Little Mommy drops the… um… ball

The Players:

• Dad – in the upstairs office, working
• Mom – …indisposed
• 3-year old, aka “Little Mommy” – playing in playroom
• 2-year old, aka “Stinky” – playing in playroom

So I’m sitting in my office, writing an email, the entire house quiet, when I hear Mom enter the playroom downstairs and stop short. Then an exclamation: “OH! What are you doing?” When that was repeated for the third time with the same mix of shock, wonderment and distress, I started listening closer. I couldn’t make it all out at first. I heard something about “don’t ever do that” and cleaning the chair. It was when I heard the terms “diaper,” “change,” and “don’t ever” all in the same sentence that I quickly went downstairs. Here’s what I saw:

Little Mommy with an eyes-wide look of “what happened? How did this go wrong?” on her face as Mom leads her slowly, carefully, away from her little chair. The chair is sitting next to the changing station, where Stinky is laying, legs splayed, bottom uncovered, except for some brown and white streaks (“I put cream on her!” Little Mommy was heard to say proudly). On the chair is… well… a diaper… and its contents… not at all well contained.

At some point, Stinky had informed Little Mommy that she needed a diaper change. Since Mom was indisposed, they worked together to — the order here is a little fuzzy — take Stinky’s pants off, move the chair to the changing table, climb up (it’s above head level for both of them), take off her diaper, “clean” her off with diaper wipes (also not easy to reach), and apply cream. It’s probably the best teamwork they’ve displayed all day. I’m not sure how the open diaper came to be on the chair. I’m not sure I want to know. I do know that when Mom brought Little Mommy back into the room, the latter was without her shirt, and I heard a lot of hand washing going on.

The diaper’s contents were mercifully solid. There was still a lot of cleanup to be done, on both children and the chair. It should be said that it was an impressive job for a 3-year old. She got almost all the steps covered. She even got the cream. It was the wrong cream, mind you, but she thought of it.

I think we got through to her that she was never allowed to do this again. I think. My poorly hidden laughter may have undermined that message a little…

[tags]parenting, diapers, growing up, toddlers[/tags]

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