The Rex Files

It's 2 am, and Rex is getting restless in his crib.  Time to feed him again.  I hear him grunting, trying to break out of his swaddle, which he is probably too big for anyway.  I pick him up, trying not to look him directly in the eye because then he will want to play, or think I am happy about getting up at 2 am.  I've heard it's just as dangerous to look a night-waking baby in the eye as it is a shark or stampeding wild pig.  I believe it.  

After I feed him I put him on his changing table.  Now he really wants to play.  I can see him smiling, trying to catch my eye.  He is being very charming.  While I'm giving him a new diaper I hear the song "Back in the Swaddle Again" in my head, as I'm hoping to wrap him up in his straightjacket before he notices what I'm doing.  But wait - there is so much poop in his diaper that it will take forever to clean him up.  It's what my mom would call a three-wiper.  Shit, shit. 

There is so much poop that I have to change Rex's clothes.  I contemplate cutting them off of him, like they do in the emergency room for accident victims.  I think I've gotten the shirt up over his head without smearing poop on his face, but who can really tell in the dark?  Tomorrow morning I might find him covered in shit, or worse, someone else will find him.  They'll report me and I'll have to be sent away.  Where I could sleep without interruption.  Fantastic.

I manage to pull a fresh shirt down over Rex's head and arms, only to discover it barely covers his upper chest.  I actually mutter "Fuck me" out loud.  Rex is enormous and every day bursts out of another piece of clothing, like the Hulk probably did when he was a baby.  My dad calls Rex a behemoth.  While cursing I remember you are not supposed to talk to a night-waking baby, either, and because Rex thinks "Fuck me" means the same as every other thing I say to him, he gives me his best smile.  Then he sneezes in my face and my glasses cloud up, covered in baby snot.  He laughs out loud.  He thinks it's hilarious when he sneezes.  

While cleaning us both up, I realize I must look really attractive during these night episodes.   I am wearing not only my glasses but also my husband's strap-on headlamp and a stained gray nursing shirt that Veronica calls my feeding smock.  I'm sure I look like a deranged miner or painter.  (I stop for a minute to wonder which is worse, and decide that definitely the deranged painter is worse, because of the whole Van Gogh ear thing.)   Either way, what I'm wearing is an atrocious, almost frightening getup.  But then I look down and realize that to Rex, I just look like Mommy, and because he loves me more than anyone in the world right now and is smiling at me in the light of my miner's headlamp, I decide to play with him.