Chapter 10
Another month passed and before I knew it, Davanee was almost 5 months old.
I was playing outside with Davanee when Darry came home with a bunch of groceries. I put Davanee in her play pin and helped Darry bring in the groceries.
"How was your day?" I asked.
"Fine. Nothing new. Yours?"
"Last day of summer. But then again, I'm going to night school so it may still seem like summer."
"That's right. You start night school tomorrow." As Darry said that, I pulled out a bunch of baby food jars.
"Baby food already?" I asked.
"Why not? She's almost five months."
"You think we should start giving her real milk instead of formula now?" I asked.
"I dunno. Why don't you call the doctor?" asked Darry.
So I did.
"Not yet" replied Dr. Irene, "but she probably is ready for baby food."
I said thanks and hung up the phone.
"So what are your plans tonight?" I asked.
"I gotta go back to work pretty soon. I won't be home until late" said Darry, "what about you?"
"I'm baby sitting tonight. Remember Stephen, that guy from the group that I told you about? He's dropping his daughter off over here. He said that he has a date or something" I said.
"Oh, there's something I forgot to tell you" said Darry.
"What's that?"
"Two-bit is dropping his little sister, Kara, off here. His mom has to work late and he's going out with Kathy tonight. But Soda should be home early so you'll probably have help" said Darry as we finished putting the grocery away.
"When did you plan on telling me this?" I asked.
"I dunno. It just slipped my mind I guess. Sorry."
"It's ok. It shouldn't be that hard. How old is Kara?"
"5 I think. How old is the other kid?"
"Hailey is two" I said.
"5, 2, and 5 months. Your gonna have your hands full tonight little brother" said Darry.
"No kidding. Maybe we should just open a day care and start charging people" I suggested. Darry laughed. That kind of surprised me. Darry never laughs.
The afternoon came and went and soon it was time for everybody to come over.
I was reading to Davanee when I heard two-bit come in.
"Pony!" called Two-Bit. I picked Davanee up and brought her out to the living room.
"I'm right here" I said.
"Would you mind watching her tonight? I've got a big date with Kathy."
"Where you takin' her?" I asked.
"To the movies and then to dinner."
"Oh, yeah, real big date there. Darry told me y'all where stopping by" I said, "where's Kara?"
"Right hewre" said Kara, stepping out from behind two-bit.
"Kara, you remember Pony don't you? He's gonna be watchin' ya tonight until I get back, ok?"
"Otay" said Kara in her little 5 year old voice.
"Alright, see ya later" said Two-Bit, walking out the door. Kara and I just stood there, staring at each other for a minute.
"Who dat?" asked Kara, pointing to the baby.
"This is Davanee" I said. I set Davanee down in her play pin so that she could play with some of her toys.
"So, Kara, what'd you wanna do?" I asked. We really didn't have a lot of things for a five year old to play with. The toys we had were mostly baby toys.
"I dunno. You wanna play Barbie's with me?" asked Kara. She was holding a couple of Barbie dolls in her little arms.
Before I could say anything, there was a knock on the door.
"Hold that thought" I said. I opened the door to see Stephen and Haley.
"Just in time" I said.
"Just in time for what?" asked Stephen.
"For Haley to play Barbie with us."
"Us?"
"My friends little sister. Hailey'll have a playmate tonight."
"Oh that's good. I hope you don't mind but I might not be back until late."
"Date tonight?" I asked.
"Yeah. I've been putting it off for a while and she'll be mad if I'm late" said Stephen.
"Say no more. You go on and have fun. We'll play Barbie and stuff here."
"Good. She's already eaten so you don't have to worry about feeding her. If I'm running late, she usually falls asleep around 9. You don't have to put her to bed or anything. She brought a bunch of her Barbie dolls but she left the little shoes at home so that the baby doesn't get a hold of them. She also brought her Cinderella tape. I don't know if you have a tape player but she brought the tape anyways. Am I forgetting anything?"
"If she does get hungry what does she eat?"
"Anything really. Nothing with too much sugar or else she'll be bouncing off the walls" said Stephen, "I think that's everything. I've gotta go. Hailey, be a good girl, ok? Daddy will be back in a little while."
"Ok. Bye Daddy" said Hailey, giving Stephen a hug goodbye.
Stephen said thanks and left for his date.
"So where were we?" I asked.
"We where gonna play Barbie" said Kara.
"Can I be Stacey?" asked Hailey, sitting down next to Kara at the coffee table.
"I guess I'll be this Barbie" I said, picking up some random doll. I sat down at the end of the table that was near the play pin.
"That's not Barbie" said Kara.
"Well, then who is it?" I asked. To me they where all Barbie. I didn't really know which one was which but I guess I had to learn this kind of stuff if Davanee was going to play with Barbies.
"That's Skipper. That's Barbie's sister. Here, you be Ken 'cause you're a boy and boys can only be Ken" said Kara, replacing Skipper with Ken. We played Barbies for what seemed like forever. I had no idea there where so many rules when playing Barbie.
"Lets play something else" said Hailey.
"Alright, what do you want to play?" I asked.
"Lets play tea party" suggested Kara. Great. Another girly game.
"Tea party! Tea party!" chanted Hailey.
"But we don't have any tea cups" I said. I was hopping that once they learned we didn't have tea cups, they would lose interest in the game.
"That's ok, we can use plastic cups" said Kara. So I got a bunch of plastic cups from the kitchen and filled them with water.
"I wanna be the queen" said Kara.
"What about Hailey? What's she gonna be?" I asked.
"Pwincess" replied Hailey.
"You can be da king" said Kara, handing me a fake crown. She brought a bunch of dress up stuff with her for some reason. She pushed it down on my head, messing up my hair that I had spent thirty minutes on.
"What about Davanee? What can she be?" I asked, fixing the crown so that it wasn't covering my eyes.
"She's too little to play tea party" said Kara.
"Yeah. She too wittle" said Hailey.
We played tea party for about thirty minutes or so, sipping our water and talking in fake English accents. It actually wasn't that bad.
When we where in the middle of our game, Soda and Steve walked in.
"Having fun, Pony?" asked Soda.
"I never knew you liked to play tea party" said Steve.
"Oh, look girls, it's the village idiots" I said in a fake English accent.
Steve was about to hurt me but then I said "there's little eyes watching. I don't think that's a good idea."
"Pway wid us" said Hailey.
"Yeah, you can be the peasants. All the important people are taken" said Kara. So Soda and Steve sat down and played tea party with us which was kind of funny to watch. About twenty minutes later, the girls got bored with tea party. They wanted to watch Cinderella.
"Can you guys put the tape in while I put Davanee to bed?" I asked.
Davanee and I did our nightly bedtime routine while the others watched Cinderella. I kissed Davanee goodnight and joined the others in the living room.
In about an hour or so, Hailey and Kara where asleep in front of the TV. I turned the TV off and read a book while I waited for Stephen and Two-Bit to pick them up.
I was right in the middle of the best part of my book when I heard a knock on the door. It was Stephen.
"Hey" I said.
"Hey" said Stephen, "how was she?"
"She was good. We didn't have any problems. She's asleep on the floor" I said, opening the door a little wider so that Stephen could come in.
"Thanks for babysitting. My girlfriend would've killed me if I had to cancel again" said Stephen, picking up Hailey.
"Is that because you can't find a babysitter?" I asked.
"Part of it. She doesn't really understand sense she doesn't have kids. Well, thanks for watching her. It's getting late so we should start heading home" said Stephen, making his way to the door.
"Wait" I said. I grabbed Hailey's tape out of the tape player. "Don't forget this" I said, handing Stephen the tape. He said thanks and left. I figured it was going to be a while before Two-Bit got back so I moved Kara to the couch and covered her up with a blanket. Little kids look so cute when they're asleep.