And without further ado, I give you my finest hour as a mother thus far:
David works as a tutor at the campus Writing Center for about fifteen hours a week as one of his many part-time jobs. He was gone last Friday from 8:00 to 3:00, the longest stretch of the week. Baby Hollie and I were getting on fine, and she let me put her down for her first nap of the day (though really, who can distinguish between her naps and her nighttime sleeping? It's all the same.), letting me get some more shut-eye, briefly.
When she woke again, it wasn't quite time to eat yet, so she was content to fall back asleep as I held her in the living room. I hadn't eaten yet myself, so I carefully and stealthily picked ourselves up and went into the kitchen to scavenge. It really takes two hands to hold this little girl the right way, so I couldn't prepare anything for myself that took actual cutting, spreading, or complicated-package-opening. I knew we had some leftover Stauffer's lasagna in the fridge, so I tucked Hollie's head under my chin and went for it.
I did not drop the baby. This is not a story about dropping babies.
I managed somehow to transfer the (let's face it) three-to-four serving size portions of lasagna onto a plate and into the microwave. Upon opening the utensils drawer, I realized that all that we had left were spoons. I briefly considered washing a fork, but this sounded like a two-handed task, and one that would potentially leave my hand/s cold unless I stood there for a full minute or two waiting for the water to warm up. A spoon seemed like a perfectly reasonable tool for eating lasagna.
I put the spoon in my mouth and somehow precariously held the piping hot plate of piping hot lasagna in front of where I was also holding Hollie's cute little poking-out bum with one hand, and her cute little fuzzy head with the other. Successfully making it to the couch, I placed the plate on the secure foundation of my closed laptop on the cushion next to me, and chose to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Netflix rather than read any 18th-century literature like I ought to have done (kudos to my good friend Kaitlin for suggesting Buffy as the new mommy series of choice for midnight feedings--though Buffy has now infiltrated my daytime watching, too...).
We had settled into a good episode of third-season Buffy, with Hollie perched on my chest leaving one of my hands free for volume control and the other for spoonfuls-of-lasagna control. I had it all: good food, good entertainment, good sleeping baby. I could not have asked for more (and considering how much lasagna was on that plate, I really shouldn't have).
Life was so good, I rewarded myself with one of those "because-you're-worth-it"-sized spoonfuls of lasagna--a real heaping load. But as I raised the spoon over my baby's head, my sleep-deprived nervous system somehow managed to disconnect my brain from my hands.....and I missed my mouth. I watched in helpless shock as the single-serving-sized portion of lasagna fell from its awkward positioning on the small spoon and landed on my baby's back, rolling down her white onesie with the yellow elephants and onto my sweatpants, where I stared at it grudgingly, as if to say, "This is all YOUR fault."
Disgusted with myself and my food, I picked the dropped piece up with my fingers and stuck it in my mouth, where it could harm no one else except, eventually, my waistline and maybe my thighs. I paused Buffy. I looked in despair at the trail of tomato sauce and small bits of ground beef that ran down my peacefully sleeping baby's back. Thank goodness it missed her hair and her neck. Thank goodness for that. But I was still creeped out. There is something about Baby Hollie not being able to eat solid foods that makes me nervous for her to come into any contact with big-people food at all. There is a deep-down part of me that feared the lasagna trail would somehow go through her onesie onto her skin and get sucked in osmosis-style into her body where it would still manage to wreak havoc on her tiny developing digestive system.
I dabbed my fingers repeatedly against her back, licking off as much lasagna as I could. After finishing the rest of my lasagna and the Buffy episode (like I said, "my finest hour"), I scooped up sleeping-baby and changed her clothes.
As for my lasagna-covered sweatpants (read: David's old sweatpants that I have since commandeered), I didn't change out of those for another two days. Sunday morning David looked at my pants and said, "Is that blood?"
"No," I said, "it's lasagna."
He replied, "From two days ago? Oh."
And the best part of this story is that having blood or having lasagna residue on my clothes was equally unalarming to my adorable husband. The second best part is that this dialogue was immediately followed up with David saying, "Have you lost even MORE weight this week? Your body looks incredible!"
So......why was it again that I was so nervous about flyaway hairs and chapped lips before we got married?
