41

I am 41 today! I had a lovely day with Edith which then turned into a too-long day, which seems about par for the course with a toddler. She woke up at quarter to five which is her usual wakeup time these days, and I pulled her into bed with me, and then somehow, miraculously, she cuddled up with me and slept for another 90 minutes. It wasn’t like a solid sleep — she kicked and thrashed and rolled, and at one point fell off the bed and howled and had to be comforted — but she more or less agreed to lie there and I definitely caught a couple of cat naps in all that, so it really was a delightful birthday present.

Then, we went to the park downtown which has become a Sunday morning tradition and it was so blazing hot by 7:30 that I was pouring sweat just standing there in the shade. We didn’t last very long, but by the time we got home, it was nearly time for our nap, and when we got up, it was basically time for swimming.

Swimming was delightful as always, and Edith had a blast, laughing and pummeling me with her feet. I have recently realized that Edith can just walk her own ass places rather than me hauling her everywhere (I don’t know what took me so long to put that together) and she was very proud and pleased to strut down the hallway to the pool on her own steam. It all takes ten times as long because toddlers have to stop to admire and experience every bit of lint they notice, but it’s still easier than hauling her and all our gear everywhere. The water was refreshing, there were a ton of parents and babies, and everyone was in a great mood.

Usually after swimming, I change Edith as quickly as I can, throw my dress over my wet bathing suit, and then we go out to the car, and I give Edith some snacks and milk there before we drive home. Edith knows milk is coming, and she is very hungry and thirsty after working so hard, so she’s whiney and fighty through the changing process, and removing two wet swim diapers and a bathing suit wouldn’t be super easy even if she would cooperate, so it’s all a bit fraught. This time around, I moved us away from the baby changing pad we usually use before she was fully changed, because they only had one today and some other parents had an infant. So then, because Edith was vertical while I finished changing her, she was able to dig into our bag for her milk and then throw a fit when she got it in her hand, so I gave in, and let her have it sitting by the pool. That took awhile and when she was finished, I threw my dress on, put her sandals on, and we got in the car.

On the way home, Edith started howling, but that happens. She howled all the way home which isn’t necessarily unusual and I thought she probably needed a nap, but as we pulled into the driveway, I realized that I couldn’t remember putting her diaper on. Sure enough, she was commando under her unsnapped romper and had peed a lake into her car seat.

I hauled her into the house, ran her to the bedroom, stripped off all her peed on clothes, and put her in a fresh diaper, and peeled off my wet clothes and put a fresh dress on. Edith was still crying so I gave her a cup of milk. Then, we headed back out to fight with the car seat. Edith would lose her mind if I went outside without her so I left the front door open and let her wander out after me in her diaper and bare feet. But she came onto the driveway which is boiling, so I sort of perched her in the floorboard between my feet while I wrestled with the carseat which suddenly wouldn’t come out for some reason. I finally got it unstuck and I sort of lifted and angled it over Edith’s head and out the door without dribbling urine everywhere, and meanwhile Edith tumped the rest of her milk out over my knees and feet and the floor of the car. As I reacted to that, I noted that somehow the urine had pooled up in the base of the carseat, and would have to be cleaned up immediately rather than left to bake in the closed car in the hundred degree heat.

I hauled Edith back in under one arm, threw the baby bag and all the swimming stuff into the hall, got paper towels and Lysol, went back out, leaving the door open again, and went to work on the carseat base. Edith wandered out after me and stayed up on the porch where it was shady. I half noticed that at some point, she wandered out onto the sunny sidewalk carrying her little shoes in her hands, but in my distracted brain, I figured she’d just turn around if her feet got hot, because I’m a fucking moron who doesn’t remember to put a diaper on a toddler, and of course before very much longer, she began to scream in pain.

I grabbed her up, ran into the kitchen, and put her feet in the sink under the cold water.

She was fine, it was just a brief second, but I felt like the biggest asshole alive. Then I still had to Lysol out the car, and disassemble the car seat and put the cover in the wash, and I had really, really meant to finally roast those goddamned vegetables tonight, but we got takeout instead (which Edith didn’t eat).

Anyway, this also marks 365 consecutive days of writing on this blog, which was never a goal I set, but at some point became a marker it seemed sensible to go ahead and hit. I will write more about that later, but not tomorrow! I will not be writing anything here tomorrow.