A Full Plate (Among Other Things)

Owen’s routine is pretty simple: sleep, nurse, diaper change, play and then repeat. Sometimes we mix it up a bit by throwing in a bath or changing his diaper before he nurses, but this is the basic order of things. More importantly, we generally don’t like more than two hours to elapse between waking from sleep and drifting back into it.

There are times, however, when we attempt to work his routine around our own personal agendas, and last Saturday was one of those times. I wanted to go to the grocery store, bake a pie, unblock a clogged milk duct and run to Crate & Barrel and the Container Store before heading to our friends Brad & Marlo’s place for dinner. Allen wanted to make a mold of Owen’s feet, give Owen a bath and indulge me.

We managed to accomplish all of this, but in doing so, Owen missed two of his afternoon naps resulting in his being awake for seven hours straight without a real nap. While Allen was painfully aware of Owen’s sleep deprivation (having unsuccessfully tried to get him down for a couple of naps while I was otherwise occupied), I didn’t realize it until we were headed to Brad & Marlo’s and I started doing the math (I know, I know, this is precisely why we have the Trixie Tracker…).

We quickly developed a plan of attack: as soon as we arrived we would give him a bottle, change his diaper and then I would rock him to sleep. Unfortunately, this was one of those times we should have changed up the order, for while we were getting a bottle ready and Brad was holding Owen, a rumbling could be heard emanating from Owen’s posterior.

At which point he pooped all over Brad.

As Allen later pointed out, there are far worse people Owen could have unleashed his colon on. After all, Brad and Marlo are expected their first child in February and Brad had said before we came over that he really wanted to get the full infant experience. And while we’re happy to accommodate him, we would generally prefer our child to not cover our friends and loved ones in crap.

We quickly changed Owen (Brad changed himself), got him to sleep for an hour, and gave him a bottle which resulted in a much happier Owen. After another hour or so of socializing, we took the little guy home, fed and changed him again and put him down for the night where he slept soundly for over six hours.

I’m pretty sure there’s a lesson here, but if it involves keeping Owen up all day so he’s cranky and pooping on our friends just so he’ll sleep through the night, I think we’ll keep looking.