Babysitter fail

Me: Hey kids! Let's make a cake!

Adorable moppet that I'm babysitting: Hooray! Can I help?

Me: Actually, it will go a lot faster if I do it myself.

Because the whole point of baking a cake with kids is to get it over with as soon as possible so that you're that much closer to cramming that sweet, sweet cake into your mouth.

Also, when I opened the box, there was a dead bug in the cake mix.

Best. Babysitter. Ever.

Abook, the WonderTeen

We love our babysitter. We all love having her here. In just a couple of months I went from being very skeptical about the idea of having a teenage girl in our house (on purpose!) to really enjoying having her around.

See, the thing is, I really don't like teenage girls. I didn't care for them much when I was one myself and if possible I like them even less now. Oh, I'm sure that most teenagers will eventually become perfectly lovely people but chances are, if you're between the ages of 12 and 18 I don't want to be around you. That's why I was so suprised to find myself not just tolerating, but really liking our babysitter.

First off, the kids really, really like her. She's very good with them and they respond very well to her. Whenever she comes over Elle runs over to her and yells "Abook!". (No, that's not her real name, that's just Elle's way of saying it.) If you have children you know how much stuff like that really counts for.

Secondly, she's just a really neat person. She's very artistic, she plays soccer, she goes dear hunting and she likes woodworking. She's really mature for her age and very interesting to talk to. I seriously wonder if half the reason I liked havingher around so much was just because I liked having someone to talk to other than the kids all day.

The sad news is that yesterday was Abook's last day of regular babysitting. She has some family stuff going on now so she won't be able to come over for the rest of the summer. The good news is that now Jesse and I have someone new we can call on if we want to have an evening out. Until now our list of babysitters was very, very short and contained only a few select family members.

So how did I go from being a hater of teenager girls and distruster of nearly everyone when it comes to my kids? It's simple, she's Abook, the WonderTeen.