babysitting

New adventures in babysitting (contd.)

Evolution has contrived to make the sound of a crying baby one of the most unpleasant in nature. The more piercing the child’s shrieking, the harder it is to ignore. The harder to ignore, the more attention is lavished upon the child and, hence, the greater chance it has of surviving into adulthood. In a small apartment, it’s like having a car alarm going off in the living room for hours at a time. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING (CONTD.)

I’ve been minding my niece Lola the last few mornings. When I volunteered to do this, before she was born, I envisaged a small child sleeping contentedly in a cot, or playing with a toy, while I worked away quietly at my desk. It would be fair to say that I knew fuck all about babies at that point.

I’m a little wiser now. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING

My niece Lola was born the same day Michael Jackson died. I’m still secretly hoping that, by some cosmic accident, she may have inherited some of MJ’s singing and dancing abilities. So far, though, there’s little to suggest that she has. She naps a lot. Tends to shit herself on a fairly routine basis. Don’t get me wrong, we all have our accidents. But this girl shits herself, like, ten times a day. It’s embarrassing.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that babies don’t really fall within my area of expertise. In fact, before Lola was born, the number of babies in my circle of acquaintances was zilch. (Nothing against babies, we just tend to have different interests.) But over the past month I’ve been spending quite a bit of time around this one. Studying her M.O. Seeing what makes her tick. After the jump: the Shocking Baby Expose Every Adult Must Read. Read the rest of this entry »