A Taste of Motherhood

Kathryn has been the babysitter for the Lisonbee family for just about a year now. She nanny's for the mom Kate . Kathryn loves the kids and the kids love her. It has it's ups and downs but mostly everything has been a wonderful experience.
But now, they are moving. Justin, the dad, has been given a promotion and they are moving to California. Everyone is sad.
Katie went to California this past weekend to help find the family a home and to be with Justin for some special events, so Kathryn was asked to babysit. This has been a 24/7 situation of which Kathryn has done fairly well with. The first few days had a few little difficulties...mostly meltdowns on the part of the two year old Nate, but overall, things have gone beautifully. Kathryn did burn her arm at work and has had some real discomfort and pain with it so that has made it a little more difficult to handle everything as easily as Kathryn would have liked to.
But overall, I have been quite proud of her. Del and I have heard some interesting comments from Kathryn about how 'she will parent when and if she ever has her own kids' and 'if I had ever done THAT when I was a kid, I would have slapped myself silly'. We have smiled a few knowing smiles over the past few days and feel this has been a good learning experience for Kathryn in several areas, not just parenting.
She's learning some concepts about patience, long suffering, kindness, discipline, compassion and a few other Christ like qualities. Where we as parents have been able to learn some of these traits one child at a time, she has been thrust into this situation with 4 kids all at once. And I think she's held her own fairly well. I'm quite proud of her.
I imagine that when she picks Katie up from the airport tomorrow at noon, that she'll transfer the mantle of authority to Katie and go right home to take a very long nap.
That's okay - she deserves it.