Beth stored up a cheekful of carrots as her father fed her, then spit them all over his shirt.
Peter and Grace got into a fight and began to cry.
Berk and David Michael got into a fight and began to cry.
Emma teased Ashley. Ashley whacked Emma with her crutch. Emma cried. Ashley was sent to the Millers’ car and Emma was sent to the Meiners’ car until they were ready to apologize to each other.
Luke did not say one word from the beginning of the meal to the end.
A horrible, stuffy feeling began to build up in my stomach. It might have been due to the big dinner I’d eaten. Or it might have been due to seeing the trouble caused by eight children with ten adults present.
What would the next day be like—with just five baby-sitters in charge of fourteen children?
Wedding Countdown:
Monday—five days to go
Stacey, Mary Anne, Dawn, and Claudia showed up at my house at eight-thirty sharp. Stacey brought her Kid-Kit, a box of games and toys she sometimes takes on baby-sitting jobs (we each have one); Dawn brought a big book of rhymes, songs, games, and activities for children; Mary Anne brought the club record book and notebook; and Claudia brought the nametags and some art supplies.
“Let’s put on our own tags before we forget them,” I said. “Then we better get organized.”
“It’s such a beautiful day,” said Stacey as she slipped the red star over her head. “Maybe we should try to stay out in your backyard as much as possible, Kristy. The picnic tables would be good for reading stories and coloring and stuff. And the kids can play ball, run after Louie, play games, anything—all in one place where we can easily keep an eye on them.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “We’ll see how it goes. If it gets crazy, we can start splitting the groups up. Oh, Mary Anne, Mom got out our old playpen. You might need it.”
“Thanks. That’s perfect. I’ll set it up outside so Tony and Beth can be with the big kids.”
We set to work in the backyard.
Just before nine o’clock, the Millers arrived. While Mom talked to Aunt Colleen and Uncle Wallace, the members of the Baby-sitters Club showed Ashley, Berk, Grace, and Peter to the yard. We gave them their nametags, and I tried to introduce the kids to my friends and explain about the groups and leaders. But before I had gotten very far, Aunt Colleen called me from the back porch.
“Just a few instructions,” she said as I ran to her. “I know you and your friends will have your hands full today, but I need to tell you a couple of things. Peter goes down for a nap sometime after lunch—around two. Grace generally doesn’t take a nap, but if she’s cranky, she’ll sometimes go down with Peter.”
“Wait, I better write this down,” I said.
I got a pencil and a pad of paper from the kitchen. “Okay, Peter—nap at two,” I said to Aunt Colleen, trying to sound professional. “Grace—maybe a nap at two.”
“Right,” said my aunt.
Then she handed me two bottles of pills. “These are prescriptions,” she told me. “Put them somewhere safe, out of reach of Peter and Beth and all the small children. I hope you won’t need them, but you might. This bottle, the one with the pink cap, is Berk’s. It’s for his allergies. He’s been in good shape lately, but if you’re outdoors a lot and he starts wheezing, give him one of these and make sure he lies down inside for a while. He’s used to this and knows what to do.”
I scribbled away frantically. I was beginning to panic. What if Berk (or any of the children) got sick? One of us would have to care for the sick child, and the others would have to take over the rest of the kids from that group. Another thing: We hadn’t thought to “childproof” my house. We were inviting little kids into a home where electric sockets, medicine, and poisonous cleaning supplies were all over the place. We didn’t have to keep those things out of the way anymore. David Michael was seven years old and knew better. But when Aunt Colleen said to put the pills away in a safe place—where the little kids couldn’t reach them—I began to worry.
However, my aunt didn’t know what I was thinking. She was still talking. “These other pills,” she was saying, “are painkillers. They’re for Ashley. The doctor at the hospital gave them to us after he set her leg. Ashley hasn’t taken one in a week, but every now and then her leg will swell under her cast, and it’s quite painful. Give her half a pill with food if she complains of pain.”
“Ashley—one half pill with food for pain,” I repeated.
“I guess that’s everything,” said Aunt Colleen. “I don’t think you’ll have any problems.”
“Great,” I said. I took my notes outdoors so I could share them with the other members of the Baby-sitters Club.
So far, things in the backyard looked peaceful. Everyone was wearing a nametag (although Ashley was complaining that hers looked babyish), and the kids were exploring the yard and the toys in the Kid-Kit.
“Yoo-hoo! Kristy! We’re he-ere!” It was Aunt Theo. (Who else would say “Yoo-hoo”?) “Hi!” I shouted.
Emma burst outside, followed, at a much slower pace, by Luke. Aunt Theo came last, with Beth—and a lot of equipment.
“Hi, girls,” said my aunt.
“Aunt Theo, this is Mary Anne, Stacey—”
“Fine, fine,” my aunt interrupted. “Now, I’ve brought Beth’s Walk-a-Tot chair so she can scoot around safely. She loves the chair. And here’s her stroller in case you want to take a walk. If she cries when we leave—and she probably will—just put her in the stroller and walk her around. She’ll calm down after a while.”
I looked at Mary Anne, who was taking notes this time. My head was swimming. Naptime, pills, strollers, Walk-a-Tots … What had we gotten ourselves into?
Aunt Theo wasn’t finished yet. “Beth usually takes two naps, one around eleven and another around two.”
Well, that was something, I thought. At least the afternoon nappers would be asleep at the same time.
“And she usually takes a bottle to bed with her. Make sure you only give her the prepared bottles I brought. She’s allergic to cow’s milk, so the bottles are filled with a soy formula.”
“Beth—allergic to milk,” Mary Anne murmured.
I nudged Stacey. “Where are all these kids going to sleep?” I whispered.
Stacey widened her eyes. I guess she hadn’t thought about naps and bottles and pills, either.
Aunt Theo finally stopped talking.
And just in time. Mary Anne, Stacey, Dawn, Claudia, and I were about to get our first glimpse of the Fielding kids. Mom was leading a whole passel of people into the backyard—all six Fieldings, plus Watson, Andrew, and Karen.
Courage, I told myself. Make like you’re the Cowardly Lion. If you think you’re courageous, then you’ll be courageous.
“Honey,” Mom said to me, “I want you to meet Mr. and Mrs. Fielding.”
I shook their hands. Then I said, “And these are the other members of the Baby-sitters Club—Stacey, Dawn, Mary Anne, and Claudia.”
Everyone exchanged hellos.
Karen took Andrew’s hand and led him to the table where Claudia’s art stuff was set out. “I’m going to draw a big, ugly picture of Morbidda Destiny,” I could hear her say.
But the Fieldings hadn’t moved an inch. A baby was huddled in his mother’s arms with his face buried in her neck. A girl about Grace’s age was holding Mr. Fielding’s hand solemnly.
And a little boy and girl were clutching their father around his legs, their faces also buried.
Watson leaned over and whispered to me, “They’re all very shy.”
Now, this is the sort of thing that kills me about Watson. Duh. Of course they were shy. Any fool could see that.
Mrs. Fielding spoke quietly to her children. “This is where you’re going to play today. Andrew and Karen are here. See?” She pointed to the table where Andrew and Karen were coloring and giggling.
I knelt down to child level. “I’m Kristy. We’re going to have lots of fun,” I said
. “There are swings and games and friends to play with.”
The oldest child (Katherine?) bit her lip and gripped her mother’s hand more tightly.
“Do you like dogs?” I tried. “We’ve got old Louie—”
“A dog, Daddy?” whimpered the little boy.
Oops, bad idea, I thought.
Mrs. Fielding tried to untwine the baby from around her neck. “This is Tony,” she said. “I think I’ll just put him in the playpen.”
She did so, with Katherine trailing behind, holding on to her mother’s jean skirt.
Tony’s face slowly crumbled. He sat on his bottom with his arms in the air and his lower lip trembling. His eyes filled with tears. Then, very slowly, he opened his mouth and let out a shrill, “Wahh!!”
Mary Anne turned pale.
Mrs. Fielding looked flustered. “I think—well, we’ll just leave him there. He’ll stop crying after a while. Now, this is Katherine.”
“And this,” said Mr. Fielding, indicating the little boy attached to his left leg, “is Patrick. And this is Maura.” (Little girl attached to right leg.)
Katherine, Patrick, and Maura made no moves to leave their parents.
I glanced at Mom. Mom glanced at Watson. They talked to each other with their eyes. Finally, Watson clapped his hands together and said heartily, “Are the adults ready to go?”
“We have a lot to do today,” added my mother.
Mr. Fielding pulled Patrick and Maura off his legs.
Mrs. Fielding got herself out of Katherine’s grip. “We’ll see you this afternoon,” she said to her children. I could tell that Mr. and Mrs. Fielding were having as much trouble leaving as their children were having letting them go.
The adults walked around to the front of the house and piled into their cars.
Katherine, Patrick, Maura, Tony, Beth, and Peter all began to cry. Andrew took stock of the situation and began to cry, too.
Something else us baby-sitters didn’t count on: seven crying children.
“Quick, put on the rest of the nametags and divide into groups,” I said.
We did. Stacey and Dawn had no criers, Mary Anne and I had two criers each, and every kid in Claudia’s group was crying.
But nobody panicked. Mary Anne put Tony in Beth’s Walk-a-Tot and Beth in her stroller, and walked Beth around the yard as Aunt Theo had suggested.
I talked quietly to Andrew and he stopped crying right away. After all, he knew where he was. Then I took my group off to a corner of the yard, pulled Katherine onto my lap, and began to read Green Eggs and Ham.
Claudia had a tougher job, but she did what I did, and led her three criers to a different corner, sat down, and began reading Where the Sidewalk Ends. Soon, every one of our criers had become a giggler. And Mary Anne’s criers were quiet.
When I finished reading Green Eggs and Ham, I looked around the yard and took a fast head count. Stacey was sitting at one of the picnic tables with Luke, Ashley, and Emma. They were making woven place mats out of construction paper.
Nearby, Dawn was playing Monkey in the Middle with David Michael, Berk, and Karen.
Claudia and I were reading to our groups, and Mary Anne had successfully put both babies in the playpen and was tickling their feet.
Good. Fourteen happy children. The first crisis was over.
The rest of the morning went fairly smoothly. There were a few arguments and tears, but nothing to complain about. At lunchtime, we seated the twelve older children around the picnic tables, and put Tony in the Walk-a-Tot and Beth in her stroller. Then Stacey and Dawn went into the kitchen to get the children’s lunches. Mom had asked the parents to pack a separate lunch for each kid. This was a little hard on my aunts and uncles since they were staying in a motel, but it worked well because my friends and I didn’t have to spend time making lunch. Also, we knew the parents would send food their kids would eat. This was important: We had a lot of picky eaters and a few kids with food allergies.
After lunch, Tony, Beth, Maura, Patrick, and Peter went down for naps. We simply lined them up on a blanket in the living room, and after a while they all fell asleep.
Good timing. At two-thirty, a horn beeped in our driveway.
“That’s Nannie,” I told Mary Anne. “She’s here for Karen and me.”
Nannie was helping out at Watson’s that week, too, and she was supposed to take Karen and me to the florist to look at wedding flowers. Mary Anne was watching the nappers while Claudia took over my group. Claudia was reading to Grace, Katherine, and Andrew on a blanket under a tree, and the three of them looked pretty drowsy.
“Come on, Karen!” I called.
Karen raced across the yard and we scrambled into the Pink Clinker.
“How come we’re going to see the flower lady, Nannie?” Karen asked. (Nannie isn’t any relation to Karen, of course, but Karen loves my grandmother and started calling her Nannie the first time they met.)
“We have to see about flowers for your hair,” Nannie told her.
“Flowers for my hair?” Karen squealed with delight.
“And for Kristy’s,” said Nannie. “You two will have matching flowers.”
“What about the flowers for my basket?” Karen wanted to know.
“Rose petals. We’ll talk to the florist about them, too. And, Kristy, we’ll see about your bouquet.”
Who would have thought that choosing a few flowers could be so difficult? You would have thought we were choosing flowers for a royal wedding in London instead of just Mom and Watson’s backyard wedding.
First, Nannie showed the woman in the store swatches of the material from Karen’s dress and my gown, which were going to be yellow. The woman said, “How about white flowers?” and Karen said, “Yuck,” and Nannie said, “Salmon,” and I said, “Yuck,” and Karen said, “What’s salmon?” and I said, “It’s a fish,” and Karen said, “Yuck” again.
After about fifteen minutes of that, we finally settled on yellow and white, with yellow petals for Karen’s basket.
But the job was only half done. We still had to decide how Karen and I would wear our hair so the florist would know whether to make up wreaths or rosettes or what.
An hour later, we left. I was exhausted.
And a herd of children would be waiting for me when I got home.
However, coming home turned out to be the nicest part of the day. The little kids were rested from their naps and stories, and the older kids were excited because Stacey and Dawn had helped them put together a play, which they performed with great delight for Claudia, Mary Anne, me, and the younger children.
At five o’clock, the parents came home to fourteen happy children.
The members of the Baby-sitters Club decided that the first day had been a success.
Wedding Countdown:
Tuesday—four days to go
Tuesday, June 23rd
Today was another bright, sunny day, thank goodness, and almost as warm as a nice September day in California. Yesterday was fine with all the kids in Kristy’s backyard, but we decided to do different things this morning. The kids would get tired of the Thomases’ yard pretty quickly So after the parents left, Mary Anne took the babies for a walk, Stacey took the red group to the brook to catch minnows, Kristy and Claudia walked their groups to the public Library for story hour, and I took David Michael, Berk, and Karen to the school playground.
What a morning my group had—all thanks to Karen’s imagination.
Tuesday morning started off a lot like Monday morning, except that the mothers didn’t have any more instructions, us baby-sitters were a lot more confident and a lot less worried, and Mr. Fielding had a much easier time prying Maura and Patrick off his legs.
When the parents left, there were only six criers (Andrew barely noticed that Watson was gone), and they were just crying token cries, except for the babies, who kept Mary Anne’s hands full for quite a while.
We had agreed the evening before that we would take the kids on the trips tha
t Dawn described in the Baby-sitters Club Notebook, and we decided to get started right away.
We must have looked pretty funny.
First of all, once the pink group had calmed down, Mary Anne had to fit both babies into Beth’s stroller. It wasn’t easy, but finally she sort of smushed Tony into Beth’s lap.
Claudia and I had to get seven small children (our two groups, plus Jamie Newton) all the way to the library. We figured it would take about half an hour to walk them there.
“Wagons!” said Claudia suddenly.
“Oh, great idea!” I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I loaded Maura, Patrick, and Peter into David Michael’s old wagon, and Claudia loaded Grace, Katherine, and Andrew into Mary Anne’s old wagon. After we each packed a bag containing graham crackers, cans of juice, toys, extra diapers, and spare training pants, we were ready to pick up Jamie and go.
Despite the fact that David Michael hadn’t used his wagon in at least two years, he yelled after me as I pulled my load down the driveway, “And those kids better not hurt my wagon while you’re gone, Kristy!”
It must be a little hard for him to practically have a day-care center in his house.
Anyway, everyone left for wherever they were going. Stacey set off for the brook with Luke, Ashley, and Emma. They reached it pretty quickly, even with Ashley galumphing along on her crutches, and settled in for a morning of fun, which Stacey told me about later.
Stacey had brought along a garbage bag to wrap around Ashley’s cast so it wouldn’t get wet. Even so, Ashley wasn’t able to do much at first.
“I can’t get into a good fishing position!” she exclaimed. “My leg just won’t go that way.”
It was true. Luke and Emma were crouching along the bank with pails and nets, but Ashley could only stand up or sit with her leg straight in front of her.
“I could help you wade,” Stacey said uncertainly. “You could take off your sneaker, and I could help you stand in the brook on your good leg.”
Ashley looked from her cast to the water tumbling over the rocks and then at Stacey. “I better not,” she said, sounding disappointed.