The first problem we had was sleeping arrangements. We couldn’t have a one year old loose in our house but Ricky wasn’t inclined to lie down and just go to sleep. He was in a new place. He wanted to see things. I thought I should count my lucky stars that he was comfortable enough in my house to want to investigate. Had he been frightened of us we could have had even more of a struggle. As it was he seemed to accept us as something close to normal.
The couch? The guestroom? He couldn’t sleep there. He could climb down and toddle off without us knowing. We decided one night wouldn’t spoil him so he slept in our bed between us. The only problem was he wasn’t ready to sleep.
The second thing I noticed is that a diaper bag holds about a dozen diapers. Since a baby might need changing anywhere from every ten minutes to every few hours I wondered how long our supply would last. We were a long drive from the nearest grocery store. I kept my fingers crossed on the diaper situation.
“Come on, Ricky, lie down,” I said, patting the bed next to me.
He gave me a mischievous grin and popped his head down, then popped right back up.
“Time to sleep, lie down,” I said again.
No way was he going to lie down. I lay there tired and exasperated.
Rusty got up and took Ricky with him. He carried him around. Ricky put his arms around Rusty’s neck and rested his head on his shoulder. No fair. That’s what I wanted to do. Rusty walked and talked quietly to the baby on his shoulder jiggling him gently, rocking back and forth. When Ricky brought his head up Rusty gently hugged him close putting his head back down, rocking, gently rocking.
“I know this is a weird place,” Rusty said to him softly. “Mama will be back soon. All we have to do is wait. In the morning you can play with the doggy. We’ll go for a ride in the car….” He rambled on and on. He even made me sleepy. And gradually Ricky got drowsy, too, until his big brown eyes were droopy and he drifted off to sleep. Rusty rocked him all the way to the bed and all the way down and lay the sleeping child gently down and slipped in behind him.
We lucked out that first night. Ricky slept until first light, then he started tossing and turning and fussing. He’d been shy and withdrawn the day before but he woke up a whole different person. First he was cranky. I figured out it was because he needed changing. Oh boy, here we go. I laid him down next to his diaper bag and he sat back up. I decided there was no reason he had to lie down until I took inventory. Diapers, baby wipes, baby powder, baby lotion, rash cream, a bottle…
“Baba!” Ricky said enthusiastically.
“After we change you,” I told him.
Formula…formula? Ricky was a year old. What happened to good old milk? Three jars of junior baby food, a package of teething biscuits, a cloth diaper, three bibs, a set of plastic keys and a stuffed bear with a rattle inside. I laid Ricky back down, took off the dirty diaper and turned to get another diaper out of the bag. A second later and he went off like a Roman fountain, right into my lap. He was lucky I didn’t freak out easily. I grabbed anything in sight and tossed it over him, which didn’t help much. It just made two wet spots in the carpeting instead of one. We moved to a different spot.
“Practice, humph,” I said. “Is this a conspiracy? If Rusty thinks this is going to make me want to be a mom he better think again!”
“Baba!” said Ricky.
“Yeah, I’ll baba you. You just wait. Diapers first, then the puddles, then the baba.”
I wiped him all over with baby wipes. I thought I remembered that being a necessary part of the procedure, from what I’d observed in women’s restrooms. I opened up a diaper. Which way was the front? They looked identical. If they looked identical then it didn’t matter, right? He raised up his legs, used to the whole procedure. I slipped the diaper under him and brought the tapes around. Hmm, this didn’t look right. I tried to untape them and try again but I thought I’d end up tearing the fabric so I decided it didn’t matter that much. Backwards diapers were not the end of the world.
Okay, the puddles. I took Ricky to the bedroom and plopped him on the bed next to Rusty.
“I have a mess to clean up. He’s all yours for a few minutes.”
I got paper towels and soaked up as much as I could. How could someone so small hold so much liquid? I sprayed the area with pet stain remover, rubbed it in and made a note to vacuum later. Pets and kids were about the same, I figured. Ricky came in and grabbed the paper towels and ran through living room, the roll thumping and bumping behind him, leaving a trail of paper towels behind him. I raced after him. Shadow thought it was a game so he ran after Ricky, nipping at his heals, herding the little sheep just like a good sheepdog was supposed to do.
“No, Shadow! Sit! Stay!” He didn’t sit. He was too excited about playing. I grabbed Ricky and took him back to the bed.
“Now I have paper towels to clean up. Keep him here for just a few minutes.”
“Huh?” said Rusty.
No use rolling them back up. I accordion folded about two hundred paper towels and put them on the counter.
“Baba!” said Ricky.
“Okay,” I said, “baba time.”
I got the bottle out of the diaper bag. It was a plastic tube with a nipple on top. How was a plastic tube supposed to hold formula? I assumed I was supposed to use the formula or it wouldn’t have been packed. I emptied the diaper bag looking for something that would work with a plastic tube to hold liquids. In the bottom of the bag I found a small box with rolled up plastic in it. I pulled one out. Bottle size plastic sheet. Hmm.
“Baba!” said Ricky.
“I know, I know, I’m trying. I’m new to this. Give me a break.”
I looked at the plastic sheet. It was two layers. Ahh, okay, I think I get it now. I took the formula, plastic sheet and Ricky to the kitchen, pried the empty bottle from his tight little hands.
“Babaaaaaaa!” he wailed.
I ignored him hoping he’d wake up Rusty.
Let’s see, the plastic sleeve goes in the tube. I unscrewed the plastic ring, then thought the nipple probably needed washing if it had lain in a diaper bag for days on end. Then I thought it had already been in Ricky’s mouth half a dozen times that morning. What was the use? I inserted the plastic sleeve in the plastic tube and bent it over the top. Walla, a bottle. I read the instructions on the can of formula, put in the right amounts of powder and water, shook it up, then microwaved the whole thing and learned real quickly that formula inside a plastic bag heats very fast and builds up pressure. The bottle went off like a Megablaster squirt gun inside the microwave. I yanked the door open. Now the bottle was too hot for a baby. I took the lid off and added some cold water but there wasn’t enough space to add enough to cool it down. I left the bottle on the counter to cool and cleaned up the microwave. All the time Ricky was dancing around wailing, “Babaaaa, I wan baba!”
A sentence! He spoke a sentence! I picked him up and gave him a big hug.
“Good boy!” I said as if I was praising Shadow for a job well done.
“Baba!” he continued to cry. So much for praise.
I checked the bottle, still too hot. I put it in the refrigerator. We took a quick walk outside while I fed Shadow. Ricky only managed to eat one kibble before I stopped him.
“We won’t tell Mommy about that,” I advised him.
“Goggy,” said Ricky.
While he was watching the doggy he forgot about the bottle so I had Shadow jump over the hurdles. Ricky was thrilled.
“Goggy! Goggy!” he giggled.
When we got back to the kitchen the bottle was cold. I handed it to Ricky anyway. I thought I’d prefer it cold and he wasn’t young enough to need it body temperature. He took a sip, looked at it weird and then started carrying the bottle around the house by the nipple. I thought I better keep the carpet cleaning supplies handy. Does pet stain remover work on formula?
I turned to the refrigerator to see what I had to cook for Rusty’s breakfast. When I turned back around Ricky was finger painting formula designs on the coffee table. Oh great. I got a damp dishcloth and cleaned up the mess. How many messes could we have in one morning? I picked Ricky up and took him over to the old brown couch and held him while he drank his bottle. Rusty walk in on the idyllic scene. He sat on the freshly scrubbed coffee table and laughed at me.
“See, I told you it would be great. You’re taking all this easier than I thought you would,” he said.
“Ha, you miss the past half hour of constant frustration and catch two seconds of peace and everything is perfect.”
“It can’t be that bad. He’s hasn’t been awake an hour.”
“You’d be amazed how many messes we can create and clean up in an hour.”
“Do you want me to take him for a while?”
“No, we’re okay. Go shower. Then you can watch him while I shower.” Mine was going to be a long shower, I decided, I’d make sure of it.
Two minutes after Rusty left the bottle was empty and Ricky was ready to play. Only problem was there was nothing to play with. One set of plastic keys and one teddy bear rattle held his attention for about two seconds.
I heard Rusty’s shower start. Shoot. I called Hazel.
“Hazel, help!” I said. “I’m babysitting a one year old and I don’t have any toys. What do I do?”
“Give him a bath. Babies will play in water until they turn into little pink prunes. Just don’t turn your back on him. If you have any plastic cups throw those in the tub and you’ll be set for half an hour or so. After that turn a bunch of pots and pans over on the floor, give him a wooden spoon and put in your earplugs. Do you have any kids’ books? Maybe you can read to him.”
We tried the bath. Ricky loved playing in the water, especially seeing how much of it he could get on me, the floor and the towels I stacked too close to the tub. I found a couple of measuring cups that were plastic, a few freezer containers and he poured water from one to another. He floated the empty ones on top of the water, then dumped water in them with a smaller container until they sank.
“Hey, you’re doing baby math,” I told him. “How many cups does it take to fill a bowl?”
He splashed and water sprayed up into my face. I wiped the water out of my eyes and sat beside the tub and splashed water around with my fingers. I was glad I wasn’t dressed for the day.
“Water,” I said. “Can you say water?”
He splashed again. “Awa,” he said. Okay, I guess that was close.
“He’s saying water in Spanish,” Rusty said behind me.
“Agua!” I said. “I should have thought of that. I do know that much Spanish. Are you a bilingual baby? You know goggy and awa and baba.”
“Looks like you can skip the shower,” Rusty said.
“No way, I’m taking one and I’m taking my time. And you’re going to watch this kid and see how much work it is.”
I started to pull Ricky out of the tub but he thrashed around yelling, “Awa, awa.” He still wanted to play. I put him back in the tub.
“Go on, we’ll be fine,” Rusty said.
I took a long hot shower. I took my time, enjoying the quiet. I shampooed and conditioned my hair. I shaved my legs. I soaped up with bar soap, then shower gel. Let’s see what else could I do in here? After I rinsed and dried off, I dried my hair and curled it and put on makeup. I was determined; Rusty was going to put in his share of the work. Let him figure out how to keep a toddler occupied for hours on end. Ricky couldn’t live in the bath. Sooner or later Rusty would have to take him out and then what would they do? I chose clothes that wouldn’t be hurt by a little baby food. Good old jeans and t-shirts. When I came out Ricky was toddling around the living room couch and Rusty was crawling around the other side. Every once in a while Rusty would pop up and call out, “peek-a-boo!” Yup, he definitely had Peek-a-boo perfected. Ricky beat on the seat of the couch and laughed.
“A boo!” he said enthusiastically.
Was anything hard for Rusty?
Ricky snuck around the end of the couch. “A boo!” he said.
“Oh! You scared me!” Rusty said, then acted like a growly monster and chased Ricky around the couch until Ricky tackled him from behind. They tumbled on the floor, the baby giggling.
I went to the kitchen to start breakfast but Rusty stopped me.
“Don’t fix anything for me. There’s a couple of things I need to do in town and then I’ll check on Eva. Do you need me to pick up anything while I’m gone?”
“Ask Eva and Antonio what Ricky can eat. Does he eat normal people food?”
“Of course he does,” Rusty answered.
“So far all he’s wanted is a bottle.”
“Baba!” said Ricky.
“Try scrambled eggs. That usually goes over well. Just make sure the pieces are small. I bet he eats most everything as long as it’s cut up and isn’t too spicy.”
“I don’t know, he’s Mexican. He might even do spicy.”
“Don’t make this hard. You think yourself into a box and then you can’t get out of it. Just go with the flow.”
“When I did that I cleaned pee out of the carpet and formula off the coffee table. He’s really good at flowing.”
Rusty gave me a reassuring hug. “Don’t make this hard. If you spend the day playing and don’t get a thing done, that’s okay.”
Playing. I’d love to spend the day playing, but we waved bye-bye to Rusty and watched him drive away, then Ricky started filling his diaper. Rusty! Come back!
Ugh! Why did messy diapers have to be so… so… messy? I untaped the diaper and looked inside. I don’t get grossed out easily. I’ve hunted and field dressed deer. I’ve eaten raw meat in order to survive. The thing here was that I had a zillion nooks and crannies of a squirmy kid who wanted to get up and play. How to clean all this… this… yuck out of all those nooks and crannies, all I could do was start and I went through about a hundred baby wipes. The stack of soiled baby wipes was bigger than the mess of a diaper. This time I got the diaper on frontward. When I finally let Ricky up he gave me a disgusted look and I returned it. He got shy and hid behind a chair.
“Ricky, come on. Want to play Ringo Star?”
I went to the kitchen and arranged a drum set of pots and pans and sat Ricky behind them. I handed him a spoon. He just looked at me like, now what? I took his little hand and brought the spoon down on a pot. It gave a satisfying bang and Ricky jumped, startled, and burst into tears.
“It’s okay! Ricky, look,” I said beating out a rhythm on the pots and pans. Ricky cried louder, so I picked him up and walked the house. Ten minutes later I was still pacing the house, Ricky howling. Okay, time to try something else. I checked his diaper. I couldn’t cook without putting Ricky down and I hated to put him down when he was crying. How could I get food into the kid without putting him down? I set him on the dining room table since I didn’t have a high chair. I got out a box of cereal and put a handful of Cornflakes in front of him.
“Are you hungry?” I asked. “Ricky, look, cereal, you like cereal?” He perked up a little when he saw the flakes before him. While he picked up each flake individually, I cooked a scrambled egg. So far so good. I cut up the egg small and put the egg pieces in front of him, too. He ate all the cereal and left the egg. He started rubbing his eyes. He ground Cornflakes into his face. I picked up some egg and offered it to him. He turned away. Okay, no egg. I got a fresh dishcloth and dampened it and wiped off his face. This started him fussing again. Sigh. I checked his diaper. Since he wasn’t really hungry. This fussiness must be because he was tired. Now all I had to do is figure out how to get him to sleep. I walked him and jiggled him and rocked him and he squirmed and fought it. My arms were getting leaden and my steps were slowing and I was going for the next level of resolve.
Half an hour later Ricky was still squirming and fussing. Maybe he wasn’t tired. Maybe he was bored. I knew he should be, so we went for a walk. He chased Shadow calling out, “Goggy! Goggy…” as we went along. Shadow did not want to be caught so I chased Ricky and Shadow through the junipers. Suddenly Ricky changed course, still yelling out goggy and then I saw what kind of a goggy he found. It was a skunk! I’d never even seen a skunk around here. No skunk tracks, nothing. Leave it to us to find the only skunk in southern California. I ran forward and scooped Ricky up as he continued reaching for the goggy. Whew! That was close. I carried Ricky as I backtracked the skunk. I hadn’t seen skunk tracks very often. I’d only seen a few on Santa Cruz Island. I followed the trail and it wandered around and led up into the forest. I set Ricky down and he began picking up rocks and pine needles. I thought it was great, exploring the woods kid style. He popped a rock into his mouth.
“No! No rocks,” I scolded fishing around in his mouth for the offending object. He bit down on my fingers. Ouch! “Ricky, give me the rock.” More fishing around. I found and extracted it with a sigh of relief and picked him up again but he’d had a dose of freedom and wanted to explore. Unfortunately, every opportunity for exploring involved touching and hopefully tasting too. Just looking was not an option. I pulled rocks and weeds, pinecones and sticks out of his greedy little grasp.
Rocks were gocks. Pinecones were cocones. Sticks were ticks.
We were half a mile from home when Ricky filled his diaper again. We didn’t have the diaper bag so we hightailed it for the house. Ricky still wanted to explore so he didn’t want to be carried. I put him on my shoulders, stinky diaper and all and made a game out of touching tree branches.
“Get the tree! Get the tree, Ricky!” whack! “Good job!”
Dirty diaper smells wafted around my face all the way home. I was thinking the skunk was lucky smelling the way it did. Dampness started leaking through onto my neck. I tried not to think about it as I hiked along. When we left the trees he wanted to take a whack at the junipers so I zigzagged my way from bush to tree. He leaned way out to whack a branch…squish…waft…ugh!
“Ricky, this has got to stop.”
I began jogging gently and he grabbed hold of my hair laughing and bouncing along. We hurried in the back door and over to the diaper bag. A hundred baby wipes later we were back to square one.
Next I had to figure out how to make lunch with a baby loose in my house. I hadn’t had time to baby proof anything. I sat Ricky on my dining room table and cut up a banana in tiny pieces. Then I cut up a slice of lunchmeat in tiny pieces. While he was trying to pick up slick banana and pieces of meat I made myself a sandwich. Every minute or so I turned around. It only took him one minute to mash banana into his hair and another minute to nearly fall off the table. I rushed over and put him in the middle of the table again. How moms got anything done, I’d never know. I only half made my sandwich. It had meat and cheese slapped between two slices of bread. I couldn’t bring myself to turn my back on Ricky long enough to hunt for more ingredients. He ate a few banana bits and a few meat bits and started looking at my sandwich longingly. I cut off a corner and handed it to him and he took it apart. He squished the bread until it looked like Silly Putty, then looked at my sandwich again.
“Want a bite?” I asked.
“B-bite!” he said.
I held up the sandwich and he took a bite and dragged all the meat out of it. He grabbed the meat and kept going. Was this a trick? I ate my bread and cheese sandwich half-heartedly. Then I found out how hard it is to get dried banana off the dining room table. After that I found out how hard it is to get dried banana out of baby hair. Note to self: highchair- necessary. Ricky cringed and whined as I tried to comb the banana out of his hair.
“I’m sorry, baby. You put it there. Now, it’s got to come out,” I said.
He squirmed and whined and rubbed his eyes.
“Mama,” he whined.
“Mama will be here soon. She’s getting better. She’ll be back soon.” I wasn’t sure who I was reassuring, him or me, but I hoped it was true.
“I wan mama, mi mama,” he pouted and rubbed his eyes. “Baba.”
“Okay, kiddo, a baba we can do.”
I decided banana hair was second place to the comfort of a small boy. This time I was a little smarter. I filled a pan with hot tap water, prepared the bottle and then stuck it in the hot water to warm. When the bottle was warm I handed it to Ricky. He took it and went to the front door.
“Mama?”
“Not yet kiddo, Mama will be here soon. Nap time.”
“Me wan dada.”
“Yeah and me want mi Rusty, too. Please go to sleep. You need a nap.”
I took him to the bedroom and laid him down but he got up as soon as I turned my back. I refused to get angry with him. He wasn’t being disobedient. He was just out of sorts and I couldn’t blame him for that one bit. I was out of sorts, too, though, and that didn’t help matters at all. He dragged his feet and rubbed his eyes and whined. I picked him up and carried him around. The house got too confining so I walked out back. Big mistake. He decided the corral and gazebo were perfect toddler-size monkey bars. The activity perked him up and he was raring to go again. He climbed all over the lower corral bars swinging like a little monkey. When would I learn? Go with the flow, Cass. He was headed for sleepytown. Why did I have to exit at playland?
“Ricky? Want your baba?” I asked hopefully. The baba was forgotten. The baba was history. Sigh. I watched Ricky swing like a monkey as I called my sister.
“Hello?” she said absentmindedly.
“Hi Jesse, It’s Cass.”
“Cassidy! What happened? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, of course, well, it depends on what you mean by okay. I’m frustrated and tired and I need some advice.”
“Golly, what kind of trouble could you get into that you’d want my advice? I don’t know anything about getting kidnapped or lost in the woods.”
“It’s the kid nap part I’m having trouble with. How do you get a kid to go down for a nap?”
“You’re kidding. Right?”
“No, I’m babysitting a one year old and every time I think he’s getting tired he just wants to play some more. But I don’t have anything for him to play with so he is wearing me down.”
“Don’t worry about it. When he gets you all worn down he will get bored and nap with you.”
“That doesn’t help much. I don’t want to nap. I have things to do.”
“Make him a warm bottle and snuggle with him. He’ll conk out.”
“I did the warm bottle and then he saw the corral so he’s climbing all over it and I can’t get him back in bottle mode.”
“I can’t believe you took on a one year old. I thought you didn’t like kids.”
“I love kids! I really do. I prefer them to be old enough to reason with. Ricky isn’t old enough to reason with.”
“Well, just forget about what you need to get done. He won’t be around for long. You’ve only got to keep him occupied for a few hours, right?”
“I don’t know. His mom is in the hospital. She might get discharged today but it could be a few days. He spent the night here and I’ve had him all day.”
“Oh, I’m so glad to see you’re finally getting used to the idea of having kids! I can’t wait for you to finally change your mind.”
“Well, this isn’t changing it very fast. No Ricky! No rocks! Rocks aren’t food. Hold on.” I fished the rock out of Ricky’s mouth and received another bite. “I think Rusty was hoping I’d get used to the idea, too, but leaving me with a one year old for a day isn’t doing the trick.”
Ricky stopped his climbing for a minute. His face turned red as he strained.
“Oh great, he’s filling his diaper again. I hope I have enough baby wipes left.”
“How many do you have?”
“About a third of a package but it takes about that many to change him.”
“Cassidy! You need some lessons. It should only take a few. I wish I could show you. You always do everything the hard way. Use the clean part of the diaper to wipe off most of it. Then use the baby wipes. While you have him inside for his diaper change give him his bottle again and I bet he settles right down for you. He’ll feel better after being changed and you can try snuggling with him again. Warm snuggles work well for naptime. I can’t wait to tell Mom you’ve been babysitting. She will be so shocked. I bet she calls you this evening.”
Oh great.
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do. I guess I better go so I can change this kid. Talk to you later.”
She hung up and probably called my mom first thing. I took another rock away from Ricky and then took him in the house.
“No! Play!” he said pulling away and heading for the corral again.
“Nope, time for a diaper change,” I said, as I dragged him kicking into the house. He swung the bottle around by the nipple and the rubber slipped through the top of the ring. The contents went flying coating Ricky and me with a nice even coating of, now cold, formula. It’s just a small mess, I told myself. It’s a simple clean up job, just change clothes, change Ricky, change Ricky’s clothes, mop the floor, make a new bottle, warm it, strangle the kid and he’ll go to sleep. Easy, right?
I had to admit, Jesse’s instructions made diaper changes a lot easier. I only used six wipes. I might survive until Rusty arrived. Ricky didn’t have another set of clothes so he ran around in his diaper until I could wash his clothes. I changed my clothes, made another bottle and took Ricky to the bed. I lay down with him and pulled him close. He struggled to get up.
“No, no, lay down. Nap time,” I told him.
He asked for his mama, his dada, the goggy. He wanted to play. Anything but nap.
“I told you she was an angel,” Antonio said.
When I opened my eyes Antonio and Rusty were standing over me. Ricky was sleeping peacefully in my arms, finally! Leave it to Rusty to arrive the one time when peace reigned.
“Angel? Huh! If you wake this kid up it’s no angel you’ll be dealing with! How’s Eva doing?” I disentangled myself from Ricky praying I didn’t wake him up. He startled a time or two but drifted off again quickly.
“She’ll be fine. She keeps asking about Ricky so I told her I’d come check on him. Do you need anything?”
“Yeah, everything! A bed he can’t climb out of, toys, clothes, diapers, baby wipes. He keeps asking for you and Eva but he seems patient enough when I tell him you’re not coming yet.”
“Sounds like everything is going great,” Antonio said.
Yeah, great, I thought, if you call great one little mishap after another.
“I’ll run home and get the things you need. I should be able to bring back everything except the crib.”
When Antonio had left Rusty turned to me.
“How is it really going?” he asked.
“You’re not leaving this house until tomorrow,” I said.
“Babe, it can’t be that bad.”
“I haven’t had two minutes to think except to figure out how to either clean up messes or how to entertain Ricky. I’m going nuts here.”
“You don’t have to entertain him the whole time. Just make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.”
“Okay, tell you what, I’ll go wake him up and you can see how easy it is to let him entertain himself. He has no problem entertaining himself. He eats rocks and sticks and grass. He finger paints with formula on the coffee table. He unrolls paper towels. There are lots of things he can do here.”
“I think you need a little break. Why don’t you take a ride on the bike?”