Preparing for the girls

Kyle had been home only about a month when his ex called and said she really needed him to take the girls to spend the night, on Father's day. Reason? Her husband was having surgery the following morning, and had to spend the night at the hospital. She wanted to stay with him.

OK - we're thrilled to have the girls stay with us. However, you cannot tell me that his ex did NOT know ahead of time about this surgery. She sprang this on us the Friday before - that's right, 2 DAYS notice. We hadn't had the chance yet to "baby-proof" the apartment. And quite frankly, I didn't know what all that would entail.

Saturday we cleaned and put all of our pretty pointy weapons away (we have a small collection). We made sure the cleaners were in a safe place, got all the laundry done, checked placement of the furniture. Went to Wal-Mart and spent about $75 on kid stuff - crayons & coloring books, play-doh, sticker books, bubbles to blow, sidewalk chalk. And of course, kid-friendly shampoo, conditioner, baby wipes, lotion, body wash, extra band-aids and neosporin, sippy-type cups (they're young enough to still need a cup & straw).

We forgot the outlet covers. Turns out the girls didn't mess with them, so we were safe, at least for that night.

He picked up the girls around 1pm that afternoon, and we took them over to a friend's house to go swimming. Apparently these children had never been in a BIG pool, only a plastic, fill-with-a-hose kiddie pool. We had also purchased goggles and arm floaties for them the night before, so we were at least prepared. They LOVED it. We spent about 3 hours that afternoon teaching them how to swim, and I mean actually SWIM. The oldest was trying to swim down to the end of the pool without us at one point, but that's the deep end so one of us trailed within arm's length of her.

That night we gave them baths, together since they're small enough and seemed to enjoy it. They played in the bubbles and Kyle and I washed their hair. I had the job of brushing out the tangles afterward. NOTE: Anything that states "no more tangles" on it - LIES. At least on the oldest girl's hair. YEOW!! I tried being as gentle as I possibly could. Finally got the tangles out, with a bare minimum of yelps from her.

We got them dressed and laid on the couch with daddy to read them a story. Left the lamp on, covered them with a quilt, and went into the office for the remainder of the evening. We finally went to bed ourselves around 11:30ish. It was a good night.

I did get woken up around 3am by a screamer - the youngest had awoken and was scared. I picked her up and brought her to lay in our bed. Kyle woke up enough to realize he daughter was upset and told her it would be alright. We went back to sleep. Then I got up at 7am to go to work.