(Okay, so my mom is a Brit.)
Dang, we’ve only been in the house for a few days and it is soooooo easy to take care of kids this way! This is the way human beings are supposed to raise kids. Multiple kids, multiple adults.
The kids entertain each other. The adults trade around watching them naturally and with little effort.
Yesterday Eliza asked me if I could watch her two kids this morning while she had an early telephone meeting. I blocked off the time: 7:30am to 9am, and the mental space: three kids, possibly by myself. Be prepared — could be tough. We had plans that if her 1yo was particularly fussy and needed to nurse I could try to carry him to her quietly while somehow also watching the other two kids.
But it wasn’t anything like that. Around 8:45 Eliza came out and thanked me, and I couldn’t remember why — oh yeah, I had “watched her kids” — ha! I didn’t do anything. The kids all wanted to eat at the same time (cuz the littler kids want to do whatever the bigger kids are doing), then Audrey happened to give the older two kids a bath, which the younger two found fascinating. And at some point Nate came down and “watched” them while I took a shower. Did I even do any watching?
The other evening Wes & Audrey came out of their rooms while I was playing with two of the kids and said, “oh! we forgot that were were supposed to be watching Eliza & Harry’s kids!” Apparently I had one of them and Nate had the other. And we didn’t even notice. It’s actually easier to watch two kids than one, because you don’t have to entertain them, they entertain each other.
Anyway, a longish post just to say wow, the kid watching part of this setup is even easier/better than I expected. And I expected it to be pretty great. 😀
CO-FAMILY LIFE 