to what is going on, letting things register bit by bit. I might even go back to sleep if the day allows. These babies weren’t like that. As soon as Noah opened his eyes he was back to climbing up on the couch to find the remote control I didn’t even realize was there. As soon as Emi opened her eyes she started crying. It was like there was a switch that went on – at the same time – and there was no need for a gradual adjustment. It was as if there wasn’t a nap at all, and we jumped right back into the races without a skipped beat. Which meant another diaper change.

It came out of the blue, and my Mom was so nonchalant about it she just started changing Emi and said I could change Noah. At first I was confused – we just did this, didn’t we? But then I thought it should be easy – at the worst there might be a little wetness. All they were doing was napping. The pants came down a little easier this time, the diaper unfastened without a hitch, and – as is karmic retribution for things I didn’t even knew I did – there it was – SURPRISE!

Who takes a shit in their sleep? I mean, who does that? This is the stuff of out-of-control drug-and-alcohol-ravaged rock stars. This is the stuff of Charlie Sheen. And apparently it’s the stuff of my nephew. But this time I didn’t have help. Someone threw a wipe in my direction and that was it. I went to work. Again, it went so fast that it was all kind of a blur – but it really wasn’t that bad. (And Paul and Erin, I apologize if at the next diaper change you wonder what kind of animal put that one on  – it was me.) But I did it, and as soon as his pants were back on he was off and running, so at least it didn’t fall off.

That was it – my first attempt at babysitting. We all survived. I’m a little bit wiser now, and they got to know their Uncle a little better. I learned that babysitting wasn’t a cakewalk. I learned that twins are relentless. I learned that you have to watch them ALL THE TIME. I learned you have to be quick. Above all else, I learned that I loved it and can’t wait to do it again.

Watching my niece and nephew I am struck with the question of how much of this time they will remember – if any of it. I honestly can’t remember anything before the age of four or five – these children are a little over one year old. The things I do remember are vague and random images – the wooden paneling of the family room, the old furniture of my bedroom, the dog’s seizure in the middle of the night. I remember feelings and emotions – the fear at the sight of my brother’s blood as they wheeled him into the emergency room, the sadness at leaving my Mom during the first week of nursery school, the excitement at having my Dad swim in the pool with us. But again, these were all a few years later than the age the twins are now.

Even though they may not remember these days, surely they have an impact on the people these two will become. To that end, the best I can do is surround them with love, protect them from danger and sadness, and make them smile and laugh.