Potty Training: Part Deux

     Yesterday morning, Clara got out her sketch pad and asked for her crayons.  Her diaper was so engorged with pee that I felt sure it would soon explode, leaving the white, absorbent diaper granules that Wilbur the dog so loves to eat all over the floor.  
     "Let's change your diaper before we color," I suggested.
     "No!" she said forcefully, bringing both arms down in a baby karate chop motion.
     "Alright, alright.  At least let me take your diaper off, okay?  You can wear your pajama bottoms with no diaper for a little while, okay?"
     Clara was extremely amenable to this suggestion because it meant she could remain standing while I finagled the sodden diaper out through her legs.  And while standing, she could continue to color, making impatient sounds at me if I jerked too hard in my struggle to relieve her of the diaper.
     After awhile, when I had drawn for her several babies and dogs, a couple of hats, and a self-portrait ("Daw Mommy, Mommy. O-tay? Tanku, welcome."), she went to the basement playroom to work on her puzzles.  I wandered down with some laundry.  She left her alphabet puzzle and came running to me.
     "Poop, Mommy! Poop!"
     "You have to go poop?"
     "YES."
     Two or three weeks ago, Simon and I decided to put away Clara's potty.  While she seemed very interested in learning to use the potty, she hadn't made much progress potty training.  We figured she wasn't quite ready.  We also put away the "Elmo Goes Potty" video because, for some inexplicable reason, it seemed to get her really amped and kind of stressed out.
     We decided to just wait until she was ready.  We had no idea what "ready" looked like.  She seemed to be "ready" for potty training, according to all the parenting lists.  It seemed the one thing she hadn't developed yet was the ability to tell when she had to go.  Until yesterday.
     "Uh....do you want to sit on the potty?" I asked after she told me she had to go.
     "YES."
     I brought her into the basement bathroom, took off her pajama bottoms, and sat her on the toilet.  I held her under her armpits to keep her from falling in.  She suddenly seemed so little.  Her little pink piggies dangled a foot and a half off the floor.
     "My turn, Mommy," she told me sternly, pushing me away.
     "Okay, you want to hold yourself up.  That's good.  That's okay."
     I let go.  She grasped the edges of the toilet with pudgy hands and strained her plump baby triceps.  It was a losing battle.  Her bottom sank lower and lower into the bowl.
     "Mommy helps you," she panted after a moment.
     "Okay, I will help you." This time I hugged her and she leaned against me.  Her hair smelled like raspberry jam.  The skin on her back was so peachy and soft I couldn't help stroking it a little.
     "Mommy, poop is coming," she muttered into my ear.
     "Uh....Okay...Well, just let it come out."
     For some reason I couldn't help but flash forward a couple decades into the future, when I might be there for the delivery of her babies.  Yes, I just compared a bowel movement to the birth of my future grandchildren.  I imagine some elements are similar: the encouragement, the sense of solidarity ("I'm here for you, Baby.  We'll get this thing out, no matter what it takes!"), the ultra-close proximity.  And yes, the joy at the completion of a hard delivery.
     When it was all said and done, Clara prodded me out of the way and hopped off the toilet.
     "Wait!  Let me take a picture for Daddy!"
     "No, Mommy.  Flush.  Flush potty.  Bye, poop.  Bye-bye."
     "You're right.  Taking a picture is probably a weird thing to do."
     "Wash hands, Mommy.  Wash hands."
     "Right.  Yes.  Good.  Hygiene is important."
     After she'd washed her hand two or three times (pumping the soap is apparently one of the funnest things you can do), I gave her a chocolate chip as a reward.  And then we put a sticker on the calendar to show that she had gone poop in the potty that day.  And then, what the heck, I gave her a packet of chewy bunny candy, too.

Nocturnal Wars

Transcript of Last Night's Events:

12:30 a.m.
Bedtime.


1: 00 a.m.
Simon: "Ahem."  (Makes other obsequious, polite noises)
Me: (Deep breathing, pretending to be deeply asleep.)
Simon: (Clear throat). "It's just, I just..."
Me: "What?!"
Simon: "It's just...You keep moving.  I...I can't go to sleep."

     I try to hold still, but the minute Simon finishes speaking, I get an urgent desire to roll over.  I make myself hold completely still on my left side. I breathe very carefully.  I have discipline, and I can do this.
     My feet are suddenly hot.  Burning. I need to take off my socks.  To distract myself, I clench my abs to see if they've firmed up since I've given birth nearly two years ago (they haven't). I clench and unclench my calves to the rhythm of, "Just a Spoonful of Sugar." I feel like Simon has bat hearing.  I'm stuck inside submarine U-571, and I daren't stir lest the enemy hears me with his sonar.
     Perversely, this makes me want to punch the air and do "bicycles" on the sheets.  
     My feet are in hell and Satan is holding hot pokers to them.

1:34 a.m.

Me: (Gently, ever-so-carefully, using my toes, I take off my socks. The sound is faint, like crickets playing dodgeball. Then I ease over onto my back.  The sheets rustle softly, like a Caribbean breeze.)
Simon: (Exhales loudly through his mouth, producing a short, windy sound of exasperation)
Me: (Exhale loudly through my nose, producing a slightly more hissy, and therefore more authoritative, sound of exasperation.)

     Now I'm on my back.  I can hold still here forever.  No problem.
     I bet people's spines look like caterpillars when seen with an X-ray.  I think I can kind of feel my nerves coming out of my vertebra.  Nerviness is the worst.  I have that nervy, twitchy feeling.  It makes me think of when I dissected a frog back in college, and after we de-capitated them we had to stick a wire down their spinal column and wiggle it around to scramble their nerves.  So their legs would stop twitching.
     Wait! I think my leg is going numb!
     I bet I have a lot of fascia in my back. I wonder if "fascia" and "fascist" come from the same word.
     Hey, my traps are starting to twitch.
     I can feel my ganglia! I can feel my ganglia for crying out loud!!

1:36 a.m.

Me: (Roll over with quick, deft movement.)
Simon: "It's just...I have a big presentation tomorrow.  I want to be sharp for it.
Me: "I feel like a prisoner in my own bed!"
Simon: "I feel like a prisoner in my own bed." (Gets up, goes downstairs to the guest bedroom)

3:30 a.m.

     I wake up in a puddle of sweat.  I sluice the water out of my eyebrows with my index finger and thumb and try to figure out why I've awoken.  Ah, yes.  A lamb is bleating outside the window.  No.  It's Wilbur the dog, he's letting out a long string of high-pitched, windy farts in his sleep.  Yes, that's true, but there's something else... Yes, there it is.  Clara has awoken.

     What time is it?  

     3:30.

     So I've been asleep for an hour and a half.

     I'm going to let her yell for awhile and see if she goes back to sleep.  

     But why am I so sweaty?  When do women hit menopause? Forty? Fifty? Ninety? I love that magazine called More for middle-aged and mature women...I bet Diane Keaton has been on the cover...Wait! Don't go back to sleep!! You won't rest well in a wet bed.

     Why am I so sweaty?

     Maybe it isn't sweat!!!!

     When do people usually get incontinent?  Forty?  Fifty?  Ninety??

     Nonsense.  It can't be that.  How did it get in my eyebrows?

     Ah.  It's becoming clearer now.  Of course.  It's the comforter Simon's parents gave us a few years back.  The goose down one rated for fifty below zero.  It seemed so light and airy when I put it over me several hours ago.  

The Gentle Give and Take of Collaboration

     This morning, after breakfast, Clara and I sat down at her tiny kiddie table to color.  For several days, we've been working on a big, white poster board.  The rule is we can draw whatever we want on it, and we can use whatever colors we want.  (But no food.  Yogurt smears are not allowed). I tend to have an artsy-craftsy style, with curlicues and bright, complimentary colors.  Like most kids her age, Clara's style more closely resembles Jackson Pollock's.

   
     When Clara first started coloring, several months ago, she had five crayons that her grandparents bought for her.  They were the basic colors--red, blue, yellow, green and brown--and they were thick so she could grasp them more easily in her pudgy toddler hands.

     I colored with those for awhile.  Then I started thinking about bigger and better things.  I bought the Crayola 64-crayon coloring set at the grocery store and hid it in the drawer where I keep all my jewelry.  I stole a page from Clara's giant Toy Story coloring book to color in my spare time, in my bedroom, with the door closed.  I had vague ideas of coloring Woody and Buzz with a Matisse-like palette.  The dinosaur--I forget his name--grew a lime-green and gold halo.  Rings like those around Saturn circled his head.  

     "I've been coloring a lot," I admitted to my in-laws.

     "Coloring is great," my father-in-law said.  "You can buy more grown-up coloring books, like with pictures of historical figures like Thomas Jefferson and stuff, at education outlets.  I have several."

     "How do you know when to color softly or push harder?" I asked.

     "Well, it depend on what you want.  Do you want the soft stroke effect, or the waxy, deeper color?"

     "It sounds like your technique is quite advanced," I said.

     

     Clara found the 64-pack of crayons.

     Of course she did.

     After awhile, I got tired of trying to put them neatly back into the box after she'd used them.  I dumped them all into a Tupperware container.  

     We started working coloring into our morning routine.

     "I will color one Hello Kitty in your Hello Kitty coloring book, and then I have to vacuum the floor," I'll tell her.  Unless the Hello Kitty I'm coloring needs a midnight blue background, and a crown, and maybe some stars...     

     This morning Clara busied herself with making jagged brown lines on the edge of the poster board.  I carefully selected a salmon-toned crayon and began making tiny curlie-cues near the bottom.  

     "Mommy, daw a dog."

     I drew a pink Beagle to go with the fifteen other dogs I had drawn on the board, and Clara cheerfully scribbled over the top of it. 

     My curlie-cues needed some definition, so I casually went into the kitchen for a fine-point Sharpie.  I sat back down at an oblique angle, holding my breath a little as I uncapped the marker and began to outline my work.

     Clara saw the Sharpie instantly and swooped down on me like a horseman of the apocalypse.  

     "Mommy, my turn!"

     "No, it's Mommy's turn."  I continued to outline, but she kept reaching for the pen, making my line wiggle.  "Clara, it's my turn.  You can have a turn in a second."

     "No!! Mommy, it's my turn.  Baby's turn! Me!"

     "Okay, you can have it for two minutes, okay?  And then me."

     With a huff of satisfaction, she took the pen from me and began scribbling merrily.  After a moment, she tried to put the cap back on and couldn't.

     "Mommy helps you," she said.  I put the cap back on for her, and then she took it off again.  I wrote her name, "Clara," and my name, "Mommy," on the poster board with the pen.  Very interesting, her body language seemed to say, but can you do this?  And a wild flurry of scribbles appeared over and around the writing.

     Then she dropped the pen.

     "Me, 'icker.  Baby unts 'ticker."

     "Okay, you may have one sticker."

     She picked a sticker of Mr. Potato Head and stuck it to the poster board.  Then she took it off and stuck it to my sleeve.

     "Ohhhhhh, Mommy! 'Ticker on sirt."

     "Yes, it's on my shirt."

     She tried to stick it on Wilbur, but it wouldn't adhere to his fur.  "'Bur unt 'ticker?" she asked him.  He licked his chops in response.

     "'Bur, a mess," she said, pointing to the broken crayons on the floor.  She sighed and shook her head.  "No, 'Bur.  No mess."

     "Wilbur didn't break the crayons, Honey.  You did.  Don't you remember?"

     "Oh, Mommy mess."

     "No, not me.  You.  But you know what?  It's okay.  Crayons get broken.  They still work."

     "Oh, Baby mess."

     "Yes."

Wilbur the dog: Methods of Persuasion that don't involve food

   Sometimes I contemplate all the things I could threaten Wilbur the dog with for his transgressions.
   The transgressions:
    -"Killing" his stuffed animals (and sometimes Clara's stuffed animals), burying them in the backyard, then digging them up and "killing" them again, so there's cotton stuffing and muddy, matted shanks of fur all over the backyard.
    -Eating Clara's dirty diapers (if I should forget and leave one wrapped on the floor for a mere five seconds to run downstairs for her diaper rash cream), and then strewing the diaper remnants all over the back patio.
     -Coughing and retching like a miner with black lung in the early morning hours, then snorting and rolling luxuriantly on his back on the carpet just beneath my side of the bed, his collar jingling like a sleigh at Christmastime.
   
     The worst transgression of all is Wilbur's passive resistance.  My neighbors are all well-aquainted with the sight of me chasing Wilbur down the street (sometimes in my jammies), and then carrying him back to our house.
     Yes, Wilbur has learned the subtle advantages of the inert rebellion. When I catch up to him on the street, rather than darting out of the way of my reaching hands, he simply lies down and rolls onto his back.  No amount of coaxing can raise him to his fleshy paws.  When we first got him, and he weighed more than fifty pounds, this was an incredibly daunting task.  I had to squat down, slide my hands underneath him and then mutter this mantra to myself: "Lift with your legs, Isabelle.  Lift with your legs."
     It was like trying to haul a fleshy log.
     Now Wilbur is much more svelte, but he has the unique ability to make himself seem like he weighs 200 pounds.
     He has taken to dozing behind Clara's rocking chair while we read her bedtime stories.  When it's time to say good-night, he looks at us lovingly, as if to say, "You poor, poor people.  Don't you know I'm not ready to leave yet?"
     Because he's wedged behind the rocking chair, picking him up and bringing him into the hallway is not that feasible.
      And this is where the threats come in.  So far I've come up with three that seem satisfying to me:
   
       1.) "Wilbur, if you don't get out right now, I will take all your rawhide bones and replace them with dental hygiene bones." ("But Wilbur likes dental hygiene bones," Simon says.
      "He likes anything that goes into his mouth," I reply.  "But he likes rawhide bones better than dental hygiene bones.")

      2.)  "Wilbur, git! Or else I'll shave off all your fur and you'll look like a chubby pink rat."

      3.)   "Out, Wilbur!  Or else I'll swaddle you tight like a papoose and give you to Clara to play with.  You don't care?  Really?  Because I know she has some pink bloomers that would look fantastic on your head.  She could put your ears through the leg holes."

     Simon's threats are much more to the point and involve cursing in a low voice so Clara can't hear.
     Of course, most of the time, Wilbur just yawns and stretches while we're threatening him.  So we've developed two tried-and-true methods of getting him across Clara's bedroom floor and out the door.
     The first is the "log roll," and it's executed exactly the way you might think.  Wilbur doesn't mind this at all.  In fact, he facilitates by curling his paws under him.  The hardest part is the initiation push.  Once we get him rolling, though, inertia takes over and each roll seems a little easier than the last.  When we get to the door, he jumps up, shakes, and trots out into the hallway.
     The second method is "the drag."  Simon reaches down, grabs his collar, and drags him horizontally across the carpet to the door.  This appears to be Wilbur's favorite method.  Done correctly, there is no choking involved (though Simon sometimes wishes there were), and Wilbur gets a back-scratch from the carpet.  Again, he facilitates by curling his paws and tail in.
     He looks like a rotund otter as he slides across the floor.

Havoc was wrought: Play Group tours the fire station

     This morning, approximately ten toddlers of the Hillside Ward Playgroup (of which Clara and I are proud members), along with their grandparents or parents, swarmed the City of Boise Fire Station #9 for a tour.
     The firefighters were remarkably composed in the midst of the toddler melee.
     They showed us the austere room where they slept: hospital-like twin beds with bare mattresses surrounded by heavy privacy curtains (the beds looked super inviting to me-- a sign that I may be sleep-deprived.)  They showed us a room with recliners and a TV where they relax, their work-out room, and their kitchen (which, I jealously noted, was in many respects cleaner than mine).
     Then they brought us out to the garage to look at the trucks.  Initial response to the trucks was mostly positive, and sometimes extremely positive:

(Note: Colton, above, is most likely smiling.  His posture appears tense owing to the fact that he's trying to see out of the eyeholes of his Batman costume.  He has been wearing the costume for several days, ever since a relative gave it to him.)
     The firemen gave us some information and answered questions.  For example, if you have a sticker on your window saying you'd like your pets rescued, the firefighters will rescue you first, and then go back for your pets.  What a relief.  I don't know what I'd do if some fireman saved Wilbur the dog before me.
     There are two engines at Station 9: one for the city, and one that's used only for brush fires.  The diameter of the trucks' exhaust pipes is probably only a little smaller than a dinner plate.  When you turn on a firetruck, one of the firefighters explained, the diesel engine pushes out billowing black smoke.  It used to fill up the garage and put an inches-thick layer of soot on the walls. So now the firefighters hook a big hose to the exhaust pipe and it vents all the fumes outside.  The ventilation hose runs on a sliding track and is also really, really fun to play with.

The firefighters let everyone climb on the engine.

And then, oh glory be, they let everyone sit in the firetruck driver's seat.  It was almost more than Clara could digest.  She has always wanted to drive a real car.  I'm sure the driver's seat of our Toyota paled in comparison to this one:

     It turns out the firetruck starts by pushing a button rather than using a key. Someone worried that might make it easy to steal.  Well, firetrucks don't corner well, and they don't go very fast, one of the firefighters pointed out.  Plus, you'd be pretty conspicuous driving a firetruck.  
     Also, firefighters don't push each other or yell, "Shut-gun!" or fight over who gets to drive as they run to the trucks.  Each man has a permanent position.  You have to go through an interview process and get a promotion to be the driver.
     The firefighters assured me that they would thoroughly investigate the rig after we'd left, and un-push all buttons pushed by dimpled toddler fingers.
     After everyone had a chance to sit in the driver's seat, one of the firemen took us aside and put on his fire gear. Along with bulky pants, boots, coat and gloves, he put on a weird, medievel-looking hood and his gas mask. He said he wanted us to not be scared if we were ever in a house fire and saw a fireman crawling towards us on the floor.  The response to the gas-masked fireman was almost universal trepidation:

     And who could blame the kids?  He looked like a giant insect with Darth Vader breath.  I'm not so sure I myself wouldn't whack him with the nearest heavy object if he came at me during a fire.
     Shar ran to her dad to be comforted.  Clara found herself in the unfortunate position of having to pass by the gas-masked firefighter to get to me.  She made several attempts, the sheer baby terror on her face dawning afresh each time she rounded the side of his body and looked at his face.  Finally another mother grabbed her and brought her, rigid with fear, to me.  
     After the fireman took off his fire gear, he brought us outside and gave the kids stickers and fire hats.  One of the mothers, Ericka, brought homemade brownies.  

Panic: Clara discovers how to lock a door

     Clara likes to slam doors.  She thunders down the hall into my bedroom, her bedroom, the bathroom--wherever there's a door--and slams it with all her baby might.  Then she laughs diabolically behind the closed door.
     After a moment, when her chuckling subsides, she says, "Mommy! Mommy, Mommy, Mommy! Do' suht! Do' o-pin!"
     This is my cue to come open the door.  She can reach the door handle, but she can't open it by herself yet.  She paws at it, and fingers the little screws that hold in the knob, and the strike plate where the lockset goes.
     This morning, she ran into the bathroom, slammed the bathroom door, and then reached up and locked herself inside.  She has never done that before.  I didn't think she'd ever noticed the lock until this morning.
     "Mommy! Mommy Mommy Mommy!"
     My heart nearly stopped when I tested the knob and found the door locked.
     "Uh, Clara, can you twist the button on the knob again?"
     "Butt-ton.  Butt-ton.  Mommy o-pin.  Mommy do' suht."
     "Honey, stay there, okay?"
     As if she could have gone anywhere.
     Still, I had visions of her drowning in the toilet, or somehow finagling her little hand past the baby-proofing on the cupboards and getting to my leg razors.
     What should I do?  This was not a door that could be opened by sticking a credit card in the doorjamb.  Who could I call that would come over STAT?  Our neighbor, Joe, is out of town.  I could call the cops, or maybe my boss, who I knew was rather handy, to come over and open it. (I noticed a tiny hole in the knob on my side of the door and had a vague sense it might be important.  Later, a coworker told me there would be an Allen wrench on top of the door sill that you inserted into the hole to open it from the outside. Wonders never cease.)
     Instead, I ran downstairs and grabbed a screwdriver.  By this time, Clara had figured out she was stuck and began to wail.
     "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!"  She listened briefly to me cursing at the screws on the other side of the door as I tried to place the screwdriver and decided I was incompetent: "Daddy! Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy!"
     Finally I got the knob on my side off.  Much to my horror, there was some sort of mechanism on the inside of the door that actually held the lockset.  I'd thought I could take off the knob and everything would just fall apart.
     Who knew doors were so complicated?
     The knob on the other side of the door fell off, too, and I could see Clara's big blue eyes staring at me over the lockset mechanism and through the hole where the knobs had been.  Her terror at being trapped inside the bathroom was quickly overtaken by her terror of disorder.  She tried to replace the knob on her side of the door.
     "Mess!  Oh, mess, Mommy!" she said.
     "It's okay, Honey, no big deal.  No biggie."
     The lockset seemed to be well-made, much to my chagrin.  I pushed at it and whacked it with the screwdriver.  Just as I was about to give up, it magically slipped open.  I thought Clara would come rushing through the door and into my arms, but she had long since stopped crying and seemed interested in the doorknob.  She hugged me, more to placate me than anything else.
     She grappled with the loose knob and peered inside it.  Then she looked at me and smacked her chest.
    "Mommy.  Bee-bee [chest smack] 'side do'."
     "Yes.  You were stuck inside the door."
     "Mommy o-pin...Bee-bee [chest smack]."
     "Yes.  I opened the door for my baby."

Bargain Shopping with a Blown-Out Diaper

     I pretty much detest grocery shopping with a toddler.  However, if I have to do it, I prefer doing it in small trips, and in a store with nice, low lighting, with a Starbucks inside or nearby.  It costs a little extra, I think, but the soothing ambience makes up for it.
     Sometimes, though, my family needs a whole bunch of stuff all at once. Knowing the total cost at a store with nice ambience could make me keel over in shock, I go to the bargain grocery chain near our house--Winco Foods off Broadway Avenue.
     How shall I describe the Winco Foods off Broadway? Preternaturally, frenetically bright, it's a flourescent-lit maze for the harried, the over-budgeted, the compulsive deal-shopper.  Floors so clean and reflective they induce nausea.  Acoustics like the inside of a warehouse. And always, always packed.  So packed that sometimes you have to park your cart at the end of the aisle and wend your way through shoppers to gather what you need.
     But the prices!  The prices always make me want to break into song. (Although, it bears mentioning that buying frozen veggies at Winco is like playing Russian roulette--sometimes they're delicious, sometimes they're so frost-bitten and desiccated you'd think they were on Lord Shackleton's trip to the South Pole).
     Last night was a Winco Foods shopping night.  I brought Clara because Simon had to work late. I'd taken her straight from her nap, so she was still wearing her pajamas. Clara is not a fan of shopping carts. She keened and flailed and climbed up my chest with her footie-jammied feet when I tried to put her in the front of the cart.  To keep her still and pliable, I gave her my phone to play with.
    Everything went smoothly until we rounded the corner into Dairy, when I caught the singular whiff of a dirty diaper.  As a mother, one knows the smell of one's child's scat.  It's as distinctive as a fingerprint.  There was no way the man with plumber's crack buying beer, or the woman with a nineties haircut and square shoulder pads, could have produced that bouquet. Unless they ate large quantities of Go-Gurt yogurt pouches and Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal.  Which was doubtful.
     I lifted Clara slightly to inspect the seat of her pants.  Yep, she'd sprung a leak.  For the first time in perhaps ten or so months.
     She thought I was lifting her from the front of the cart to carry her on my hip, and shrieked when I put her back down: "MOMMY! Hode you! Hode you! Hug! HUG YOU!!"
     I impatiently swung her to my hip, but it seems her desires to be held were all a ruse.  She really wanted me to put her down so she could run.
     "Stop!" I hissed as she yelled and squeezed my hip between her delectable toddler thighs. I bent her knee against me so she couldn't kick at my opposite arm.
     It seemed like people were beginning to notice the smell.  I could feel them staring. In retrospect, it seems more likely they were watching Clara's face go white, then brilliant red, as she screamed with rage.  One-handed, I hurried our shopping cart down the dogfood aisle towards the bathroom.
     Suddenly, the cart's right front wheel locked up.  And then the left back did.  I glanced down and saw the back wheel was clogged with what looked like a bunch of greasy, black strands, probably threads from some packing material. To my frazzled mind, though, the threads looked like hair. Like someone had used the cart to repeatedly run over someone's head.
     Panting with effort, I discovered if I grasped the right corner of the cart, and pushed at an angle to it, I could slide the cart horizontally, like a jack-knifed tractor trailer.  People hurried out of my way.
     When we got to the bathroom, I saw the damage was worse than I'd ever imagined.  My mind slowly reeled through images from the afternoon: Clara eating handfuls of blueberries before her nap; Clara eating an adult portion of baked beans at lunch; Clara gorging herself on grapes while I distractedly browsed the fruit stand near our house.
     I didn't have a change of clothes with me.  And, through some egregious oversight, I didn't have diaper wipes, either.
     I did have a clean diaper, and the little purple sweater I carried in case she got cold. And, glory be, at the very bottom of the diaper bag, I found the polka-dotted swimsuit bottoms Clara wore when she was six months old.
    We had to make a run out to the car to get her sparkly purple sneakers, and she locked me out of the handicapped stall once or twice while I was running back and forth with soapy paper towels. But after fifteen minutes or so, she was pretty cleaned up.
    The swimsuit bottoms were so tiny they looked like a Speedo, and we didn't have any socks.  Clara was incredibly peeved, poor baby, but I suspect it had more to do with not being able to run through the store like a wild heathen than with what she was wearing.