Poo-poo head

On Saturday, I dressed Kaylee in one of my favorite outfits for her: a onesie that says “little monkey” and has a picture of a monkey eating a banana. When I saw it in the store, I just had to buy it -- even though I was in a Gymboree, where the clothes are much too expensive when you consider that the baby will grow out of them in 10 minutes. That’s how much I love this onesie.

So imagine my horror when I realized that, 15 minutes after I dressed her, Kaylee had a diaper explosion. And not just any diaper explosion –- a sick baby diaper explosion. That’s the worst kind, I’ve recently learned.

I had to call Rob in for reinforcements while I cleaned poo off her calves, thighs and back. I didn’t actually need him to do anything other than cheer me on, but his laughter was a nice counterpoint to my frantic chanting of “ew, ew, ew, ew.”

After I’d properly mourned the staining of the monkey onesie and sent Rob off to throw it in the washing machine, I dressed Kaylee in something else and started trying to forgive her for the incident.

Later, I carried her into our bedroom to talk to Rob, while I nuzzled her and pretended to eat her neck, face and head. Then I held her out to Rob and said, “Here, kiss your daughter.”

He gave her a peck on the side of the head, and then as I pulled her away, he said, “What is that on her head? ... Is that poo? Does she have POO on her HEAD?”

I turned her around and there it was. Poop. Right there in her hair, most likely deposited there when I took her onesie off.

And Rob, sweet husband that he is, had one more thing to say.

“You really are going to turn her into the stinky kid, aren’t you?”

Survivor

If my family were characters in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi/horror novel a la The Stand, Kaylee would be a survivor and the rest of us would be dead.

Because she was able to giggle and play immediately after episodes of Exorcist-style vomiting, Rob and I attributed Kaylee’s trouble last week to “air in the tummy” or difficulty digesting her new solid foods. We were wrong. Very, very wrong.

Kaylee apparently brought the superflu home from daycare, and she managed to pass it on to all of her Colorado Springs-based family within 24 hours. I never thought a 12-pound, 10-ounce little person could wreak that kind of havoc.

On Friday night, we had dinner with Grandma and Uncle Tim, and Kaylee exploded all over a previously clean eating establishment. On Saturday, we had a picnic with Gram, Papa, Uncle Jamie, Aunt Laura and cousins Hope and Evie, and there were no major bodily-fluid incidents.

By Sunday night, Grandma, Uncle Tim, Gram, Aunt Laura, Rob and I were all in the grip of a nasty stomach bug, and Papa was feeling kind of queasy.

That’s right. My baby took out four households.

And while we were all incapacitated with misery, she was bouncing in her Jumperoo, laughing her little head off.

Again with the puking / I’m so happy I have Rob

I think I may have to saran-wrap everything in Kaylee’s room.

Kaylee almost always wakes up at around 3 a.m. and has a bottle before drifting quietly back to sleep. This is usually a rather uneventful experience: feed the baby, put her back in bed, the end.

Not so much the last two nights, though.

Rather than going right back to sleep, Kaylee’s bottle-drinking has been followed by a hiccup and then a shower of vomit. She hasn't seemed to mind, really. She's been in just as good a mood after channeling Linda Blair as beforehand, so I don’t think she’s actually been sick.

Kaylee may not have minded, but it was a bit traumatic for Rob. In two out of three spit-up incidents, he actually had to go take a shower because of the volume of vomit that had been dumped on him. The carpet in front of the rocking chair in her room was squishy, Kaylee’s pajamas were soaked, and the dog was in heaven.

You may remember that this is the week that Rob was scheduled to go out of town for work, but something came up and his company decided not to send him. This was disappointing in an aww-now-he-can’t-have-adventures-in-Virginia kind of way, but a relief in a now-Mommy-is-less-likely-to-go-crazy kind of way.

And thankgodthankgodthankgod he was here. Because a hysterical 3 a.m. phone call from his wife screaming, “I’M COVERED IN PUKE. GET ON A PLANE AND COME HOME RIGHT NOW SO I CAN TAKE A SHOWER!” probably wouldn’t have helped him achieve maximum productivity.

I should know better

I took a big risk this morning.

In honor of my 29th birthday, I decided to dress Kaylee in a new “I love Mommy” onesie. As soon as she was dressed, I sat her down and we had a little talk about how important it was that she not throw up all over her nice shirt.

I’m pretty sure she was listening intently, even though she was staring at a ceiling fan. Here’s hoping her shirt makes it through the day.

UPDATE: She managed to make it through her entire school day without spitting up on her clothes ... and then she threw up on them at home.

Daddy’s little girl, part 3

Immediately after Kaylee was born, I felt a need to buy clothes for her that glorified her parents. I’m not sure why, but it may have been because I was so tired. I probably thought, “Well, I’m exhausted and cranky, but I’ll feel better about parenthood if I put her in an ‘I love Mommy’ onesie.” And then to be fair, I had to buy a “Daddy” one, too.

Here’s an inventory of the parent-praising clothes Kaylee owns:
• “I love Mommy” onesie
• “I love Daddy” onesie
• “Perfect, just like Mommy” onesie
• “Daddy’s little princess” onesie
• Two pairs of “I love Mommy” socks
• Two pairs of “I love Daddy” socks

The first time I put Kaylee in her “Perfect, just like Mommy” shirt, she pooped on it about 30 minutes later.

All right, I can take that. It’s nothing personal. I mean, she’s just a baby. Plus, I got the stain out easily enough.

Then, a couple of Fridays ago, she spit up on the “I love Mommy” onesie at daycare. When a baby erupts there, protocol is to put soiled clothing in a red bag labeled with a biohazard symbol (!!) and send it home with the parents. But Rob, having never been made aware of spit-up protocol, didn’t realize he was supposed to take the red bag out of her bin, and the clothes were left over a weekend to ferment, sealed tightly in plastic.

I can’t be bothered to do laundry more than once a week, so it wasn’t until Sunday that I took a good look at that Mommy-worshiping onesie and realized that it had decided to grow some hair. Tiny little dark-green spots had sprouted on the shoulders, in the middle of all the crusty grossness.

Disgusted as I was, I decided to make a go of cleaning it, discovering only that baby laundry detergent doesn’t stand a chance against that kind of ick. Mentally humming a funeral dirge, I dropped it in the trash can.

“It’s ok, though,” I thought as I headed back to her room. “She still has the ‘Perfect, just like Mommy’ onesie, so that one can boost my ego.”

I took it out of the closet to gaze upon its cuteness – and there, right on the shoulder, was a dark formula stain. Not enough to keep me from putting her in it, but enough to make the “Perfect” statement on the front kind of ironic. Darn.

Plus, I think one of her “I love Mommy” socks is missing, kicked off in the middle of Target somewhere.

But her Daddy clothes?

Don’t you worry. They’re all pristine.

Grrrr.

Daddy's little girl, part 2

Rob and I have been alternating nights getting up with Kaylee, and for the most part it’s a pretty good system. Kaylee’s usually kind to us, only waking up for one feeding or so, and we both know whose job it is to go take care of her each night.

Here’s the problem: Lately, Kaylee's decided to torture me. For some reason, every other night, Kaylee either wakes up more often or picks an ungodly hour of the night to decide it’s time to stay awake and play. And since it happens every other night and Rob and I alternate nights, only one of us ever gets the privilege of staying awake with her. The other gets to sleep peacefully every. single. night.

I like to think that Kaylee has learned our system, and she just wants to see me a lot because I’m her favorite parent. It makes me feel better than the alternative, which is that she and Rob are collaborating in some sort of anti-Mommy plot.

Here’s a perfect example: The other night, she woke up at about 2 a.m. for a feeding, and then again at 5 a.m. to play. I was exhausted and desperate for her to fall back asleep, and she did – right at 6:30, when I was going to wake Rob so he could watch her while I took a shower. So again, I got to be tired while Rob got to sleep.

But I think I’ve finally outsmarted her. In the last couple of days – as a result of Harry-Potter-reading-marathon-induced fatigue – Rob and I traded nights. Finally, FINALLY, Rob had a night in which Kaylee woke more than normal and decided 3:30 a.m. was a good time to start the day. With any luck, that means she’ll sleep like a little angel tonight and every other night after that.

I hope so, because I’m not sure my body can take much more caffeine.

Daddy's little girl

Yesterday, as I tried to rouse Kaylee from sleep to get her ready for daycare, she gave me the dirtiest look I’ve ever seen on a baby’s face. If she could talk, I imagine she would have said something like, “WHAT are you doing?” and her voice would have been dripping with venom.

This is much like what happens when I try to wake Rob up from a deep sleep. Both father and daughter tend to wake suddenly and in terrible confusion. They’ve both mastered an expression that’s halfway between terror and fury, like they’re afraid that the house is burning down, because that’s the ONLY THING THAT WOULD JUSTIFY WAKING THEM UP. EVER.

Fortunately, though, the similarity stops there. Where Rob will usually grumble, roll over and go back to sleep even as I repeatedly jab his shoulder to try to keep him conscious, Kaylee quickly breaks into a smile that lights up her whole face when she realizes that Mommy is leaning over her.

I’m sure that’ll change when she’s a teenager.