This little light of mine

I think I've mentioned before that upon my return to work after maternity leave, I arranged to work 36 hours instead of 40 and work longer hours on weekdays so that I could take Mondays off with Nico. Surefire cure for hating Mondays, let me assure you. Today didn't start out so well, though. I cringe to even type these words, but Nico had his first Poo Up The Back incident, and it was really bad. Really, really bad. He was wearing two-piece pajamas, and my shirt-removal technique was clearly completely useless, because he ended up with poop smeared up his back to his shoulders. He sat there mostly oblivious as I howled in horror and scrubbed him down with baby wipes. Once he was finally clean, I lifted him up to do a last butt / leg check and when I turned him to face me, I discovered a huge smear of shit ACROSS HIS CHEEK. As in the one on his face. As in oh my God, kill me now. The bath I was going to put off until Wednesday night became an immediate priority, and I suppose it was almost worth it since I got to spend the rest of the day with a sweet-smelling curly-haired baby.

The Universe must've felt a little guilty about the Poopocalypse, because the rest of the day was really stellar. I'd put off the last of our Christmas shopping until today, after a hastily aborted attempt to go to Walmart on Saturday morning. (No. HELL no. I don't know what we were thinking. Luckily we came to our senses as soon as we saw the long line of cars waiting to turn into the parking lot.) Nico is usually a good shopper, but today he was an amazing one. We went to Goodwill to buy an end table for the guest room so my friend Tamsyn has a place to put her glasses when she comes to visit us for three days next week (squee!). Nico rode in the cart and didn't try to shove the table off the back when I balanced it across the basket part. He fell asleep in the car on the way to Toys R Us and I almost bailed on going in, but I needed "something to build with" for my cousin's son, whose name we pulled in the kids-only family gift exchange. (We ended up getting these Trio things from Fisher Price that look really cool, since I felt like at three years old he's on the upper end of Duplos and maybe a little young for Legos. Plus, holy hell, Legos are expensive.) Nico slept in his stroller during that entire endeavor, and then miraculously stayed asleep through the transfer back into his carseat and the drive out to Walmart.

Once we got there, he woke up and proceeded to be as charming as humanly possible for the duration of our visit. He was bright-eyed, he grinned and chatted with me, he sat politely in the cart and did not try to lick it. My kid magically made a trip to Walmart four days before Christmas something fun. Crazy, right? We had two more stops after that, and on the way over Nico suddenly began crowing happily in the back seat, clearly immensely pleased about something. When I looked in the mirror to check on him, I discovered that he'd somehow figured out how to remove his hat while his hood was still on, and he was very proud of himself.

Obviously I had great hopes that having a kid would be enjoyable. I knew when I signed on that of course it wasn't going to be fun and games all the time, but I don't think I expected it to be this fantastic. My friend bibliophile81 said not too long ago that Nico is the kind of baby that fools people into thinking they want a baby, and she was totally right. I'm not sure how I ended up with such a wonderful, easygoing kid, but I will definitely take it.