What did the referee say and is that poop on the floor?

Being at the Superbowl in Detroit could not have been more chaotic or noisy than where I spent Sunday afternoon --- at my daughter’s house. My daughter had been on a three-day business trip and my son-in-law had been in charge of Xman during that time. His parents came down and spelled him over the weekend but had to return mid-afternoon on Sunday. We agreed to give him a baby break for the Superbowl and planned to arrive early Sunday afternoon. I could baby-sit while he and my hubby watched the game. My daughter was due to fly in around 5:30 PM and hoped to be home near the kick-off time.

Well, my son-in-law also invited one of his best friends with wife and 6-month-old baby girl. He also invited a friend from work with his wife and their 8-month-old baby boy. Are you getting the picture? No? Let me paint it a little more clearly.

The living room of this house is about 12 feet by 15 feet. It has one of those large modular furniture units that fit in a corner with a matching lounge unit against an opposite wall. The TV is one of those 4 foot high projection units taking up a large part of another corner near the fireplace. There is a cage (moveable play pen that I bought in desperation to save my grandson from untimely death by falling down stairs) that takes up about 40% of the remaining floor space in the living room.

Ok, here we go. Eight adults and three babies; two of the babies are mobile; Xman is not only mobile these days, he is fast as a snake and just as hard to grab.

Half filled beer bottles get placed randomly on the floor near the furniture and grabbed by other people as crawling infants head that way. The bottles were placed elsewhere just as randomly. I don’t think anyone knew that they hadn’t drunk out of the same bottle all evening!

What little that could be seen of the game was interspersed with son-in-law dashing back and forth from the kitchen with snacks from the oven and other food and drinks. (Frozen taquitos only hit the kitchen floor once, but that was before going in the oven, so they could still be served.) The two other young fathers spent part of their time changing diapers and part marking statistics on a paper chart to see who got ‘points’ or not. These guys had worked out a point schedule for who guessed whether the first toss would be heads or tails, who guessed when the first beer commercial would air, which team got the first foul, etc. The three young mothers were socializing amid the babble and comparing notes on feeding habits and diaper size and bowel movements (of the babies) while mixing baby food.

The noise level was pretty high and only increased when the little girl angel began shrieking like a jungle rooster and then grinning at the decibel level she had achieved. I swear she broke a beer bottle at one point.

Before we left our apartment in the early afternoon, I had asked my husband if we could possible come back to the apartment at half time instead of staying until the end. He was concerned that he needed ‘bonding’ time with his son-in-law and wanted to stay until the final score. Well, he was more than ready to head home at the half-time as was I!