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| Thursday, January 5, 2012 05:58 PM |
| The Adventures of Fat Guy & Son |
 by Fëanor |
The boy didn't nap hardly at all today, despite my parents' best efforts (they look after him when I work from home), so I resolved to use the age-old tactic of desperate parents everywhere and drive him around for a while to see if that would knock him out. As I was getting us ready to head out (always a lengthy procedure), he caught sight of a bowl of Cheerios that I was keeping in the diaper bag as an emergency snack and made noises and motions to indicate that he wished to consume these immediately. Clearly dinner was going to have to happen before a nap, so I sat him down with the Os and some water while I grabbed myself a salad, baby carrots, and some veggie dip out of the fridge. We each munched on our own stuff in silence for a while until he made noises and motions to indicate he wanted some of my carrots. He has often shown interest in baby carrots for some reason, despite the fact that whenever he puts one in his mouth, he becomes visibly distressed. The same thing happened this time, but he followed up his sour expression with further motions that seemed to indicate he wanted to try what I was doing: dipping the carrots. When I asked him if he wanted some dip, he even agreed by repeating "dip" as best he could in toddler-ese. This was extremely impressive, so I had to comply. Of course, once I put a little dip on a carrot and gave it to him, he just sucked the dip off and handed me the carrot back, indicating that I was to apply more dip forthwith. Being the pushover I am, I did so. After a while this became tiresome and more than a little gross, so I did something even more gross: I scooped out a nice dollop of dip into a bowl, stuck a spoon in it, and handed it to him. After eating a good amount of this, he switched over to using the dip as paint and applied a liberal coating to his platter and water cup. He then noticed that somehow his hands had gotten disgracefully dirty and requested that I clean them immediately. It seemed time to move on at this point, so I finally got us packed up and out.
Our default destination when we take the boy for a (hopefully) sleep-inducing drive is the closest Dunkin' Donuts with a drive thru, so that's where I headed this time. He babbled and burbled his way all the way there, and things were looking grim. Worse still, as I pulled away from the Dunkin' Donuts, I realized that either his sense of smell has become excellent, or I've been to too many drive thrus with him, because he put his hand out and started grunting. I had no choice but to fill the hand with one of the munchkins I'd purchased. A little ways on, the whining began again, and I saw the hand sticking out again in my rear view mirror. Once again I filled the hand.
Thankfully this wasn't repeated. The boy continued burbling for a while, but as I neared home, the backseat, now dark with evening, became suddenly quiet. Hoping against hope, I circled the block a few more times, then carefully pulled into the driveway. When I opened the backdoor, I found him fast asleep and slumped completely sideways, a small chunk of munchkin clutched in his hand, crumbs of munchkin down his coat, and his socks inexplicably torn off and thrown onto the seat beside him.
Young man, I salute you. |
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