A well-meaning grandpa is going viral for his hilarious babysitting blunders.
When Molly Madfis took a babymoon before the birth of her second child last year, she enlisted the help of her father, John, or Poppy, as he’s known to her 5-year-old son, Arlo.
“Arlo worships my dad,” Madfis, 37, tells TODAY.com. “But I was a little nervous about leaving them alone together. My dad is pretty co-dependent — like, he’ll go to CVS and then call me eight times with different questions.”
Madfis, a blogger and content creator in Los Angeles, had reason to be apprehensive. In a now-viral TikTok video, Madfis shared exactly what went down while she and her husband, Gideon Boomer, were on vacation.
The clip begins with a photo of Madfis and Boomer, 42, posing on a beach. And it features a warning: “How to have a relaxing babymoon — don’t ask your dad to babysit.”
First, John, 75, is seen on security camera footage leaving for school 30 minutes late — and without Arlo’s backpack.
Next, viewers are shown a series of texts that Madfis received from her dad over the course of her three-day getaway.
“Hi, how do I toast?” John asks. In his text, he includes a photo of Madfis’s toaster oven. Madfis proceeds to coach him on what button to press. Crisis averted.
Then John has questions about where he can find the sour cream and guacamole. Madfis responds with the exact locations of both items in the fridge.
For dinner, John take it upon himself to order takeout. But he’s unsure about what to do with the leftover food.
“Huge pizza. Should I refrigerate? Put in plastic bags?”
Madfis replies, “yes you should refrigerate leftover pizza.”
When Madfis requests some pictures of Arlo, John writes back, “Why? You know what he looks like.”
Madfis, who eventually called in reinforcements, asks the babysitter to “secretly” photograph John. She wants to know if her dad is “just sitting on his phone.”
That’s when a picture of John drinking a beer flashes across the screen.
“At first my dad was actually kind of mad that we had our babysitter come and help. But after we got back, he thanked us,” Madfis tells TODAY.com.
Madifis notes that the sitter helped with getting Arlo washed up and into his pajamas.
“The first night, bedtime didn’t go so smoothly ... I’m not sure he even did bedtime,” she says, with a laugh.
Madfis wants people to know that she adores her dad, and that he finds the TikTok video absolutely hilarious.
“He loves the limelight,” she says. “He was like, ‘Am I going to get more followers?’”
Related video:
