Trying to Keep Up

Silly me. I thought raising kids was supposed to get easier once you got the process rolling and got into a groove with it.

Baby Girl’s newest little trick is what I’ll call the stop, drop and roll. She stops what she’s doing. Drops a deuce, and rolls all over the place while I’m trying to change her. Used to be she would lay there calmly, staring intently up at me as I tried to make sure I got all the poop wiped up without getting it all over the changing table, or myself. She was polite, well-mannered, well-behaved and generally cooperative. Now however it’s like trying to fit an eel for a dinner suit. She squirms. She rolls. She grabs the side of the changing table to propel herself onto her stomach, regardless if there’s a steaming pile of poop underneath her or not.

If, God willing, I’m able to get her changed without repainting anything in a stinky shade of brown, she then proceeds to make it impossible to get her dressed again. More than once I’ve just given up and put her in a onsie, since the I have a hard time matching up the buttons on her PJ’s when she’s being cooperative, so doing it while she flops around like a fish on dry land is almost as hard for me as calculus.

She’s also started become increasingly mobile. We removed the top deck from the pack-n-play, because Baby Girl has figured out that she can pull herself up and has nearly launched herself out of the thing once or twice. Gravity is not a baby’s friend.

She really does like moving though. I’ve partitioned the house into sections so she can roam free during the day. The judicious use of boxes, suitcases, and furniture has created a nice play area for Baby Girl. We would have used her pack-n-play, but we have started transitioning her to sleep in it and she now officially hates to be in it. The pre-sleep screaming has dropped dramatically from around 40 minutes, to about 15 on a good night, so we’re making progress. But if you drop her in the pack-n-play during the day, she automatically assumes you expect her to sleep, and starts lodging a verbal, if incomprehensible objection within seconds. It’s loud. The neighbors probably think I have her hooked up to some kind of medieval torture device.

So the house is partitioned off during the day, making it look like we just moved in. But it keeps the munchkin occupied while I try to get things done. One of the more amusing things to come out of it is that apparently Baby Girl is confused by corners. She got stuck in one, seemingly couldn’t figure out how to get out of it, and was not amused by the situation. I’ll admit that I chuckled at it.

She is, as babies tend to be, quite curious. This has led to a number of almost heart attack inducing moments. Like when she removed the sonic bug reppeler from its socket and tried to put it in her mouth. Or when she tried to topple the Diaper Genie diaper disposal unit. Or when she started crawling for the underside of the kitchen counters, towards a day’s worth of dropped food (I’m a reasonably talented cook, but neatness is something that escapes me. On any given day you could probably figure out what we had for dinner the night before by referencing what dropped on the floor and has been kicked under the counter.).

She’s exhausting. And from what I’m being told by friends, who have children of all ages, I shouldn’t expect this to get any better. Only 35 more 6-month stretches to go before she’s off to school. Which means I get a nap sometime around the time I turn 62.