the horsey tree

Lesson for the day: Never put your one-year-old to bed in just a diaper. You just never know what might happen.

Do you really want the details?

Baby C went down for his first nap in a T-shirt and a diaper.  Yes.  Older, wiser mothers may have thought twice about this. They might have thought that any day now that one-year-old might turn his diaper into a toy and start exploring.  They might have had the foresight to pull on a pair of shorts or even a onesie or perhaps a straight-jacket to prevent such exploration.  But, alas, I suppose one must learn some lessons through experience as one begins her progression into the older, wiser mother category.  Anyways, to make a gross story short…C woke up from his nap.  I heard him talking but decided to leave him in his crib for a bit to play as I usually do.  The problem is, today he was playing in his doo…. As I found out when I went to retrieve him.  He had removed the diaper and THEN decided to poo and pee all over his sheets/bumper pad, etc.  The diaper itself was clean. The baby was a complete mess.  And, since everything at this point in his life is something to be discovered and, most of all, tasted…well…let’s just say his face was smeared with poo and he was sucking his thumb when I entered the room.

So, today was bath day.

When I was quite young and, I suppose, recently potty-trained but not yet fully trusted to make it through the night, my mom would scoop me up out of bed for mid-night visits to the bathroom.  She would set me on the toilet in my delirious state and tell me to "go potty." I would obediently comply. Then, back to bed.  I never remembered it in the morning.  My sister thought this whole routine was hilarious.  I was always a sound sleeper.  Some time I’ll recount the story of a certain night time visit from the tooth fairy. 

My sweet babe is so very sweet when, for whatever reason, he is disrupted from his sound night-time sleep. A few times recently I have needed to change his diaper after he has been asleep for a couple of hours.  Sometimes he can manage to stay asleep through the entire clothes/diaper change.  Most times, though, he just opens his little eyes, stares at me confusedly, though with utter trust, endures the changing and wiping and dressing without a peep and nods contentedly back to sleep.  Tonight, I put C down over at a friend’s house.  When it was time to leave, I scooped up the sleeping babe and his blanket and his doggie.  He looked around, but was still groggy enough not to care what was happening to him. I went outside, carrying the babe to the car, got only minimally wet from the sprinklers, and realized I didn’t have my keys.  I went back in the house to retrieve them, carrying my sleepy-but-no-longer-sleeping babe into the brightly lit house full of happy loud children. He was now awake but in a stunned sort of awe that turned back into sleep when we finally got on the road. We just made it home where, upon exiting the car, I bonked little C’s his head on the door frame. Note that throughout the whole ordeal, C is trying desperately to give in to his sleep and keeps resting his heavy little head on my shoulder. I, overwhelmed by his sleepy sweetness, can’t resist kissing his snotty little nose several times.

He is in his crib. With doggie and blanket. Back asleep. He never made a peep.

Tonight is the eve of my sweet first baby’s first birthday.