I have been having babies now for 14 and a half years. In all that time I have only been home alone with just one baby for exactly 23 and one half months. The rest of the time I have had an older child around to pick up the slack. More often I have had real help for those moments when real help is needed. That is, until recently, when all my kids went to school and left me here to fend for myself with only a baby and a permanent stream of PBS pouring into the family room.
The scenario:
Mommy is in "the loo" (a term I am using only because my husband doesn't like the word "toilet") because sometimes that is just plain necessary (even if some of us don't like to talk about it).
Baby is, gratefully, not screaming and trying to get on mommy's lap.
Baby grabs toilet paper off floor and runs gleefully away.
Mommy isn't alarmed, surely there is another roll close by.
Mommy is alarmed.
Baby is bouncing along swinging those cute little chubby arms and legs to the rhythm of "Ba-by, ba-by, come back to Mommy, Ba-by!!!"
Mommy is very alarmed.
Baby is playing peekaboo with mommy while toilet paper swings wildly above a cute little head of frizzy baby hair, smiling...eyes sparkling. Playing with mommy is so much fun!
Mommy is desperately trying to sound happy and inviting.
Baby looks over at the laundry chute. You remember that laundry chute don't you?? The one that is so stupidly on my bathroom FLOOR without a cover. Just a gaping hole leading to the downstairs "laundry room". Baby really likes that laundry chute. All kinds of things fit in there. Clean clothes as well as dirty ones, along with brushes, toothpaste, hangers, and cell phone re-chargers and....toilet paper.
Mommy considers using her super stretchy powers. All mommies are secret super heroes by the way. If you don't believe me, ask your mom what her super powers are. Some of us have more than one power.
I discovered one more power that day. The power of substitution.
5 comments:
I hate getting stranded in the loo! That is funny that he thought it was a game.
What a great post! I am glad that you weren't afraid to share, cause we all have times like that once in a while and you made us do the only thing you can in those situations....laugh.
Oh Misty this was fabulous. Sorry you had to "substitue" but what a great post. I totally knew where this one was going. We've all been there........and to know that it is motherhood all over the place.
Fabulous post! I love the way you write about motherhood.
Toilet - from the root "toil" which means work, which is what a bathroom interlude sometimes devolves into. The cute "et" at the end is contradictory, however, and suggests cute fun. I cannot ever recall in my own experience any bathroom experience that I'd classify this way. But I don't know - maybe in the beginning, when they first moved pooping out of the outhouse and down the hall upstairs, they might just have considered it that.
i missed you K! so good to have you back. i will now say toilet with gusto!
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