The Babysitterville Field Trip

The first official Babysitterville Field Trip took place this week and it was a huge success.

The most successful part of the whole day was that I returned home from the Childrens Museum with the same two children I left with.

All attending the field trip were required to sit on the couch while my Uncle Brian read off a list of do'es and don'ts. Immediately following the first meeting, Brian called a "Daddy and Sarah only" meeting which was much less formal than the previous meeting. All he did was hand me a bunch of money and train schedule before telling me that "we'd be fine". I'm glad he had such confidence in me because my aunt was "SO NERVOUS" that she almost changed her mind about us going.

Taking the train to and from the museum caused almost as much excitement as the museum visit itself. Zachary is train expert and knew ahead of time which stop we'd be at next, which connecting trains you could go on, and which line took you to get to which station. Molly tried to sound smart too but her remarks usually resulted in Zachary saying, "Molly! That's not the Acela train! That's the Downeaster!!" in a very exasperated voice.

Acela train or Downeaster, we got to the museum without any mishaps. I'd like to point out that Why I Still Babysit reason #27 is so I can go to children's museums. I'm just one of those people who likes to touch things at museums and nothing is off limits at the children's museum. I learned that visiting a museum as a child and visiting as the person responsible for two children are two very different things. For example, I had to deal with meltdowns. This picture was taken approximately 12 seconds before meltdown #2.

I will never understand why all the meltdowns/breakdowns/loudest arguments always seem to happen when we're either supposed to be quiet{like at the library}or when tons of people are around. It happens every single time. It's possible I may have played the "we don't have to wait for the 3:00 train to go home; there's a 12:00 train we can take too" card. I hated using it but desperate times call for desperate measures.

We ate lunch outside and Molly tried swinging from the Weeping Willow like she was Tarzan. It didn't work out well for her but it was entertaining. I discovered that Zachary has a pigeon phobia. He would start freaking out every time one of the 30 pigeons came within 20 feet of him. This repeated the whole entire time we were eating lunch.

Despite various moments of meltdowns, pigeon phobias and Molly's drama, we had a fabulous time. Below is Zachary's "I'm having a really great day with my most awesome and favorite babysitter/cousin of all time" shadow.

Ok, maybe he didn't say that part about me but he was thinking it!