Pros and Cons

We just spent two days caring for our favorite respite sibling group, ages 3, 5, 9, and 10.  In many ways it is soooo nice to have older kids around.  Brishen loves that he can play his favorite board games with them.  Brishen and Basia love playing Legos with them.  They all LOVE playing outside and in the pool together.  No one needs their diapers changed or to be watched every second of every day like some wee ones I know.  It's kind of refreshing, if any part of caring for 10 whole children can be considered refreshing.

I did, however, notice some disadvantages to having older kids.

1.  The toilet gets really, really dirty really, really quickly.  Did I mention 3 of the 4 kids are boys?

2.  Their bedtimes are later, meaning my work day is an hour or two longer.

3.  They mostly want to play video games, which is probably the biggest reason why Brishen likes to have them here.  If they were ever here longer than a couple days, man would they hate my "screen time" restrictions!