Babysitter

I have been working on letting Karianna babysit more frequently in the last 3-4 months.  Most of the time, that means watching the baby while I teach or take care of an online meeting.  I was conducting a group interview with 9 potential employees tonight, and asked Karianna to babysit Jackson from 5-5:30 when Jared would get home.  She's done this many times before, so I wasn't worried.  She did great, and Jared took over as normal when he got home-the baby had pretty much slept the whole time.  I was anticipating being done at 6:15 when Jared would have to leave for work...that didn't happen though, the interview ended up going until 6:50!  I knew Jared had left, so I rushed out as soon as I could, expecting the baby to be wailing and the other kids to be destroying the house.

Not so.

All the kids were either sitting and watching The Magic School Bus, or coloring.  Karianna was just coming back in from the hall, and the baby was nowhere to be seen.  Before I could get worried, Karianna told me the baby had started screaming a few minutes after Jared left.  She said she unbuckled him from his bouncer and rocked him until he went back to sleep.  She then took him into her bedroom since the family room was too loud.  She successfully laid him in her bed, tucked him in, turned off the light, and cracked her door so she could hear him if he woke up.

It was so responsible of her, I was super impressed!  She handled the situation just fine, and I am still surprised that she didn't try to come get me.  Just super impressive, and it was the first time I really got the impression that she would be able to handle other peoples' kids sooner than later.  I was so pleased, I ended up taking the kids to McDonalds for ice cream and playtime.  Awesome job to my pre-teen!