Dash, Liana, Owen, Kyle, Meera — last night
Living on a college campus, we have hundreds (literally, hundreds) of babysitters at our fingertips. Braydon and I could go out every single night and have a different babysitter each time. If we need someone to cover the kids for a couple hours during the day, I have lots of students that I can (and do) ask. But for night-time babysitting, we like to have one “regular,” steady, go-to person that we can count on to handle the bambinos, their bedtime (and bedtime battles), and Dash, with consistent comforting steadiness. Braydon and I go out for date-nights on Friday nights probably on average about every-other-week. Our first year on campus we had our beloved Kathryn as our steady nighttime babysitter. But in our 2nd year, Kathryn was away for study abroad, and we had to find someone new. We quickly landed with Liana. And for the past two academic years, Liana’s been our steady-consistent-go-to-nighttime-babysitter-dogsitter.
Liana lived in Sayre last year and we got to know her, and love her, fast. And, Dash loves her beyond belief (she is, for sure, Dash’s all-time favorite student; he goes absolutely crazy when he sees her).
Just about every-other-Friday, Liana and the bambinos have pizza and watch a movie. And then she puts them to bed. Often Liana’s boyfriend Mike joins them. I’m not there — so I don’t know what exactly goes on — but I know that Kyle, Owen, and Meera love their time with Liana. I don’t think they even think of this as “babysitting.” They think of it as “pizza and a movie Fridays with Liana.” Sometimes, if we go for more than a couple weeks without this ritual, the bambinos will request that Mommy and Papi go out… so that they can hang out with Liana.
Liana’s on track to graduate this year. Which is, of course, great for her, but bittersweet for us. I’m confident we’ll always stay in touch with Liana (we’re developing a pretty good track record of keeping in contact with special students we’ve become really close with during their time at Lehigh), but we’re all starting to realize that our regular Friday routine is about to shift and change and evolve. Liana babysitting has been a two-year ritual that’s anchored us all. We’ll miss her when she goes. Which brings much weepy-type feelings into my heart.
The J-Ms love Liana. I hope posts like this will remind us, years later, of some of the very special people we had in our lives during this phase of our family.