Adventures in Babysitting

This is not about that movie that the chic from Karate Kid was in...this is about me. I have taken a "summer job". I am babysitting Kate and Aden, (Bean's cousins) a few days a week through out the summer.
Today is my first day.
We have already had a few....ummm..happenings. Let's call them learning experiences, shall we?
The things I have learned so far today are:

• A nine year old boy arrives with toy guns. A nine year old boy gathers up all other toy guns in a three block radius. A nine year old boy will then proceed to use these toy guns to emphasize any and all conversational points. If said nine year old finds himself, inexplicably, with out a "gun" , he can and will use any thing in the near vicinity that resembles a gun to continue pontification.
• Those Nerf dart gun things are truly annoying to anyone who is NOT 1) a boy 2) under 15
• There is a law of nature that states a child's desire to watch a film is proportionately related to the desire of other children to watch the movie-conversely. This means that you can NOT get three children to agree on any single movie. You have to promise 2 movies- with your fingers crossed behind your back- and hope they move on.(they don't)
• No matter how little water you add to a Barbie pool with the accompanying threats about getting yourself , the floor, the cat wet? Your down stairs will be soaked and you will have to change at least one child.
• Your nine year old nephew lives in house where-in the Mother always closes the door. This means that when you are getting undressed to hop in the shower (because they came at 8 am and I DO NOT shower before 10 am), your nephew will start charging up the stairs to tell you that he is done with the movie now and you will shout out " ADEN! I...! UHHH!! In a minute! " . THIS nephew though has heard the story about the other nephew seeing me naked, accidentally, a few too many times (Scott was a baby then-his father wasn't-'nuff said?) and had things figured out before I stopped sputtering and ran hell bent for leather back down the stairs, thus preventing unsavory outcomes.( such as blindness, the need for therapy and the need to explain to his mother).
• When you do get all of the way naked and one leg into the shower you will realize a few things. Things like your house is quiet while the street is sounding a bit like Mogadishu, that you heard your door slam, like those voices out on the street sound eerily familiar. Then you will hastily and a bit dampily, wrap a towel around you and holler ( a la Whispering Pines style) out of a window for the hoodlums to return inside. Then you will get that same leg back into the shower and realize that the hoodlums are now pounding away and screaming at the back door as they have locked themselves out. Then you will fumble your clothes back on and go down to let them in. And try not to visit physical violence upon their bodies.
• I also learned the it may not be a good idea to combine the idea of helping me strip the bathroom wall paper off the walls with a talk about "using the bathroom". This may confuse certain 6 year old nieces and they MAY think that you mean them to use the wall paper as toilet paper. I am waiting to see how the toilet will handle a bit of old vinyl wall paper......
• When you are applying make-up around two young girls, it ends up being "beauty shop", no mater what you do. I am wearing a shockingly small amount of make-up for this crowd.
• My niece thinks that barbies who swim naked are morally reprehensible.

It's only 1 pm as I write this. My goodness what will I have learned once the summer is complete?