A taste of three, or five

I'm babysitting Cedric this afternoon, one of my first tastes of having 3 kids. And on top of that, it's 3 boys.

When I went to pick Eli up from Alice's, she invited us in for lunch. So thinking that 2 adults vs. 5 kids is easier than 1 adult and 3 kids, I thought, why not.

Why not? Because 5 kids is NUTS.

That's not to say that I didn't have fun at Alice's, we always do. But there were moments where the noise of 5 kids (2 boys screaming, 1 baby crying, Tobey playing "emergency bell", Eli moaning) all in the same room was enough for Alice and I to regularly say, "You boys go play upstairs!".

But as always, it's fun to see kids' dynamics, from older to younger and this time, from old friend to new friend (since Cedric has never met Joshua/Justin and Alice). I'm also surprised at how maternal I was for Cedric, probably wanting to make sure that Minette doesn't think I ignored him in the chaos of 5 kids. He was also surprisingly responsive, even though we see each other often.

I'm back home now with 3 kids. And miracle of miracles, they are all sleeping at the same time. A 5 kid playdate will do that to them. Minette got Cedric on board with me babysitting because she called it a sleepover. Sleepover indeed: Tobey and Cedric are both sleeping in the Thomas tent. I've already had to go in once and bust them for playing. But all seems quiet now in the Chang household.

Can we do three? I would say that 80% of the time during lunch I was ignoring Eli (but I was also chatting with Alice). And towards the end of the playdate, Joshua and Cedric were playing well together so I was back to just Tobey and Eli. Maybe the trick with three is keeping at least one of them self-entertained so that you only really have two. But then, why not just stick with two.