Seasoned Mom Moment
...can also be a Stupid Mom moment.
So the other morning Jake was annoyingly disciplined and got up an hour early to write, or work, or do something other than sleep. Me, I chose to sleep to the late hour of 7am, but then, I'm sleeping for two. Duncan came in at 6:45 or so and said something about Timmy being poopy, and being determinedly half-asleep I said something about go downstairs and tell Daddy. He went downstairs and Jake said something about going to play in the playroom, and off went Duncan to the playroom, Jake went back to his computer, and I went back to sleep, which meant when Jake jumped up to get ready for work and I jumped up to go walk my neighbor's dogs before Jake left for work, neither of us with time to spare, it was less than fun to discover poor Timmy, with a poopy diaper that was only half attached to his bottom.
Of course, the extra time we all spent sleeping and writing and playing in the playroom gave Tim plenty of time to roll around (silently, I might add--there was not a peep from to even indicate he was awake before I walked in) and get lots of poop on himself and the crib sheet and, horror of horrors, the Beloved Blanket. I told Jake to start the bath running on his way into the bathroom to shave, and for some reason he felt that a poopy baby meant it was necessary to protect the non-slip mat in the tub from coming in contact with a messy baby, instead of leaving the mat there to protect the very poopy baby from slip-sliding away all over the tub while I tried to scrub dried poop off him. So I had to stand there holding the poopy baby out in front of me to try and maintain my poop-free status while telling Jake in as few words as possible that he should replace the @&#^!*&% tub mat so I could put Timmy down. Luckily, Tim had managed to coat mostly the lower half of his body, with only a small amount on his hands and cheek. The latter parts were scrubbed first, and then I showed him how neat it was to play in the running water so that the hands kept nice and rinsed while I went to work on the rest of him.
Needless to say I did not make it up the hill to walk the dogs before Jake had to leave, but Tim was cleaned up in short order (without the unhelpful panic attack I would have had back in my Baby Liam days about baby in contact with poop and the bacterial nightmare my imagination would blow out of proportion--seasoned motherhood knows that yucky as poop is, the gameplan is still to turn messy baby into clean baby ASAP and panic, though helpful in other situations, usually does not significantly speed along a bath), and then Garrett made some excellent comments about Dad not leaving yet for work and asked to drive him to the railroad station. Driving Jake would give him an extra ten minutes to hang around, would get me and the kids in the car for a loop up the hill to let my friend's dogs out to pee, and would of course, of COURSE, allow us to get some Cait and Abby's, our bakery by the train station which magically yields cookies or muffins or chocolate croissants to Daddy when we drop him off and wait for his return from the pastry-filled depths of the station before heading to wait for his train.
So, we all hop in the car, we go to the station, Daddy gets out, Daddy comes back with a bag containing two smiley face cookies (for Alex and Bot) and two dinosaur cookies (for Dunc and G) a mini muffin (for Tim) and a chocolate croissant (there's a reason I never lost the baby weight from Timmy--and a lot of the baby weight came in the first place from the mysterious way chocolate croissants appease the queasy tummy). If you're wondering about Liam and Cory, they were off at a sleepover and therefore did not qualify for bakery privileges. Off we went to let out the dogs up the hill and then back home, where i settled everyone who went with me with their treats and when Alex and Bot appeared from sleeping in presented them with theirs. (Don't worry, Uncle Mark was home sleeping in as well, I didn't leave the dogs babysitting.) I put the Beloved blanket right in the washer so it might have a shot of getting clean and dry in time for Tim's nap, having thrown out the poopy crib sheet, Jake and I agreeing that a crib sheet that we've probably had since Liam was born was not worth the effort when we had plenty more of both cribs sheets and other laundry to expend the effort to redeem this one item (though once i realized that we really hadn't bought new crib sheets in forever and it might very well be one of our first crib sheets I did wonder if it should have some status as an antique and be restored.)
Timmy ate his muffin, but since he isn't an idiot and is my child he did not fail to notice that his treat had no chocolate and mine did, so he did convince me to part with a small piece to appease him and send him toddling off. I finished, took heart in my momentarily content tummy, and made the rounds of the ground floor. Collected a few plates, ordered G and Dunc to pick up the popsicle sticks they had dumped all over the playroom floor in order to recreate a crash scene out of a Thomas story, and came across a Tim with stuff on his face.
Now, in the past Jake's made fun of my tendency to check a baby's diaper by sticking my finger in the diaper. "That's one seasoned mom, to just stick her finger in there knowing what she might encounter..." I never thought much of it--it was often faster than getting a good view of the interior of a diaper, and if the child is poopy what better way to force yourself to change him promptly than to end up with poop on your finger? Changing the diaper involves poop anyway, so take child and finger to the baby wipes and everythign gets clean....
But this time I found myself picking up Timmy and, looking at his smudged face, I rubbed my finger at a smudge and licked it before I even realized that I was essentially making sure that this brown stuff was chocolate and not poop, and I was doing it in a most stupid of ways. Now, instinctively I'm sure I knew that this was surely chocolate because getting poop on the face is not a common toddler occurrence, gifted as they are for getting themselves into trouble and mess. But he did wake up covered in poop that morning, and the fact is I did check--by TASTING it.
Thank goodness it was chocolate.
So the other morning Jake was annoyingly disciplined and got up an hour early to write, or work, or do something other than sleep. Me, I chose to sleep to the late hour of 7am, but then, I'm sleeping for two. Duncan came in at 6:45 or so and said something about Timmy being poopy, and being determinedly half-asleep I said something about go downstairs and tell Daddy. He went downstairs and Jake said something about going to play in the playroom, and off went Duncan to the playroom, Jake went back to his computer, and I went back to sleep, which meant when Jake jumped up to get ready for work and I jumped up to go walk my neighbor's dogs before Jake left for work, neither of us with time to spare, it was less than fun to discover poor Timmy, with a poopy diaper that was only half attached to his bottom.
Of course, the extra time we all spent sleeping and writing and playing in the playroom gave Tim plenty of time to roll around (silently, I might add--there was not a peep from to even indicate he was awake before I walked in) and get lots of poop on himself and the crib sheet and, horror of horrors, the Beloved Blanket. I told Jake to start the bath running on his way into the bathroom to shave, and for some reason he felt that a poopy baby meant it was necessary to protect the non-slip mat in the tub from coming in contact with a messy baby, instead of leaving the mat there to protect the very poopy baby from slip-sliding away all over the tub while I tried to scrub dried poop off him. So I had to stand there holding the poopy baby out in front of me to try and maintain my poop-free status while telling Jake in as few words as possible that he should replace the @&#^!*&% tub mat so I could put Timmy down. Luckily, Tim had managed to coat mostly the lower half of his body, with only a small amount on his hands and cheek. The latter parts were scrubbed first, and then I showed him how neat it was to play in the running water so that the hands kept nice and rinsed while I went to work on the rest of him.
Needless to say I did not make it up the hill to walk the dogs before Jake had to leave, but Tim was cleaned up in short order (without the unhelpful panic attack I would have had back in my Baby Liam days about baby in contact with poop and the bacterial nightmare my imagination would blow out of proportion--seasoned motherhood knows that yucky as poop is, the gameplan is still to turn messy baby into clean baby ASAP and panic, though helpful in other situations, usually does not significantly speed along a bath), and then Garrett made some excellent comments about Dad not leaving yet for work and asked to drive him to the railroad station. Driving Jake would give him an extra ten minutes to hang around, would get me and the kids in the car for a loop up the hill to let my friend's dogs out to pee, and would of course, of COURSE, allow us to get some Cait and Abby's, our bakery by the train station which magically yields cookies or muffins or chocolate croissants to Daddy when we drop him off and wait for his return from the pastry-filled depths of the station before heading to wait for his train.
So, we all hop in the car, we go to the station, Daddy gets out, Daddy comes back with a bag containing two smiley face cookies (for Alex and Bot) and two dinosaur cookies (for Dunc and G) a mini muffin (for Tim) and a chocolate croissant (there's a reason I never lost the baby weight from Timmy--and a lot of the baby weight came in the first place from the mysterious way chocolate croissants appease the queasy tummy). If you're wondering about Liam and Cory, they were off at a sleepover and therefore did not qualify for bakery privileges. Off we went to let out the dogs up the hill and then back home, where i settled everyone who went with me with their treats and when Alex and Bot appeared from sleeping in presented them with theirs. (Don't worry, Uncle Mark was home sleeping in as well, I didn't leave the dogs babysitting.) I put the Beloved blanket right in the washer so it might have a shot of getting clean and dry in time for Tim's nap, having thrown out the poopy crib sheet, Jake and I agreeing that a crib sheet that we've probably had since Liam was born was not worth the effort when we had plenty more of both cribs sheets and other laundry to expend the effort to redeem this one item (though once i realized that we really hadn't bought new crib sheets in forever and it might very well be one of our first crib sheets I did wonder if it should have some status as an antique and be restored.)
Timmy ate his muffin, but since he isn't an idiot and is my child he did not fail to notice that his treat had no chocolate and mine did, so he did convince me to part with a small piece to appease him and send him toddling off. I finished, took heart in my momentarily content tummy, and made the rounds of the ground floor. Collected a few plates, ordered G and Dunc to pick up the popsicle sticks they had dumped all over the playroom floor in order to recreate a crash scene out of a Thomas story, and came across a Tim with stuff on his face.
Now, in the past Jake's made fun of my tendency to check a baby's diaper by sticking my finger in the diaper. "That's one seasoned mom, to just stick her finger in there knowing what she might encounter..." I never thought much of it--it was often faster than getting a good view of the interior of a diaper, and if the child is poopy what better way to force yourself to change him promptly than to end up with poop on your finger? Changing the diaper involves poop anyway, so take child and finger to the baby wipes and everythign gets clean....
But this time I found myself picking up Timmy and, looking at his smudged face, I rubbed my finger at a smudge and licked it before I even realized that I was essentially making sure that this brown stuff was chocolate and not poop, and I was doing it in a most stupid of ways. Now, instinctively I'm sure I knew that this was surely chocolate because getting poop on the face is not a common toddler occurrence, gifted as they are for getting themselves into trouble and mess. But he did wake up covered in poop that morning, and the fact is I did check--by TASTING it.
Thank goodness it was chocolate.
posted by Sue Freivald at
11:16 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home