The New Serendipitous Rendezvous

With a lack of blog ideas, we decided to change things up!

Soooooo, from now on Serendipitous Rendezvous is geared towards Child Development as both of us are going into fields dealing with children.

Hopefully this change will make it easier for us to create new content and make a more interesting blog... Plans so far include children book reviews, arts and crafts, and discussions about child development. If you have any other ideas, please let us know!

We hope you stick around and find out something interesting!

~H and T

What Babysitting Has Taught Me

Currently I babysit two very active boys...and it's a lot of work. I know I have no right to complain since I only babysit them 2 hours a day, 3 days a week, but I get a months worth of exercise after watching them for one day. Okay, that was an exaggeration, but it really does feel like it.

So, I'm the youngest in my family and I was a kid when my younger cousins were babies, meaning I was and pretty much still am inexperienced with taking care of kids. Most of what I've learned babysitting is the basics of how to deal with a little human being and I learned it through trial and error, which is basically how you learn everything in life.

The thing is though, every second I spend with them is valuable and educational to me. I've been able to get slightly better with understanding kid talk. I say only slightly because once the youngest was trying to tell me he wanted a banana and it took me a good minute to understand the word banana.

I've also gotten better at being patient...okay not really, but I've learned to control my anger. Talia often gets texts from me when I'm babysitting and I'm annoyed with the kids. One time I was trying to put the youngest's (he's 4) shorts on because he had went potty earlier and decided not to get dressed after it. I walked up to him and he was about to put it on when he decided to dart away and run in their box fort. So I ended up walking to a different room because I wasn't wanting to deal with that that day. He came to find me and ran away a couple times, but I finally got him to stand still. But just as he was about to put his foot through the hole, he screams at the top of his lungs right in my face...was it necessary, apparently. So long story short, it took around 10 minutes to get him dressed, which I now know is basically standard when getting a kid dressed.

I've also learned how random kids can be. In the summer, the oldest who is 8 asked me if he could bring the outside hose into the house and fill the bathtub with it...like who would even think about doing that?!?! As I gave him a disapproving look he added "we won't tell mama". I mean if anything you think about doing has to have a "don't tell mom" attached, it's not a good idea.

I've also learned how hard it is to enforce rules, especially since I'm only with them for 2 hours and I'm a lazy human being. I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like it is extremely hard to put someone else's kid in time out even though they put me in charge of their kid, I just feel I'm not in the right place to do that. Anyone else feel that way?

But no matter how hard it is to take care of these kids, it's really heartwarming when I see them outside of babysitting (usually at church) and they still want to hang out with me. It makes me feel like I'm not just a cruel, no fun babysitter.

What I learned the most though is how much work kids are. Seriously, you have to teach another human being how to act to grow into independent people and everything you do has an effect on how they turn out. Like "don't whine", "no screaming", "say please", and "just because you say please doesn't mean you'll get what you want". I wish I could just say "work it out yourself", but that would make me a bad adult so...

But everything I've gone through with these kids is 100 percent worth it. The crying and the screaming to the laughs and the smiles. I wouldn't trade any of it for anything.

H

Boy Trouble... Not Really

So. I’ve got boy troubles.

Not the usual boy troubles though, not by definition. It’s not issues with romance or anything like that. Kinda wish it was, that seems like it could be resolved easier.

Have you ever had a friend, and at one point you two were inseparable, like, planning to move across the country for each other?

I did. And that friend was a boy. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, because we were great friends. This friend and I accumulated quite the history. I’ll be transparent: we dated for a month. I ended it, after realizing I didn’t like him that way (plus, he was super clingy, and I felt like something was… off). But our friendship persisted for years.

Actually, it didn’t necessarily persist, we had ons and offs.

This boy had some… issues? How else to call it…?

He routinely befriended women, hit on them, and somehow victimized them without noticing he was.

I’m not kidding. There’s a whole club of us. We routinely talk with each other—“did you see what he did yesterday??” “look at what he just said to me. unbelievable…” “he knows I don’t play that shit”.

And somehow… I can still call him my friend. I put up with his habits and destructive ways of socializing. I can’t figure out why.

I’ve decided recently this can’t stand anymore. Something’s gotta change, or else we’re better off going our separate ways.

With all of the news lately calling out predators and abusers, it’s making me… jittery. Itchy. Like, I have to do something. When all of the women I knew were posting “Me Too”, I had nothing to share, and yet I felt guilty. Because no matter how hard I like to think I have my morals in place, that I’m a good- at least decent- person, I let the boys around me get away with those little actions every day. Those little actions that pile up into real shit.

So, I’m not going to wait until New Years to make this resolution. I’m making it right now. I’m going to call out my friends, especially the boys, when they do things that go against common sense and human decency. I’ve been too timid, maybe too scared of confrontation, to make this promise until now. I’m hoping more people will make this promise with me too, because it's a nice first step to take to maybe (hopefully) make the world a tiiiiiny bit nicer to live in. J

T

Not Knowing What the Heck You're Doing (a.k.a. College)

So now you're in college. The place where you finally get to learn how to do the job you want, except for those first two years where you're doing the same thing you did in high school. Plus, you'll most likely change your major somewhere in that time frame once or maybe twice. The good thing though is you get to pick your classes with some freedom of what time you'd like to take them.

When I entered college, I thought it was going to be soooo much better than high school. For one, I was ready to not have to wake up at 6 am and go to school for 7 hours straight. I was ready to have "freedom". I literally told my mom that wherever I went, I wanted to live in a dorm so I could experience college life...except I ignored the fact that I'm not social and I prefer not being around people 24/7.

So I ended up living in a dorm, but only for one semester because I'm not the most thought out person in the world. On top of that, I ended up transferring schools. So while most normal people transfer from a community college to a university, my creative self had to transfer from a university to a community college in the middle of the academic year.

On the plus side, I've had a way better social life since transferring.

After settling in to community college, I decided to change my major since everything else I planned was changing. So instead of majoring in Zoology, I decided to major in Early Childhood Education, basically the same thing. Just instead of calling the thing you work with an animal, you call it a monster..i mean kid.

While everyone's college experience differs, odds are, no one really knows what they're getting into when entering their freshman year. And no one really knows what they're doing for the rest of their college careers. And that's totally cool. My high school self would drop dead before thinking I would ever become a teacher. And who knows, I might even change that (although I can't really afford to change it again).

College may be everything you thought it would be and it may not. The key is to just learn to live with not knowing what's happening.

H

A Step Beyond the Comfort Zone

If you're anything like me, stepping outside of your comfort zone enters you into a haunted forest filled with screeching owls and glowing red eyes. It is alarmingly scary and makes you run right back into your little comfort hole with rainbows and lollipops. But this isn't supposed to scare you into staying in your bubble, in fact, this is quite the opposite.

Once you peek around your little wall labeled comfort and peer into this immensely horrifying beyond you may think to yourself "why would anyone go there?" and that's completely normal. Seriously, what's the benefit of forcing yourself to step beyond your comfort zone? Well, let me paint you a picture.

Let's say you actually did leave your little hole of all things familiar and safe, and you stepped beyond your comfort wall. You're terrified. The unnerving glowing red eyes tell you to give up, you'll never make it out. Worn out wooden signs advise you to turn back. There isn't even a clear cut path and you wander aimlessly about. Your thoughts echo in the dark, telling you this isn't worth it, there is no other side, turn back and run.

Despite the signs that attempt to dissuade you, you stay and continue forward. Time seems to have slowed down and there is nothing telling you if you are going the right way. You feel alone, like no one is there to help. You feel this is useless and you'll be wandering in the dark forever. But just when you feel you have had enough, when you feel like giving up, when you feel there is no point anymore, a light appears, the end is nigh.

Before you reach the end of this treacherous journey, you see something, a silhouette of a person. Behold, millions of people are doing the exact same thing as you, heading toward the light, trying to make it through this dark, dreary forest.

You may be surprised that you weren't actually alone although your thoughts made you believe so. But you made it, no matter what, you conquered the first step beyond your comfort zone. Be happy, feel proud, you did it and I bet you it wasn't that bad.

So you finally reached the light and now you're standing right outside of the dark, frightening forest, a symbol of your anxieties that tried to hold you back. Now, look around. You made it past the worst part. Sit back and relax as you continue moving forward. You may look back and see that forest receding in the distance, that part is over and there is so much more fun and interesting places ahead.

Now you made it past your comfort zone and accomplished what you set out to do (be it talking to your crush, setting up an appointment, or riding a roller coaster for the first time), now what? Well it's time to go back into your comfort zone, but don't worry, there will be a time when you have to leave it again and I hope it won't be as bad. You already learned to conquer those pesky little fears and anxieties. It won't be easy to do it again, but now you know you're not alone, you CAN do it again.

Sometimes it may feel like leaving your comfort zone isn't worth it, it's too much of a hassle. And while I'm guilty of doing exactly that, the best part of leaving your comfort zone is growing. You learn to do things you never imagined and that's the beauty of life. Take risks because you'll never know when something good comes around. And if nothing good came from that one risk, that's ok, you lived and you learned. Just remember to never give up and try again!

So, I hope the next time you may think "um, no thanks, I'll stay right here in my little comfort hole", you'll actually peek around your comfort wall and just go for it!

H