Cake and macaroni

Other people's babies are easy to look after.

News at eleven.

I know, it's not the most amazing of breakthroughs, and considering I started babysitting at 14 I should still know this myself, but it seems that in the last few years I've spent so much time intensively taking care of my own kids that I've hardly ever been alone with other people's, and I'd forgotten this tiny but vital piece of information.

This morning was phase II of the Great Baby Swap, wherein I pottered about for the morning with a sweet and mostly silent 15-month-old, as well as (the highly contrasting) Mabel. (Not that she isn't sweet, but she was fairly possessive every time it looked like I might be dropping her for the newcomer, and she literally and figuratively ran and talked circles round him. But I'm sure they'll be best friends in no time.)

It was a piece of cake. He was perfectly content - or at least didn't indicate to me that he wasn't - and the best part was when he ate my homemade macaroni and cheese with chicken. I love it when other people's children eat food I prepare: it restores my faith in myself and my ability to feed a family. My own silly offspring may turn up their noses at real food, but that doesn't mean I'm Doing It Wrong.

What I need to take from this is the realisation that if I leave my own (tiny! helpless! unable to communicate! not) baby with someone else, she's going to be fine. As she was on Wednesday. She's not going to be hanging on them for boob, pestering them for Little Einsteins (probably at least because they won't understand what she's looking for), demanding a dinosaur vitamin and refusing to the waffle I just toasted because she asked me for it and swore up and down black and white that this time she'd eat it.

Moral of the story: People should swap babies more often. And I should get a babysitter and take my poor beleaguered husband out to dinner.