The Babysitting Nightmare

Chapter 1 Once upon a time, I was babysitting

“Lulu, you’re babysitting for the Mellonjellys!” said my mom.
“No!!!!” I shouted. The Mellonjellys are three 5 year old triplets, April, May & August. Plus they have a little sister named Springy. Well anyways, my friend babysat there once, and she says she still has nightmares about it. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.
I walked over to the Mellonjellys after school. “Hi Lulu!” said Mrs. Mellonjelly. “The kids can have peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for snack. Well, have fun!” and she shut the door behind her.
“We want snack!” the Mellonjelly kids chanted.
I ran into the kitchen and started making sandwiches. Seriously, those kids must have a hollow leg. We used up the whole loaf of bread.
I was so busy I didn’t notice Springy taking apart her sandwich and smearing it on the wall. Well, that is, I didn’t notice until April, May & August started doing it too, and they smeared some on me. I screamed and sent them outside while I cleaned up the mess. Soon I heard shrieks of laughter. I raced outside to see what they were up to. August was burying Springy, while April and May were digging through their mother’s zinnia garden, looking for worms.
Then I had an idea. The Mellonjellys have a pool in their backyard. That would get them clean and give them something to do while I finished cleaning the kitchen. After all, there wasn’t that much they could do in the pool, was there?


Chapter 2 The Pool

“Come inside and get your life jackets!” I ordered. They did just that, tracking mud all over the house. I made sure the life jackets were on tight then let them jump into the pool. Then I started cleaning. Now where was the vacuum? I thought.
Crash! I jumped around and looked outside. All I could see was a bunch of splashing. I looked at my watch. “Out of the pool!” I called. Well, I ended up having to get in the pool and pull them out. But when I took a closer look, I saw that the lawnmower was on the bottom of the pool. The kids had pushed the lawnmower into the pool!
I was beginning to lose my patience. “Inside all of you and get dried off!” I shouted. August had a sneaky look on his face, so I gave up on trying to figure out how to get the lawnmower out of the pool. Then we walked inside, unaware of the surprises that lay ahead of us.


Chapter 3 The Games

“Let’s play some games,” I said. Now we were upstairs.
“50 million pick-up!” shouted May, running in the opposite direction. I turned around just in time to see ten decks of cards thrown all over.
“Yeah!!” the others cried. Then they began flinging cards.
“Let’s play something else,” I said.
“I know!” shouted August, as if he were the smartest person in the world, “Let’s play follow the leader!”
“I’m first!” screamed April.
“No. Me!” shouted August.
“Nuh-uh!” said May. “I’m first”.
“Are not!”
“Are too!”
“Are not!”
“Are too!”
“Three-eyed-monster!”
“Evil alien!”
“Meany brat!”
“Unfair badguy!”
Then they started kicking and hitting each other. “I know a fair way to decide who goes first!” I said suddenly. The Mellonjelly kids froze, hands and feet in mid air. I did eeny-meeny-minny-mo. It turns out, August won. He started by making farting noises. Then burping. The others laughed and imitated him. But something seemed wrong, I thought. Then it came to me. Where was Springy?


Chapter 4 The Big disaster

“I’m going to look for Springy” I announced. Then I took off. Suddenly I heard a voice.
“Yes, I will make it the perfect size for you, Mrs. Tippy,” the voice said. The voice was coming from Mr. and Mrs. Mellonjellys’ bedroom. Slowly I walked inside. And there was Springy, sitting on her parents’ bed, with her mother’s best dresses. And, to my horror, a pair of scissors. “I a sewing person” she said, as she ripped and cut up the last dress.
“NO!!!” I screamed, but it was too late.
“All done!” she said happily. I’m sure my face had turned red by then.
“Get out and give me the scissors!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. It didn’t quite work out that way, so I took the scissors from her and grabbed her hand and together we ran to the room where the triplets had been playing. No one was there. Well except for May, that is. And when I took a closer look I saw that she was ripping pages out of a bunch of books.
“May!” I cried.
“I don’t like those pages,” she said innocently.
“Well, whether you like them or not, you do not tear pages out of a book!” I said, grabbing her. I heard something bang downstairs, so that’s where we went. There was August, with a bunch of plants lined up. (The Mellonjellys have about 40 in the kitchen).
He kicked one of the plants. They all tipped over like dominoes. “Oop-sies,” he said when he saw me glaring. I grabbed him. So now I had May, Springy and August. Where was April?
I looked all over the house. But she wasn’t there. So she had to be outside. When I got outside, I screamed. April had gotten at least six buckets of paint around her, and she had painted the whole front of the house as high as she could reach, with pink, blue, purple, green, yellow, orange and red.
“Isn’t it so prettyful?” she said. I grabbed her, too, and dragged all four kids into the house.
“You guys are in so much trouble,” I said. But before I could think of a good punishment, the phone rang.


Chapter 5 The Deal

I answered the phone.
“Hello Lulu,” the person on the other end said. “This is Mrs. Mellonjelly. I just remembered that I forgot to tell you that if they get in trouble, punishing them won’t work. They always find some way to enjoy it. Well, I’ve got to go! Bye!”
“Okay, bye.” I said.
Now what was I going to do if I couldn’t put them in time out or anything. Then I had an idea.
“Come over here,” I said, trying to make my voice sound happy. And surprisingly, they did just that. “We need to talk.” They didn’t say anything, so I kept going. “Let’s make a deal, okay?”
They nodded. I had never seen them so quiet. “I promise to take you to the park…”
But then August cut me off. “You mean the park with the rides?!” he shouted, jumping up and down.
“Yes,” I said, “now let me finish. But you guys have to do something for me.”
“Okay! What do we do?” shouted May.
“Well, you made a big mess, so you have to help me clean it up,” I said. “So first we need to get the paint off the house.”
“I saw some clear stuff next to the paint,” April said. “Will that work?”
We ran out to the garage. The clear stuff turned out to be paint remover! “Now let’s just hope the paint hasn’t dried yet,” I said. We took the paint remover and five paintbrushes outside. I started reading the instructions. “It says here that you paint this over the wet paint you want to take off, then you let it dry, and when it’s dry, you scrape the paint off,” I said. Then I opened the lid and we started painting.
“This is almost as fun as painting!” April said.
“Yeah!” agreed May, “except no pretty colors.”
So we painted for half an hour. Then we cleaned up the sandwiches and plants in the kitchen, and fixed the zinnia garden, taped the pages back in the book and picked up the cards. We decided there was no way we were going to get the lawnmower out of the pool or to fix Mrs. Mellonjelly’s dresses, so then we went outside to scrape off the paint. That paint remover really worked! You just had to run the thing over the paint, and it came off! When we were finished with that, we still had an hour to play. So I grabbed a little snack, and we were off.


Chapter 6 The Park

Well, we had to walk to the park, since I’m not old enough to drive yet. But when we got to the park, I said, “What ride do you want to go on?”
“ Let’s go there!” they all said together, but they all pointed in different directions.
“Uh-oh” I whispered. They all looked at each other.
“There!”
“No, there!”
“Nuh-uh! There!”
“Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat!”
“Dare-devil!”
“Baby!”
“Meanie-pooh!”
“You guys! Let’s not waste all our time fighting,” I said.
“But who goes first?” asked August.
“I’ll make a list of the rides we want to go on,” I said.
So I did that, then I ran my finger down the list with my eyes closed. When I opened my eyes I was pointing at the Lilly pad ride. So we did that one first. We went on seven more rides. Then I looked at my watch. “Okay, time to go home!” I said.
“NO!” the Mellonjelly kids shouted.
I looked at my watch again. “Okay, we have time for one more ride,” I said.
“Who gets to pick the ride?” asked May.
“Me,” I said quickly. And before they could argue, I said, “Let’s go on the screamin’ eagle.”
“But that ride’s scary!” said Springy.
“Then you’ll sit next to me.” I said.
After the screamin’ eagle we walked home. We got there ten minuets before Mrs. Mellonjelly. When she rang the doorbell, April got the door.
“Hello!” was all Mrs. Mellonjelly was able to say, before April interrupted her by saying, “No soliciting, Bye-Bye!” And she slammed the door.
“Who was that?” I asked as April marched into the kitchen.
“A person trying to soliciting,” answered April. “But I told her to go away.”
“Oh really,” I said as I ran to the door and opened it. Sure enough, it was Mrs. Mellonjelly.
She stepped into the house and looked around. “They didn’t make a mess?” she said, looking surprised.
“Well, um, they, um,” but luckily she interrupted me before I could say anything else.
“Well, I’ll have to get you get you to baby-sit again!”
Now would you look at the time! I have to baby-sit for the Mellonjellys again. Bye!