All Childed Down and Nowhere to Go
We handed Abbie to a babysitter last night. One of Ellie’s friends offered to watch Abbie for us for a few hours as a birthday present. The fact that her birthday was five weeks ago should be a potent enough sign that we need to get out more.
The gift was meant for Ellie, but her friend had her own motives for watching Abbie. Her friend is one of those wonderful people who believes that every moment spent caring for a child is a blessing from heaven, as opposed to people like myself who just hope that the oldest sibling is really good at caring for young children so I can finally get some work done around this house.
Her friend has three children, a four-year-old girl, two-year-old boy, and infant boy. Her daughter loves spending time with Abbie, which I find a little strange for a couple reasons. First, Abbie doesn’t interact with other children unless stealing their toys and food qualifies as interaction. Few children her age have learned how to play with others, but Abbie seems exceptionally independent. She won’t even play with us most of the time, preferring to play near us requesting our help only when switches need turned on or balls need retrieved from crevasses. Second, when I was growing up, age differences greater than one grade were unbreachable chasms. Younger children were pests meant to be shunned, or at least mocked when parents forced you to let them tagalong. Associating with older children was a privilege on par with being first in line when the swimming pool opens or commandeering the good pit in dirt clod fights, privileges that were enacted only with the older child’s permission. Maybe this child truism doesn’t kick in until grade school because this girl of more than twice Abbie’s age was giddy with the prospect of a play date with Abbie. Her mother couldn’t have backed out on caring for Abbie even if she wanted to. A child was going to whine in their house last night, and it was either going to be Abbie whining because we were nowhere around or her daughter whining because Abbie was nowhere around. She might as well watch Abbie and let someone enjoy the evening.
We dropped her off around 4pm, agreed to pick her back up by 7pm, and returned to the car to enact our plan for a wild night on the town. First, we returned home. I started some laundry. Ellie watched some football. Then we both watched some football in the hopes that something wild would smack us upside the head like so many thrown Weebles. Within an hour we realized that not only was nothing exciting going to happen to us, but we were sorely out of practice in planning wild nights on the town. We fell back on our old standby, namely going out to eat, because this could be our last chance to eat in a restaurant that doesn’t prominently feature clowns for the next dozen years.
We made the most of our temporary childless status by eating at a bar, specifically the “High Life Lounge.” Not only would it have been developmentally harmful to bring Abbie to a bar at her age with all the smoking and drinking surrounding her, it would have been physically impossible since they didn’t have high chairs either.
Ellie had wanted to eat at this bar for months, ever since they opened and we heard they were the first in Des Moines to offer broasted chicken. Broasted chicken, which is basically chicken pieces fried in a pressure cooker, is a delicacy in small-town Iowa regions like the one where she originates, but no one else near here wants to sell it, possibly because the bevy of employment opportunities in the big city makes it impossible to find someone desperate enough to want a job operating the broaster.
The bar was an honest attempt to lift a bar from 1970 rural Iowa and plop it between the new brownstone apartments and old warehouses in downtown Des Moines. Old beer signs lined the walls, a Kelvinator hummed near the kitchen, and a scary guy with tattoos manned the bar. The look would have been complete if they could have dirtied up the place better, maybe stuck some duct tape to the vinyl seats and pulled up some tiles in the too-clean bathrooms. The food was the reason we came, though, and I enjoyed my Frito pie (Fritos, chili, and cheese) as much as she enjoyed her broasted chicken.
Stuffed and smelling vaguely of smoke, we returned to pick up Abbie at 6:30pm. Everyone had a good time, though Abbie threw her share of fits. Her friend offered to watch Abbie for us again in a few weeks. We may take her up on it again if the twins haven’t arrived yet, and hopefully we’ll have a plan to enjoy the night for a change.
The gift was meant for Ellie, but her friend had her own motives for watching Abbie. Her friend is one of those wonderful people who believes that every moment spent caring for a child is a blessing from heaven, as opposed to people like myself who just hope that the oldest sibling is really good at caring for young children so I can finally get some work done around this house.
Her friend has three children, a four-year-old girl, two-year-old boy, and infant boy. Her daughter loves spending time with Abbie, which I find a little strange for a couple reasons. First, Abbie doesn’t interact with other children unless stealing their toys and food qualifies as interaction. Few children her age have learned how to play with others, but Abbie seems exceptionally independent. She won’t even play with us most of the time, preferring to play near us requesting our help only when switches need turned on or balls need retrieved from crevasses. Second, when I was growing up, age differences greater than one grade were unbreachable chasms. Younger children were pests meant to be shunned, or at least mocked when parents forced you to let them tagalong. Associating with older children was a privilege on par with being first in line when the swimming pool opens or commandeering the good pit in dirt clod fights, privileges that were enacted only with the older child’s permission. Maybe this child truism doesn’t kick in until grade school because this girl of more than twice Abbie’s age was giddy with the prospect of a play date with Abbie. Her mother couldn’t have backed out on caring for Abbie even if she wanted to. A child was going to whine in their house last night, and it was either going to be Abbie whining because we were nowhere around or her daughter whining because Abbie was nowhere around. She might as well watch Abbie and let someone enjoy the evening.
We dropped her off around 4pm, agreed to pick her back up by 7pm, and returned to the car to enact our plan for a wild night on the town. First, we returned home. I started some laundry. Ellie watched some football. Then we both watched some football in the hopes that something wild would smack us upside the head like so many thrown Weebles. Within an hour we realized that not only was nothing exciting going to happen to us, but we were sorely out of practice in planning wild nights on the town. We fell back on our old standby, namely going out to eat, because this could be our last chance to eat in a restaurant that doesn’t prominently feature clowns for the next dozen years.
We made the most of our temporary childless status by eating at a bar, specifically the “High Life Lounge.” Not only would it have been developmentally harmful to bring Abbie to a bar at her age with all the smoking and drinking surrounding her, it would have been physically impossible since they didn’t have high chairs either.
Ellie had wanted to eat at this bar for months, ever since they opened and we heard they were the first in Des Moines to offer broasted chicken. Broasted chicken, which is basically chicken pieces fried in a pressure cooker, is a delicacy in small-town Iowa regions like the one where she originates, but no one else near here wants to sell it, possibly because the bevy of employment opportunities in the big city makes it impossible to find someone desperate enough to want a job operating the broaster.
The bar was an honest attempt to lift a bar from 1970 rural Iowa and plop it between the new brownstone apartments and old warehouses in downtown Des Moines. Old beer signs lined the walls, a Kelvinator hummed near the kitchen, and a scary guy with tattoos manned the bar. The look would have been complete if they could have dirtied up the place better, maybe stuck some duct tape to the vinyl seats and pulled up some tiles in the too-clean bathrooms. The food was the reason we came, though, and I enjoyed my Frito pie (Fritos, chili, and cheese) as much as she enjoyed her broasted chicken.
Stuffed and smelling vaguely of smoke, we returned to pick up Abbie at 6:30pm. Everyone had a good time, though Abbie threw her share of fits. Her friend offered to watch Abbie for us again in a few weeks. We may take her up on it again if the twins haven’t arrived yet, and hopefully we’ll have a plan to enjoy the night for a change.
posted by Matt at
9:49 PM
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