baby wrangler

To my long list of titles (mommy, wife, daughter, sister, friend, coworker, general pain in the ass), I can now add baby wrangler.

I’ve always heard of the terrible two’s, but no one ever bothered to mention the not-so-ONEderful one’s. Overnight Cooper went from this sweet, happy-go-lucky baby to a screaming, writhing, fit-throwing tot … flailing feet and body jerks included! And that’s just when I won’t pick him up when HE wants or when I put him to bed before HE’s ready. (It also happens when I put him in the grocery cart, car seat, high chair, blah, blah, blah.)

Last night, after an especially heinous/torturous/exhaustive boot camp, Coop decided he’d had enough of this whole “getting his diaper changed” business. After several failed attempts at trying to scale the bath tub wall and climb out on his own (the child has gone plum crazy!), I pulled him out and wrapped him like a baby burrito and prepared for the same routine we’d done night after night for, oh, um, A YEAR!

Maybe Coop’s not as much a creature of habit as his mommy is, or maybe he just wanted to “free ball it” for awhile, but oh, holy Hannah the fit that he threw while I tried to get his diaper on. SCREAMING! KICKING! Every appendage waving erratically in the air. It was enough to wear down any mom, not to mention one that was already down for the count.

I entertained the idea of letting him air dry all night, allowing him to mark his territory wherever he wished. But, I quickly realized that if I didn’t have the strength to tame a 1-year-old, I certainly didn’t have the mojo to scrub up puddles of pee. My second thought was to tape a plastic baggie to his pickle (like the doc does when he needs a urine sample), so that he could “go” and there’d be no excessive cleaning required. But, I knew Coop would just figure out how to get the baggie off and well, just imagine THAT mess.

With a tot still thrashing around as if to smother flames on his body, I did what only a perfectly capable, perfectly adept parent would do … I sang 10 Little Monkeys at the top of my lungs, handed the wild man a toy, put the diaper on backwards, one cheek hanging out, wiped the sweat from my brow and called it a night.

His crib was wet this morning. Sigh.