Midnight Babysitting

No, I'm not joking. My cell phone rang with an unknown number Tuesday night at 10:50 PM. I was finishing up on Facebook and about to go to bed, and I answered expecting to say only "you have the wrong number" and hang up. So imagine my surprise when a male voice said "is this Erin?" Um, yeah, who is this? It was Justin, the husband of my friend Ginny. (We went to GA Ren Fest with them in April.) He had to take her to the emergency room, which of course does not allow children under 18 unless it is the child experiencing the emergency. He was wondering if I could come pick up their 2-year-old son and keep him for the night. Um, sure, okay. We were happy to do it, but there were a few logistics we needed to work out.

Thankfully, Justin had Riley's blanket and a couple of diapers and some wipes. We still have our pack-n-play, which DH was setting up as I left. My biggest concern was the car seat. I have no idea where Luke's old 5-point harness seat is, so I had to ask Justin to get his out of their car and help put it into mine. And can I just say how awesome the LATCH system is! Neither of our 1999 cars had it, so we had to put in Luke's carseats the old fashioned way, with seatbelts and locking clips. Justin had that thing installed in our new 2011 car in literally 30 seconds. By the time we got back to the house, it was well after midnight.

When Justin called this morning, he said that he hoped Riley hadn't given us too much trouble. Well, let's see. We put him in the carseat in my car, waved bye, and he never cried or fussed or anything. He fell asleep in the car on the way to our house. He never woke up when we got him out of the car or when we put him down in the pack-n-play in the guest room. And he was still asleep when Justin called at 6:15 this morning to ask if you could come pick him up (he knew we'd be up by 6 to get Luke ready for school). In fact, Riley didn't wake up at all until Justin woke him up to put him in the car. I'd say that definitely qualifies as "not much trouble"! LOL

Literally, if he had called 10 minutes later, I would not have gotten the message. We don't take our cell phones into the bedroom (don't want to get woken up by late night email notifications). We do keep a home phone in our bedroom, and we do answer it whenever it rings for *just* such emergencies, but Justin only had our old home phone number, which just says disconnected. I'm glad it all worked out, and we were happy to help.

Currently feeling: too much excitement for a Tuesday!