I should have known something was wrong when I walked into their bedroom and noticed it smelled…off. Not bad, just…off, somehow.
I knew Bee wasn’t sleeping. She had put up quite a fuss when I put her to bed and on those nights it can take forever for her to settle down enough to actually fall asleep. So I wasn’t surprised when I walked in to put Gracie to bed and saw Bee sitting up on the edge of her little toddler bed. No, the full extent of the calamity wasn’t apparant until Gracie exclaimed that Bee had “the cream” and it hit me: Bee had gotten into the diaper cream and heaven only knew what she had done with it.
“Bee!” I exclaimed, panic in my voice, as I threw on the lights to survey the damage. All I could see at first was the diaper cream smeared all. over. her baby doll. And her pillow. Oh, and her hands and her jammies. Bee started bawling big belly sobs that made her breath hitch and my heart hurt (even though she totally deserved it! Diaper cream! Just…diaper cream!) I refused to soften until the mess was cleaned…but that turned out to be much easier than I feared. Oh, but I had reason to fear. Gracie had pulled this stunt once before when she was almost two, except she had emptied an entire tube of diaper cream all over a blanket that she had spread on the floor picnic-style…and ground into the carpet…and mooshed into her hair. Bee’s escapades in diaper cream destruction barely broke a Tropical Depression rating on the scale o’ damage.
Really, Baby Doll bore the brunt of it. She had cream covering her legs and drenching her butt. A crumpled Pull-Up lay near the scene. I suspect Bee had climbed onto her safety rail, reached up and across her dresser, found her cream buried in the basket up there, and decided Baby needed to be changed. More evidence was found stuffed into the top of the diaper pail – half a box of wipes was emptied into it and Bee was even thoughtful enough to take the empty package out of the wipes container and squeeze that into the tiny diaper pail opening, too. So thoughtful, that one.
Once I was sure I had found all of the surprises available to me, I gingerly picked Baby Doll up by a toe and dumped her into the bathroom sink. Then I carefully extracted Bee from her jammies and gently lectured her about not doing that ever! again! I was pretty sure the message got through, so I allowed myself to scoop her up and tuck her into a new pair of pajamas, soothing her as best I could. Gracie got one shot at the diaper cream and now so had Bee. Just so long as Bee understood this was one-time-only act of leniency, I was okay with rocking away her tears.
Now – someone please tell me how to get two sweet little girlies to stop comparing notes on misdemeanors?
April 15, 2009 at 10:09 am |
You have to get them separate bedrooms – otherwise deep into the night they will talk of things they have gotten away with.
And, be thankful that diaper cream is water soluable these days. We have photos from when the neighbor’s daughter covered all her hair in Desitin (the origianl greasy STINKY version). It stuck around for weeks no matter how many times her hair was washed.
Sounds like you handled the whole situation beautifully. Keep up the great work Mom!
April 15, 2009 at 12:59 pm |
did you ever scrap about gracie’s diaper cream adventure? because you could just pull that out and look up the adventures that followed and be braced for them. scrapping: fun, theraputic, practical book o’magical mommy wisdom!!=]
April 15, 2009 at 3:32 pm |
Just think of allllll the things we did that Mom still doesn’t know about ;-P Eventually, I’m sure they’ll move into that Phase…which should mean less clean-up for you!
April 17, 2009 at 3:24 am |
Oh yes, the diaper cream bonanza..LOL! Isn’t it funny how little ones duplicate moms? They become us and their dolls become them. When I ask my three year-old daughter why she did that, her reply is always a replica of what I say to her… Amazing! It’s inevitable, they are going to compare many more notes…(smile).
Thanks for sharing a piece of motherhood!
June 29, 2011 at 7:12 pm |
[...] She got crazy with the cheeze whiz, er, I mean diaper cream. [...]