Watch out!

Graham got his new babysitter today, and boy, I'll bet she is worn out. Because Graham doesn't really like it when people leave. And when mommy, Chandler or I go anywhere without him, he wakes the dead with his screams. That being said, we Thought it might be prudent to have the babysitter over a couple of times beforehand to get him used to her. That seemed to work. He had a few tiny fits, but most of the time he kept it together.

This morning, however, was a different story all together. Chandler and I did our usual sneak out the side door on our way to school before Graham see us thing. And that worked. It doesn't always. Then the babysitter arrived, and the world ended. They even try to trick Graham with the old, let's go see the cat in the basement routine, while Karla made a bee-line (etymology?) for the door. He lost it! He couldn't be calmed down and went into a full-fledged panic attack running around and searching for "Momma".

Ring. Ring. "This is Mark". That was the next obvious course of action. So I headed home determined to find a way to keep him from tossing his cookies. When I opened the door he was tugging on the gate to the upstairs and gasping "Mah mah". He ran to me and climbed up into my arms and spent 15 minutes struggling for breath and making strange noises. I 'm not sure how to describe them, kind of a burp and a breath at the same time.

Anyway, he calmed down a little and I proceeded to get out toys from every room. I even went downstairs and got Chandler's old Vespa riding toy and refurbished it with new batteries. He was a slightly hesitant rider but then proceeded to drive it around a little. Not really drive around, since he didn't even attempt to steer. We got out his coloring book and put in the TMBG DVD. Then I kept going from room to room without him hoping he wouldn't follow. Graham looked for me right away for the first few attempts, but then the babysitter took him downstairs and played the LeapPad. Then he came up looking for me and wasn't all that interested because I had untangled the giant mess of Plug-N-Play games that was in Chandler's room and had brought them down for him to play with. I wandered into the kitchen and then snuck out the side door. I called the house about 20 minutes later and they were doing fine. Crisis averted. And by crisis, I mean gallons of puke.

Bee-line
The phrase derives from the behavior of bees. When a forager bee finds a source of nectar it returns to the hive and communicates its location to the other bees, using a display called the waggle dance. The other bees are then able to fly directly to the source of the nectar, i.e. 'make a beeline' for it.