Friday, September 17, 2010

My Week With Baby

Baby is eleven months old now, just starting to walk, and getting into EVERYTHING. Case in point, my week with Baby:

Monday:
Baby digs in trash and finds a used pinto bean can. He cuts his finger on the top of can. Blood everywhere - on him, on me, all over the kitchen floor. I freak, contemplate the emergency room, but instead wrap his tiny finger in three band aids. Baby chews off all three. Blood spurts all over his toys, the living room carpet, and sofa. I rebandage. Baby chews if off. More blood. Older boy suggest putting a cone around his head like a dog. I briefly contemplate this, then bandage the finger again.

Tuesday:
I’m sitting at my computer, writing. I hear in the background “splash, splash, splash”. Uh oh. Where is Baby? He’s splashing in the toilet bowl, of course. I disinfect Baby, put him down to watch TV. He chews off bandage. More blood.

Wednesday:
I’m attempt to write again. Baby, meanwhile, crawls into the kitchen where he knocks over recycling a bin, grabs an empty wine bottle out of it and uses the wine bottle to smash a ballpoint pen on the kitchen floor. The pen shatters, little pieces of plastic and globs of blue ink flying everywhere. I just finish cleaning this up (and relocating the recycle bin outside) when I hear “splash, splash, PLOP” Oh. No. Baby is again at the toilet, this time dropping my cordless mouse into the water. Fab. I disinfect Baby and the mouse, then give a stern lecture to the other members of my family on lowering the lid and shutting the bathroom door when they’re done.

Thursday:
I give up on writing, instead taking Baby to the grocery store where everyone comments on how cute and well behaved his is. (Ha!) We get home, and I put him down on the front lawn while I bring the groceries into the house. He eats a handful of grass. I grab it out of his mouth. He eats an acorn. I grab it out of his mouth. He reaches for a snail, and luckily I get there just before he can sample his first escargot.

I decide to take Baby to my mom's house for a change of scenery. He makes a bee-line for her open dishwasher and takes all her clean silverware out, throwing it on the kitchen floor. While I'm rinsing them off and putting them away again, he wanders into the bathroom. (Where the toilet lid is down. Ha! One step ahead of you, pal!). As soon as I finish with the silverware, I go into the bathroom and find him… "cleaning" the tile floor with Grandma’s toilet brush. Ew. I disinfect him, put the brush up high, and clean the floor.

I take him home, set him in front of “The Wiggles”, and check my email for five minuets. (Just five, I swear!) And then I realized it’s quiet. Too quite. I look over at Baby. He has figured how to take his own diaper off… and has gone number two all over the living room carpet. All I can say is this is one time I’m thankful for the ugly brown color of our renter’s carpet.

I give Baby a bath, wash his clothes, shampoo the rug, then collapse on the sofa.
Where he chews off his bandage and bleeds all over my lap.


Friday:
While I’ve been writing this, Baby has thrown a pen, a rubber ball, and a pair of iPod ear buds into the toilet. As soon as I disinfect them all, I’m driving to Babies R Us and getting toilet seat locks. And more band aids.




And he looks so innocent...


~Trigger Happy Halliday

13 comments:

Jenyfer Matthews said...

LOL - I remember those days! My youngest is nearly 8 and I still worry when it gets too quiet.

When my children were little, I only wrote when they were napping. Too many distractions otherwise!

Zita said...

Oh dear. I've heard that putting them in a barrel and feeding them through the bung-hole is a viable option.

krisgils33 said...

wow! he is super cute. but, it probably is time to reconsider the collar thingie (or a pair of handcuffs). :-)

Diane Kelly said...

I don't know whether to laugh or cry about this post! Those days were very trying, but the reward for all your hard work is being the center of his universe. I've got a similar problem with my "toddler" dog. She's a one-year old part Dalmatian, part Tasmanian devil. She's chews up anything she can find that's not nailed down, and when she runs out of those things she chews through the wall. Literally. I had a guy here this morning patching the drywall. Argh! I have to leave the house to get anything done!

Christie Craig said...

Gemma,

He is so adorable. I'm sure you are totally making all this up. LOL.

CC

Jana DeLeon said...

And yet another reason why I have dogs. Yikes.

catslady said...

Perhaps maybe a playpen so mom can write lol.

Gemma Halliday said...

You will not belive it. I was changing a lightbulb today (after toilet item fishing), and had the old one in one hand while screwing the fresh one into the socket. Before I even knew what was happening, Baby had snatched the old one out of my hand and smashed it on the floor. :O Luckily I nabbed him before he could dance on the broken glass.

This child is taking years off my life. Good thing he's so cute...

~Gemma

Tori Lennox said...

I sometimes think the family in the movie version of Please Don't Eat the Daisies had the right idea with their lidded playpen (aka a cage *g*). LOL!

Dru said...

He looks so innocent and is a cutie.

MG Braden said...

He is so adorable. But I remember that so well and my "baby" is 4 now so we still have adventures. However when he was still really a baby he pulled the ink refill out of my desk garbage (and I only checked my email for 1 minute) and ate it. Um, hello? Poison control? When we first moved into this house he somehow grabbed the laundry cup from across the top of the machine and drank the liquid laundry detergent. He is my 3rd child and that's the first time this stuff had happened to me!

So you have my compassion!But he's still so darned cute!

Beth Yarnall said...

Your little guy reminds me of my little guy. He once emptied an entire bottle of baby powder all over his room. It took 2 weeks and daily vacuuming before he could sleep in it again. Another time he stuck duct tape to the top of his head. I got suspicious when he walked in with a hat on... he'd cut the tape off down to his scalp! He also figured out that if you take the TV remote & pound the bejesus out of those baby door knob locks, they pop right off & you can go play in the front yard.
I used to be brunette but now I'm blond. It got too hard to hide the gray hair!
Good luck with your little guy. It sure is a good thing they're so darn cute!!!

Angie Fox said...

I've been there. That's why they make them so cute.