I spent this morning babysitting for Elissa’s daughter Charlotte, who is now two and a half.  The last time I babysat her, she was still more or less preverbal.  Now she’s a real live toddler who walks and talks and has opinions about things.  This was a much different type of babysitting.  Also, the last time I was in attendance, it was evening, and she went to sleep soon after I got there.  I was pretty sure this wouldn’t happen at 9 AM, so I came armed with a 20-ounce coffee, knowing I’d probably need it.

Charlotte is a very easy kid to be around; she lives in a family that is very dedicated to reading aloud and to storytelling, and so she is in that curious phase of early childhood development where reality and fantasy are indistinguishable, and she has an almost-continual running monologue made up of sentences she has heard in her favorite stories.  My babysitting consisted mostly of listening to her, and waiting to see whether anything she said might be indicative of something she needed or wanted in current time.  Unlike the last time I was with her, she has now proceeded to being able to tell me pretty clearly what she thinks should be happening, so I don’t have to guess.  At one point, she informed me that she wanted something to drink.  I took her approved drink out of the refrigerator, and she imperiously told me: “Put it in my little cup.”

The little cup was nowhere to be seen, so I asked her if she could show me where it was.  She rolled her eyes a bit, but went over to the drawer where it is kept, and pointed.  Once I got the little cup out, I could see why she’d insisted; it’s very cute.  Then we went down to her playroom so she could draw on her easel, which has a dry-erase board on one side, and a chalkboard on the other side.  I never had a chalkboard when I was little, and I always wanted one, so it was a little difficult for me not to want to play with Charlotte’s toys.  But I didn’t want to be rude, so I sat down and read one of her books instead.  It was a good book about a kitten that gets its tail caught in the screen door, so it has to go to the vet.  I learned that the vet isn’t such a bad place.  While I was reading this, the family cat, Mac, came in, took one look at me, and decided I was the love of his life.  He hopped up in my lap, wrapped his arms and legs around my waist, buried his face in my shirt, and purred for all he was worth.  Charlotte was much engrossed with “drawing” on her chalkboard (this involved much random scribbling) so I told Mac the story of the kitten at the vet.

Then Charlotte wanted to go upstairs, so we did.   This was a good idea, because I needed the rest of my coffee.  While I was drinking it, Charlotte announced, “David catch Charlotte!”  She then ran into the laundry room, giggling hysterically.  The rules of this game seemed simple enough; she would run away, and I would chase her in a desultory fashion so that she didn’t actually feel chased, as I was afraid that if I really chased her, she’d run too fast and fall down.  Then I would express great astonishment that I’d been able to catch her, and give her a big hug and pick her up and swing her around a couple of times.  This was toddler comedy gold.  We did this until David, who is 36 going on 70, got kind of worn out.  Then Charlotte crawled up in her stroller and announced, “I’m ready to go.”

I would have taken her for a walk, but I’d left Elissa’s house key at my place.  Plus I hadn’t asked permission to take Charlotte out of the house, so in hindsight, I wouldn’t have gone even if I’d had the key.  However, Charlotte clearly expected something to happen.  So I wheeled her around the living and dining room for half an hour.  It was familiar scenery, but viewed from this novel perspective, it seemed to entertain her.  It was pretty boring for me, though, so I absentmindedly started to sing, as I sometimes do when I’m fussing around my own house.  Charlotte seemed positively transfixed by this, so I sang her some opera, transposed down a fourth so she didn’t have to endure my glass-cracking spinto range.  “Do that again!  Do it again!” she ordered, when I was done.  So I did.  “I like your songs,” she informed me.  I don’t know when I’ve had a more enthusiastic audience.

Thanks to the 20 ounces of coffee, I then really really had to use the bathroom, and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with Charlotte.  Last time, she was asleep and safe by the time Nature called, so it wasn’t an issue.  This is one of those questions I just didn’t think to ask.  I weighed the risks of leaving Charlotte alone for maybe a minute vs. leaving the door open and risking some blight on her young life vs. taking her in the bathroom with me and perhaps somehow scarring her psychologically and irreversibly.  So I opted for the fastest piss in the West, hoping she couldn’t kill herself in the 30 seconds it took me to get in and out of there.  She was, thankfully, still alive when I got back out of the bathroom.

After that, Charlotte wanted to go back downstairs to her easel.  She gave me a pen and said, “David draw a bug.”

“You want me to draw on your easel?” I asked.  This was almost too good to be true.

“Draw a bug,” she repeated.

“Do you want to draw a bug?” I asked, wanting to make sure I really understood the protocol.

“David draw a bug!” she insisted, clearly a bit impatient with my seeming recalcitrance.

“OK,” I said.  I drew a dragonfly.

“Fly!”  she said, delightedly.  “Draw another bug!”

I drew a ladybug, and a butterfly, and an ant, and then I was out of bugs I knew how to draw.  “How about a spider?” I suggested.

“That’s not a bug,” she said.

“Technically, no — it’s an arachnid.  But I don’t know any other bugs to draw, so … do you want to draw a bug?”

“No.  David draw a spider,” she said.

“With or without a web?” I asked.

“With web.”

So I drew a spider with a web.  “Do you want a fly caught in the web?” I queried.  She thought that was a good idea, so I put one in.  “The spider will eat that fly, you know,” I said.  She clearly thought this idea was disgusting.  “But you don’t have to eat one,” I hastened to assure her.  At this point, the easel was getting pretty crowded.  I didn’t see a dry-eraser anywhere, so I tested how the board was cleaned by licking one fingertip and rubbing.  Everything came right off, all over my finger.

“David, go wash your hands!” Charlotte ordered.  She had a point, so we went back upstairs and I fixed my hand, and got a damp paper towel for the easel, which I cleaned off.

“Draw … a popsicle!” she commanded.  I did, and then she wanted me to draw her eating it.  Luckily, she was able to see herself in an image that wasn’t exactly a triumph of realism.  Then she thought I should draw a house, and put her family in the windows.  Her visual sense accepts that her family’s faces are comprised of a circle with two dots.  At that point, Charlotte’s parents and little brother came back home, so my career as a famous artist, singer, and cat whisperer was over for the day.