What do Babies want to do? I babysat for a friend tonight who has a precious little seven month old girl. I was only going to be there for an hour, so I thought it would be pretty simple. But within the first 5 minutes, we’d done all I could think of doing, and she was so bored with me.

We played with the toy guitar. Boring. We ate a cookie. Messy. Then boring. We read a book. Even I was bored. We stood out on the balcony. King Boring.
Older kids are easier. You can play Star Wars or Barbie, or give them the Nintendo and go read a trashy novel while they amuse themselves. But seriously, what do you do with a seven month old? Every time I switched to a new activity to keep her attention, I wondered, “Am I contributing to this child’s future Attention Defecit Disorder?”
The only thing that seemed to work, was to walk around the apartment. Understand, it’s a small apartment, and you end up doing a lot of circling. The sad part was, the only thing that held her attention was the television. As I would circle in front of it, I would pause to watch a second or two. And just like an adult, she would get that glazed-over TV stare, and freak me out. It wasn’t like it was Barney or the Teletubbies or even the Power Puff Girls (who rule, by the way), it was MSNBC’s new Donahue show. Frightening.
I hope one day when I have my own kids I’ll figure out what Babies want to do. Or maybe I’ll just park them in front of the television.