Still the Babysitter

Chapter 1
A Day Spent Babysitting

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Chapter Description: It's quite a bit different from my normal stuff, and I'm not sure if it all works, but here you go.

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Lily was actually looking forward to this afternoon. Toddlers were a handful, but it was still nice to have a distraction from the normal sort of stress she had in high school. And it was hard to have anxiety about interacting with a child like she did with kids her age. Little kids don’t care, and they’d forget about her screw ups soon enough.

She arrived at Mrs. Cohen’s house just after lunch. The woman was friendly, but clearly in a hurry. She introduced Lily to her two year old daughter, Madison, showed her where the necessities were, and went over her daughter’s normal routine.

"I left a note on the kitchen table that tells you everything you need to know. Go ahead and eat whatever you want from the fridge." She bent down and kissed her daughter on the head. "Be a good girl for Lily, OK princess?"

"Kay," the girl responded.

"Good girl." She stood up. "I should be back around 10 or so. I’ll give you a call if there are any delays."

"Have a good trip!" Lily said. The woman left, and she was left with her charge. "Wanna go play, sweetie?"

"Yeah!" The girl hurried into the playroom

Madison spent several minutes showing Lily her toys and babbling about them. This was followed by her running and jumping around before getting on a rocking horse and laughing as she moved it as fast as she could.

"I wish I was young enough to be that easily entertained," Lily said as she watched this.

Madison slowed down. "Weawy?"

"Yeah, sometimes. Being little was fun. Nothing to stress about."

"Kay." Madison got off, picked up a plastic fairy wand, and swung it around. "Abababagababawa." She looked up at Lily with a smile. "You widdo now."

"Goo goo ga ga," Lily said, figuring she’d play along. Madison burst into giggles, and did so again when Lily got up onto her hands and knees and started to crawl around.

"Not dat widdo, siwwy."

"Oh? How little am I?"

"Um... I fink... dis many." She held up 3 fingers.

Lily laughed. She didn’t expect the game to go in that direction. "That is pretty little, but isn’t it still bigger than you?"

"Uh huh. Dat’s fine. You widdo enough."

"Oh, OK." Lily wondered how exactly the 2 year old expected her to act differently with a "change" like that. Luckily, the girl’s attention span was only so long, and she was already bringing ponies out for them to play with instead of whatever she had intended. Kids her age always seemed thrilled that Lily had watched the show and knew all their personalities, and Madison was no different. She seemed to like playing as Rainbow Dash acting up, so Lily took the role of Rarity and the others reacting to it. Somehow, she really seemed to click with her charge’s playstyle. Before long, it was just natural.

"Why do I have to pee already?" Lily asked herself after a little while. She glanced at the clock. "Wow, an hour already? I guess I’m having more fun than I thought," she said with a smile which seemed to delight the younger girl. "But I do have to take a small potty break, OK?"

"Kay. I hewp." She ran to the other corner of the room and came back with a pink plastic training potty.

"Thanks, sweetie,." It’s surprising she has one of those around if she’s still in diapers, Lily thought as she lifted her dress over her head. She slid her leggings down and stepped out of them before looking at her underwear. "Still got all my flowers," she said proudly before sliding them off.

"Good job!"

"Thanks." It was weird to hear that from someone a whole year younger than her, but praise is praise. She sat herself down, and pretty much immediately heard the expected tinkle. She waited until it definitely seemed to be over and looked around. "Oh poop. Do you have any wipes?" Madison ran off to the changing table and came back with a box of baby wipes. Lily wasn’t sure that was a good idea, since you’re not supposed to flush those, but she hadn’t thought to bring toddler wipes, so they had to do. She soon finished and proudly pulled her Pull Ups back on, then looked disappointed.

"Wha’s wong?"

"Oh, um..." she looked a little embarrassed. "My mommy or daddy usually gives me candy when I make it to the potty."

"We can get candy! I know wheah mommy puts dem!"

"Are you sure she’d be OK with that?"

"She’d wanna hewp," Madison said, crossing her arms.

"I suppose that’s what mommies do... but we have to be responsible! Just a little candy."

"Yay!’ Madison led the preschooler to the kitchen. "Is up dere." She was pointing to a cabinet above the counter.

She didn’t want to do this in front of a little kid, but it’s not like she wouldn’t have to do this again at dinner time. She went to the kitchen table and dragged a chair over. "This is only for big kids, OK?"

"But you widdo."

"Well yeah, but, uh, I mean when your mommy says you’re big enough to do this."

That seemed to quiet the girl down, so Lily carefully climbed up the chair and onto the counter. She quickly found a bag of those little packs of M&Ms you usually see on Halloween. For a split second, she almost threw the whole thing on the floor for her and her companion to enjoy, but she was babysitting. If there was no grown up around, she had to be the responsible one. She pulled out two small packets and climbed down.

"This is for helping me out," she said as she carefully opened one and handed it to the excited toddler. The two children happily began eating.

"Why you stwess?"

Lily swallowed what was in her mouth. "It’s just the usual preschool stuff. My daddy’s all ’you have to work real hard to get into a good kindergarten,’ all the time. I mean I’m good at learning stuff, but like I’ll show him I can count to twenty, and he’s just like ’OK now count to 100.’ He never just sees the next step and never seems happy with what I’ve already done."

"Das yucky!"

"Yeah, real yucky. Then there’s this boy," she said blushing a bit. "Eric. He’s nice and really good at tag and smart and stuff, but it’s just... I’m scared to ask him to play with me."

"Why?"

"I don’t know if he’d like me, and even if he does what if he has cooties or something? The last boy I went on a playdate was yucky."

"You no gotta pway wif boys if you not weady."

"Yeah, but I kinda want to."

Madison popped another M&M in her mouth and took a moment to chew it before responding. "You aweady no pwayin’ wif him. Wost ting is you stiw no pway."

"I guess..."

"An’ if he yucky you no gotta pway."

"I know..."

The two girls finished the last of their candy. "TAG!" Madison said suddenly as she touched Lilly on the shoulder and ran off. Lily immediately gave chase and caught up to her friend in the living room.

"You’re it!"

Madison chased her around the room twice and finally got her, then darted into the playroom. The house was filled with with giggles and squeals as they continued back and forth for a while until Madison suddenly stopped running, squatted down, and blushed a little. The smell removed any doubt as to what just happened.

"Let’s get you cleaned up before we play more," Lily said. Madison didn’t look too thrilled with that idea of ending their game, but she nodded and walked over to the changing table with Lily. "Hmmmm..." The table was about as tall as Lily was, and it was hard to tell if it would be stable enough for two kids to climb up. She tried to think of what she normally did in these situations, but she couldn’t remember encountering one that was too big for her before. That was kind of weird now that she thought about it. But it didn’t matter now. She poked around the room and soon found a small blanket. She’d be able to clean that up before Madison’s mommy got back, if need be. She spread it out, had Madison lie down, and began to change her friend’s diaper.

For some reason, it was a lot more awkward than normal, even though the toddler wasn’t fussy. She’d done plenty of babysitting jobs, so it should have been second nature, but she was finding that doing this to someone nearly her size required a lot more help on the part of the child than she was used to. But shouldn’t that have been the case for all the other times, too? Like the Johnson kid down the street was pretty big for his age, but she didn’t remember it being a problem even though she had to have still been in diapers herself when she first babysat him a few months ago. Wait, wouldn’t he have to be about the same age as her? Then why-

"You ’kay?" Madison asked.

"What? Oh, sorry. Got distracted by something. Let’s finish you up." Soon her friend was taped up, the diaper was in the diaper genie, and the now dirtied blanket was in the wash.

"Why does it smell like pee in here?" she asked as they returned to the playroom. Madison pointed to the potty. "Oh, poop." Lily was so used to her parents taking care of that that she didn’t even think about it after she went. They could have easily knocked that over when they were playing. "I guess I gotta be responsible." She carefully picked it up, being careful not to spill. "Can you lead me to the bathroom?" Madison ran into the hallway, and Lily slowly and carefully carried the potty behind. She caught up to Madison, who was pointing at a closed door. "Could you open that?" Madison did, revealing a closet. "Maddy!"

"Sowwy! I no use much," she said as she darted to another closed door in the hallway, nearly knocking into Lily in the process. She opened it. "Bafwoom!"

Lily carefully shuffled over and inside. "Now how did mommy do this..." She opened the lid of the toilet. "I guess I just pour it in." It was hard to lift it at a good angle for that, and she nearly dropped it as she figured it out, but she managed to get most of it where she wanted and quickly wiped up the rest. "Jees, that was a pain."

Madison yawned. "Potty siwwy."

Lily rolled here eyes, then yawned herself. She checked the clock out in the hallway. "Looks like it’s nap time."

"No wanna nap!"

"Sorry, Maddy, but we gotta."

"We?"

"Just because I’m a babysitter doesn’t mean I don’t need a nap, too. I’m still a little kid." She didn’t want to go, either, but she had a responsibility to be a good example when she was the one in charge. Luckily, it seemed to work, and Madison seemed much happier about the idea.

"Wead a stowy," Madison said as she climbed into her bed.

This would be tricky. "I barely know the alphabet" was never a satisfying response to that for a kid. She either had to hope they had a book she’d already heard at bedtime a dozen times and tell it the best she could from memory, or she’d try to find one that looked like it had barely been read and make something up based on the pictures. She didn’t recognize the first several she pulled out, so she grabbed something from the back of the shelf and joined her friend in bed.

"Do you know this one?" Madison shook her head, and Lily sighed in relief. She looked at the cover, which showed a girl in a big, poofy dress. "It’s called ’The Coolest Princess Ever.’" She opened it to the first page. It was a simple shot of this girl standing in her room. "Once upon a time, there was a princess named Princess Angelicalina. She lived in a big castle and she had dinosaurs and a space ship and all the ponies and went on lots and lots of adventures." Lily took a glance at her friend, and luckily she seemed enthralled so far. It shouldn’t have been surprising given that Lily was already sure this was the most interesting character she ever came up with.

She turned the page. There were a couple boring pictures of the princess talking to what looked like the king and queen, then looking unhappy. She needed to punch that up. "So she went to her daddy who told her to do a million chores and not come out and play until she could count to 100 and color inside the lines and read."

"He yucky."

"Yeah, that’s what Princess Anelinala said and then her daddy said he’d take her dinosaurs and she said she’d get her T Rex before he could take it."

"An’ den Wex eated him."

"Uh huh! But it turned out her daddy was really a monster called Marglebarbo and that her real daddy was kidnapped by 20 dragons..." The two went back and forth making up details of this story, and it was only after the princess conquered the galaxy and became the world’s best ballerina, cyborg, and ninja that Madison realized she hadn’t even turned past the second page. And this had probably already gone on longer than the book would have if she could read it. They still needed to actually nap. Madison flipped right to the last page. "So then she met a handsome prince and got married and got a bazillion presents that all had a million toys inside. The end."

"I wike dat one," Madison said.

Lily tried not to beam too proudly. "Yeah, it’s really good. But now we gotta take a little nap, OK?"

"OK," Madison replied with some disappointment.

Lily put the book back where she found it, then climbed back in bed with her friend. As the younger one began to lightly snore, Lily thought about how the two of them should have a proper playdate. She was having a good time, but it would be nice to have a grown up around to be responsible for them so she could just let loose completely. She couldn’t remember the last time she got to do that. That was kind of weird, wasn’t it? She was three years old, so she shouldn’t playdates be a fairly regular thing her parents set up for her? But the only time she could remember where she wasn’t in preschool or getting paid for it was that yucky playdate with Mark. And she was pretty sure neither of their parents were there for that, which didn’t really make sense. Kids their age either needed a babysitter or an adult, and she was sure neither of them was the babysitter then. This was confusing. And it was keeping her up.

She decided to try to think about something else. Like that story she came up with. That was a really good one. Action, romance, dinosaurs. It had everything someone like her wanted out of a story. And if Madison was any indication, it would find an audience. She’d have to remember to write it down when she got the chance. Definitely. Wait, she thought, how would she do that? She figured she must be really tired to keep coming to these weird conclusions and turned over to try to sleep again.

...

"But I wanna..." Madison’s voice said. There was a pause. "No, you wight."

Lily opened her eyes and sat up. She saw Madison sitting there holding a teddy bear. "Wha-" she yawned. "What’s going on?"

"Mr. Baba say I should no wake you. But you up now! Yay!"

"Well that was considerate of him." Lily was glad to know there was someone around to be a good example besides her.

"Uh huh. He weal nice."

"Well then I’m glad to meet you." She shook the bear’s hand.

"Wiwy, I firsty."

"I am, too. We probably should have gotten something after play time." The two got out of bed. "Hold on one second." She checked Madison’s diaper, then looked down at her own training pants. "Wow, we both made it through a naptime dry. We must be really thirsty." They once more entered the kitchen, and Lily had to climb again to get the cups. She wondered why Madison’s mommy hadn’t thought to put necessary items on the counter if she was going to hire such a young babysitter. "So what do you want to drink?"

"Juice!"

Lily decided she better double check the note she was left in case Madison wasn’t supposed to have something. She looked at it. Then she flipped it over. Then she looked around the room. "Is this really all your mommy left?"

"I dunno. Wha’s wong?"

"It’s this note. It’s all a bunch of letters and stuff. How hard is it to draw a picture of something with an X through it or a frowny face next to it? I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with this. It’s like she was expecting a grown up to babysit you."

"Juice pease!" Madison said insistently.

Lily put the note back on the table. "I guess juice is probably fine." She opened the fridge. "Which one do you want?" Madison pointed toward a shelf that had two different juice bottles on it. "The orange one or the... purple one?" Madison just stared at her without comprehension. "Sorry, I guess you don’t know your colors yet. Those are hard. So is it the left one or..." That was a dumb question. Even if Madison gave an answer, it’s not like Lily would have any idea what it meant. It was weird that she thought it made sense for a second. She used the chair to climb again. "This one?" she asked holding up the purple juice.

"Yeah!"

She carefully climbed back down and closed the fridge door. Then she placed the cups on the floor and unscrewed the bottle. "I hope this works out. Your mommy really needs to keep in mind how old her babysitters are." She carefully lifted the heavy bottle in both hands and did her best to pour it carefully into the cups. She did a better job than she expected; at least 80% made it into the cups. She quickly screwed on their caps and cleaned up the floor with some paper towels, then did the same to herself. "Now what?"

"Wanna watch Dora?"

The girls returned to the playroom, and after some awkward finagling with the remote and the menus that weren’t designed for children, she managed to pull the show up on Netflix. She’d sworn seen this show before, and it had always been something she tolerated for the sake of whatever other kids were around. But what was on screen here felt totally different. Dora spoke directly to her, and she listened! It was a whole form of interactive entertainment, with gripping plot and funny characters. When the episode ended, Lily immediately put on another without asking if Madison wanted to keep going.

Madison, on the other hand, was losing some interest. She wandered away from her enraptured friend and dumped out a bin of toy cars and trucks. She pushed them around making "vroom" noises for a few minutes before she accidentally knocked one into some others. She then backed the car up and slammed it into another group, breaking into giggles as they went flying. She glanced over at her friend, and with a laugh rushed the car in her direction.

"Ow!" Lily turned to see her friend looking pleased with herself. "Why did you do that!?" Madison seemed surprised by that reaction and looked like she was about to cry. Lily almost yelled at her more, but she reminded herself that she was a babysitter right now. She had to control herself. Besides, she had been ignoring her charge. She put her hands on the younger girl’s shoulders. "I’m sorry for ignoring you, and I’m sorry for yelling. But you still have to play nice even if you’re annoyed with me. Just tell me to play more next time, OK?"

"Kay..."

"Wanna hug?" Madison nodded, and the two briefly embraced before Lily went over to take a look at what her friend had been doing. It looked fun, so she joined in. Soon the two of them were stacking blocks and other toys and seeing what they could knock them down with, thrilled with the destruction. They continued for quite a while until Lily suddenly stopped.

"Ugh, I gotta go pee again. Such a pain when the grown ups are out."

"Use Pu’Up."

"I don’t want my parents to know I used one if I didn’t have to. They’ll check how many I come back with."

Madison ran off to the changing table and pulled out a diaper. "Use dis!"

"That’s....hmmm...." She took pride in her ability to use the potty, but this would be so much more convenient. They’d barely need to stop playing. "You promise not to tell anyone?"

"Uh huh. Pwomise."

Lily slid off her training pants and held the diaper up between her legs. She looked a bit embarrassed, then ran over and sat on the potty, diaper still in place. "Still counts as making it to the potty in time," she said as she soaked the diaper.

Madison giggled. "Diapee bettuh den potty."

Lily rolled her eyes at that, but it did reminder to check whether her friend’s juice had also gone through her, and sure enough, it did. This change was going bit easier than the last, since Lily better knew what to expect. Still, that did raise the question of why it still seemed so weird compared to all the other times. She thought back to the other times she’d babysat. She couldn’t remember anything weird about changing Sam. Or Emily. Or Timmy. And then she babysat Jenny, but she was six years old, so... Lily froze. She babysat Jenny. Jenny was six years old. But she was three. So she couldn’t have babysat Jenny. But she babysat Jenny.

"Wiwy?"

"Just...just hold on a sec." She was three years old. But she never played with kids her age. And she thought she could write. And she swore she babysat a 6 year old. Was she going crazy?

"Wha’s wong?"

"Am-am I even really your babysitter?"

Lily started crying. Between sobs, she heard Madison’s running feet, and then "Bubadabadaga!" The sixteen year old looked up to see the toddler aiming that plastic fairy wand at her again.

"I SOWWY!" The toddler ran up and hugged her babysitter, who was now more confused than anything.

She was sixteen. She babysat a six year old because she was sixteen when she did it, and that was normal. Three year olds didn’t babysit anyone. But she clearly remembered being that young just seconds ago. Was that just a weird dream? She looked down at herself. Still naked because she hadn’t yet dressed herself after going in that diaper. She looked for her clothes. There was a pair of Pull Ups, a dress, and a pair of leggings, all sized for a preschooler. Exactly what she remembered wearing.

It was then that she returned her attention to the sobbing toddler. "It’s OK, sweetie," she said as she hugged the child. "Shhh... it’s OK." The child started to calm down. "So what just happened?"

"You said you wanna be widdo so I made you widdo but I weft da babysitting stuff ’cause you gotta babysit but den you got confused an’ sad."

"You can just do that?"

"Uh huh."

"How?"

"Wif dis," she held up her plastic wand. "I fink stuff den I say magic wods an’ it happen."

This was a lot to take in at once. Really, this should have been an even bigger blow to her psyche than the contradictions from earlier. But somehow it was hard to freak out about a fun time had with an apologetic toddler. She looked at the clock. "We still have hours before your mother’s due back," Lily said. "Would you...would you want to do that to me again?"

"WEAWY!?"

Lily looked a little embarrassed. "That really was a lot of fun. It was kinda the escape I needed for a little while. Just promise you’ll let me remember how old I really am, OK?"

Soon the house was once again filled with the sound of excited children

 

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