Tuesdays with Sadie: Blueberries

6:45-S talks to me about the plans for the day while I try to remain asleep.
7:30-Lil s awakes late enough that I don’t think I’ll be entirely exhausted. As a reward I let her mop the downstairs floor thoroughly. I mean, the shirt she had on was at least nine distinct colors by the time I put her down for a nap at 10:30. I feel like she did an especially good job near the front door, and I try and tell her so, but she’s busy eating a blanket. I think I’m going to have her skip trade school for secretaries and go straight to being a human mop. Is there an industry for that?

8:15-After playing with s for a while and giving her some food I spend a little quality time with the computer. Lil s scoots around the floor trying to find something that is not one of her toys to play with. She scoots over to my feet on the couch and briefly inspects my toes before departing for greener pastures. Lil s loves to climb towards our front door because it has a mat with a nice rough texture just inside it that she can pat. That mat is also always dirty. For a while I sort of lose sight of her over by the mat as I’m on the computer, but I can still hear her playing. A minute or two goes by and I check on her, and she peers up at me and smiles, and then coughs. At this point I become aware that she’s probably pulled some hairball off the floor and eaten it, and is now in the process of vomiting it up. I don’t panic though. I pick her up and put her down on a blanket. She then proceeds to army crawl towards her almost empty milk in an attempt to wash the hair ball down. As it turns out she was just hiccupping because of the milk. Parenting is fun.

8:15-9:45 Lil s scoots around the floor or has a bit of milk, chasing after a ball, chewing on our stairs, chewing on a foot rest, or trying to pull the blanket strings/blanket off the couch because it has the computer on it, and she thinks it would be a good idea to have it fall on her head.

10:00-Feeding time. Blueberries. Blueberries stain everything. Thus, I prepare myself by stripping s down to her diaper, and me down to my unmentionables. I am determined that neither one of us will get blueberry stains anywhere. First off I heat up the blueberries in the microwave for too long, and the liquid portion explodes all over the inside. I’m off to a good start. Thankfully s does a fairly good job of eating, only occasionally trying to take the spoon and make sure to smear the blueberries all over her cheeks and at one point, her right eye. I’ve seen worse. She also takes my hand as she’s reaching for the spoon and makes sure to smear a little on me as well. However, we make it through the whole process without either one of getting stained clothes. Victory is almost ours. Except that s is covered in blueberries, and I wind up using about half a paper towel roll to get her clean, apologies to the environment, and midway through the process she starts crying because no one likes to have their face washed off by someone else, and I realize that the blueberries are everywhere, legs, under arms, shoulders, scalp. I’ve still seen worse but they take some vigorous rubbing to remove, and she’s crying and looking at me like I’ve betrayed her. Eventually I get all the berries off and hurry her off to bed. Naturally she’s taken another colossal uh bathroom break that I have to clean up before putting her down. And it is at that point that I momentarily panic because I notice that she has a long line of what I initially think is poop on the underside of her right arm only to realize a second later that it is no doubt just blueberries. And as I wipe it off I wonder how stained her sheets will get during her nap from all of the berries that lie somewhere hidden on her skin

12:06
I’m reading over some notes sent to me about an old family trip, and I’m particularly impressed by a couple of details that strike me as the sort of things that give an essay a nice texture. Ergo; I say out loud, “that is some good shi-.” This is followed by me saying “ooops.” And then looking down at my feet where lil s has been working on her podiatrist skills, and she is looking back up at me with a huge grin on her face.

12:30
Lil s and I make for the great outdoors. If she’s as bored as I am of sitting in the living room then I figure she’s going to love it. We spend only a minute on the blanket before s heads again for greener pastures. In this case the pastures really are greener. She tugs at bits of grass, and I’m thinking she can be a weed wacker and a human mop, but I think she’s learning because she doesn’t try to eat the grass or dried leaves. This being the case I decide to let her keep crawling, and she makes her way into a patch of new grass, which, unfortunately, is also full of mud. Thus, by the time she wiggles her way back to the blanket her shirt has become something that we’ll wear outside again in the future. Images of old Tide commercials keep running through my head about taking stains out because your lousy kids keep getting them. For a while I look at Sadie, her messy shirt, her red and blond hair. The latter of which, I’m certain that if I tell her mother she’ll almost forgive me the shirt. It looks just like yours. This especially because a woman at church the other day said she’d never seen a baby look more like its father than lil s. Though, her judgment may not be gospel level at she thought lil s was a boy despite the pink dress. And after I talk to lil s for a while, her face smiling up at me, she crawls up towards my face, and puts her hand on my chest.
Patches of blue sky, not abundant in these parts, interfered with on all sides. Clouds no more than puffs of smoke, the wispy hair of an old man. A helicopter heard before seen, torpedoing through blue. A squirrel chittering warnings at a robin from the oak in our alley. A cicada making it’s awful racket. Robins and crows exchanging places in a tree. The tree is alive with the noise of birds. In the distance children are arguing on the playground. These are the things at which she cocks her head, and tries to understand.
When I get inside it occurs to me that I should at least, for my wife’s sake, make an attempt to salvage the shirt. However, as I leave to go upstairs lil s begins crying. I think she was getting used to spending time with her daddy.

4:00
By the time lil s has taken her third nap I have washed, dried, and gotten ready the little onesie that was damaged by our back yard earlier in the day, so that her mother will not complain too vociferously. I can tell when I put it on that lil s appreciates all the hard work I put into making her outfit look almost like new, though she might resent the two hours she spent scooting around our floor in her diaper like some commoner. If she does, she doesn’t say so.

5:00
We go outside and sit on the front porch. Lil s arches her back to look up at either the overhead light or me. I try and determine if her eyes are green or blue. The mosquitoes are light and variable, but lil s’s chubby legs don’t exactly put up adequate defense. After doing intermittent battle with one I see it land on her foot and quickly swat it. However, I notice that its already started its business and that I’ve got blood on my hands and she on her foot. But I suppose we’ve already gone enough blood shared between us. Why, just today I watched her climb into a pile of dirt just because it was there.