Chaos ensues

This week my crazy wife decided to take advantage of some of the post-Halloween sales. Clearance crap, I have found, is kind of like a fight brewing in a bar: I'm drawn to it, because I want to see what's going on, yet in truth I want nothing to do with it (and I definitely don't want it in my house). While we did score some sweet Halloween decorations and costumes for next year on the cheap, Sarah grabbed a couple things that I generally try to avoid at all costs.

The first was some new dress-up clothes for the girls. Now, as a rule I hate dress-up clothes. When they're pulled out if the box I invariably spend the morning playing "Can you put this on me?" and mending the bumped heads brought on by the tiny, plastic, lethal high-heeled shoes the girls like to wear. (Clomp-clomp-clomp-clomp-THUD. "Waaaahhhhhh!") But whatever. If a new dress or two will occupy them for a morning, fine. I'm all for it.

The other thing to hit our cart was a haunted-house style gingerbread house kit, complete with assorted small candies and frosting packets to decorate it. Those things make me shudder, for two reasons. Number one: by the time you actually purchase the thing, get it home, unwrap it, build it, and eat it, the cookies are so ancient that they resemble concrete slabs (which I suppose is appropriate, since they're being used for building materials and all). The second reason is the potential for mess-making. Or more correctly stated,

MESS-MAKING!!!

Two preschoolers + gooey frosting + thousands of tiny sprinkles = one enormous mess that I have to clean up.

I made Sarah supervise the building activity as my revenge.

Multiple plates of tiny mess-making particles, or as some people call them, decorations.


And here we go!



First taste of frosting. It's all downhill from here, folks. Avert your eyes.


Luke, oblivious to the impending carnage, plays with the toy of the day (TotD): cookie cutters!


I can't watch!





Mary surveys her creation...


...and revels in the deliciousness of black frosting.


The amazing duck-billed cat Sarah made of fondant.


Epilogue: Luke watching Papa weep as the mess is made.

101 uses for a garden hose

Hi all-

Where to start? Hmm...camera is downstairs, I'll get some more pics of baby Luke up tonight. We are totally enamored with him....he's a wonderful addition to our family and I want to brag.

But first, I want to share something else with you. Until today, Mike and I have been working toward the goal of getting our house on the market for viewing next week. That means it needs to be 1. Uncluttered, and 2. Pretty. Both of which it is most certainly not. ONe of the things we need to do to make it pretty is to "touch-up" paint the front. We had saved some paint from when we painted the thing five years ago...in the garage. Apparently, latex paint doesn't tolerate freezing very well...and it turned into a nice sedimentary rock in the bottom of the bucket. So, Mike went off to the paint store and bought some in a "matching color" (ie. the code on the bucket matched.) Unfortunately, when he painted over the spots, the color was obviously different than the original.

So, it was another trip to the paint store. Mike loaded up the van with the paint to be returned. Since I haven't slept much in the last week, I was thrilled that I finally got to lie down for a nap at around 3:30. I had to make the most of my time: Luke was down for a nap after nursing for 90 minutes straight. I left the breakfast dishes undone and raced upstairs. I was just getting comfortable when someone lifted the pillow off of my head and woke me up. Husband looked terrified and flabbergasted and baffled at the same time. Uh-oh.

"Woman, can you come downstairs??? I need your help."

"What did you do, honey?"

"Um,.....I spilled some paint in the car."

"Well, get a rag and a squirt bottle."

"Um....I need you to come. I um,....I spilled a GALLON of paint in the car. How do I clean it out?"

.....

that was the end of my nap.

I spent the next two hours of the afternoon with the garden hose in hand, spraying gallons and gallons of water into our minivan. After the initial shock, awe, and horror subsided, I realized the potential joy of my new project. It was actually very, very fun. Especially since Mike is the kind of person who gets irritated when he sees a dog hair in the car or catches me feeding chicken nuggets to the kids while they're in their carseats. The irony of the whole thing is quite amusing. I stood there blasting the inside of the car with the hose on as high as it would go. And paint was splattered everywhere...and there were painty rivers flowing down the carpet and round the plastic doorway cover things....and down into the crevices..... Eventually the rivers joined together in a huge painty lake next to the sliding door that overflowed into the alley below. After a couple of hours, the rivers went from khaki-colored to clear, and the van looked like it had simply gone through the car wash with all of the windows open.

Mike, I hope you forgot to read this post. And I am happy to announce that your van, albeit a bit saturated at present, is cleaner than it has ever been. Good thing the exterior of our house is a similar color as the interior of our minivan. !!

The Mount Olive Christmas Pageant

Last Sunday, our church put on a little Christmas pageant after mass. It was one of those productions where everybody heads downstairs to the "fellowship hall" after church is over and munches a variety of Lutheran goodies...while the kids re-enact the Nativity. This always proves to be an amusing event for everyone. I knew that going in. However, I said a little prayer during church that the "amusing" part of the event would not be brought on by my children. (Julia, after all, was playing an angel! That's a good omen, right?) Unfortunately, I was interrupted mid-petition by a hungry 18 month old, wanting to munch the rest of her banana. I never finished my prayer. I should have.

The pageant started with the a prayer. When Pastor was finished, he said, "I have been told that we need to get things rolling. Some of the little angels are getting a little antsy."

Seconds later, there were kids marching in, two by two, to "Away in a Manger." It was cute. They had costumes...some camels, a sheep, a cow, a thing with horns (reindeer? Goat? Bull? ) Mary, Joseph, shepherds, three wise men, and a few little girls wearing the white "altar boy" outfits with halos on their heads...aka angels. Everyone looked picture-perfect. Except where was Julia? She was supposed to be in the crowd of angels. Did I miss her? She is the shortest one here....

Wait. A few seconds after I noticed my missing daughter, she came rushing in, holding the hand of the "director," being coerced to walk up to the stage. Instead of the neatly combed blonde hair in pigtails that her papa had prepared that morning, Julia's hair was a voluminous rat's nest. Somewhere in it was a tinsel halo, tangled among the sticky strands of blonde with remnants of the five packages of gummi bears she had probably been eating before the show...to keep her busy, of course. When she saw the stage, she broke out in a full run, eager to get the show going.

The first few minutes went well. Julia stood as still as, well, an angel...while they read a few verses from Luke's gospel. The handbells played. The kids stood up again when the bells were done and resumed their roles. Except by this time, the novelty of the situation was clearly over. Julia started getting antsy. She sat, she stood, she spun around in circles on her butt. After the novelty of *that* was over, she walked away from her crowd of angels and stood right in front of Mary. (Not our Mary, but the girl who was playing the actual Mary, standing next to Joseph and the baby Jesus.) Mary, who was being played by a shy, very well-behaved ten-year-old, suddenly was shuffling on her feet like she was stumbling. What was Julia doing? Was I imagining this?

No. I was not imagining it. Julia was carefully scooting Mary backward toward the back of the stage. She wanted Mary's spot. My eyes grew big in horror as I rememberd something Julia had said during rehearsal:

"Mommy, I am sick of being an angel. This is boring. I want to be Mary!"

Oh dear. She was trying to live out her aspirations by eliminating her competition. Julia was trying to knock Mary, the mother of Jesus, right of the stage!

I remembered that prayer that I never finished.

Thankfully, Mary had to leave her post and read a few lines at the lone microphone across the room. When she moved away from her spot, Julia stood there and grinned like she had won the prize. The manger was HERS! Also fortunately, if you haven't noticed, Julia gets bored with things rather quickly. Soon after she had achieved her prestigious position, she grew tired of standing next tp Joseph and simply jumped off of the back of the stage herself.

At this point, Mary, our Mary...not the girl playing the Blessed Mother... decided to take matters into her own hands. Mary notices everything....even when her sister ditches the Christmas play off the back of stage. Over the hush of the nativity, she shouted, "DOOOO-UH, DOOOO-UH!" (Translation: JULIA, JULIA) Mary was no longer content munching on christmas cookies. She wanted to get up there and be part of the show. Mike tried to stop her initially, but I told him to just let her go up there. Perhaps she could talk some sense in to our little "angel."

This proved to be a very good idea. Not because Mary saved the day, but because Papa was now free to collect The Three-Year-Old and put her back in her place onstage before she knocked down the ten foot high wooden star display that probably weighed about thirty pounds. We saw the stars began to quiver...and before I had the chance to sic Mike on Julia, he was already backstage, steadying the heavy star tower....and probably preventing a call to 911 on a Sunday morning and some horrifying nativity bloodshed...

....

Although hesitant at first, Mary approached the stage and climbed right up. No costume and in a bright red dress, she took center stage and tried to act like she knew what was going on. When it came time to sing, Mary smiled. I could read her mind. "I know how to sing! I do that at home all the time!" She "sang" with the christmas carols, loudly and clearly, just like we do in the car: "Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum." Now THAT was cute. People went "ohhhh cute!" Mary glowed. She continued "Bum Bum Bum-ing" a little bit after the songs were over. She actually lasted about half of the pageant up there.

Meanwhile, her sister was able to remain on stage, now fascinated by a bale of straw. Phew. There was plenty of straw there for Julia to pick at over a period of ten minutes. Except for some additional flopping around onstage and obligatory showing of the crotch (why do little girls ALWAYS find it necessary to lift up their dresses in public?) We were in the clear. At the end of the pageant, Julia ran off the stage and crashed right into a pole. It's naptime!

Well, I guess all's well that ends well. And this ended well. The people of Mount Olive got their Christmas pageant. They witnessed beauty, cuteness, hilarity, a bit of danger, and even some nudity. All in all a good show. Next year, I bring the video camera.

hats of meat

While searching for images to put into a talk I am giving tomorrow morning, I somehow stumbled onto this insane website. If you have a minute....

http://www.hatsofmeat.com/

Single Parenting

OK...don't read the title of this and gasp. Mike and I are doing just great.

I have had the privilege of parenting my small children by myself the last two days since Mike took a couple of afternoon/evening shifts at work to help them out. We pass like ships in the night...I work early in the AM and run home mid-afternoon, Mike blows me a kiss as he flies out the door and then it's just the kiddos and I....

In the last three years of child-rearing, I have learned many things. Today I will comment on how I have learned that Mike and I parent our kids in entirely different ways. Let's take Saturday as and example. I had clinic in the AM and wasn't home. Mike spent the morning with the kiddos. They ate cereal in high chairs with bibs on, did nice clean puzzles, and helped their papa fold the laundry. I came home during their nap and Mike headed off to work. When the kids got up from their naps, they were wearing cute tops and skirts (spick and span, mind you.) Mike dresses them up so NICELY! It was beautiful outside and I wanted to take them to a good park and spend a few hours out of the house. Problem: parks are dirty. My kids were so clean. The thought of changing their outfits before we went anywhere crossed my mind.

I must be honest with you: I am becoming afraid to pick out clothes for my kids. When I get dressed for work, I have two choices: black pants or scrubs. I like to keep it simple. I even bought three pairs of the same black pants because I liked them. Dressing the girls is an entirely different endeavor. I think it's about as easy as shopping for car parts. Mike, however, seems to effortlessly dress them each day, and two darling little girls emerge from the bedroom, simply flawlessly put together. When I dress them, I spend forEVER digging through their drawers of neatly stacked tops, searching and searching for something that might match. I can NEVER find a shirt and pants to match. All of the jeans have girly stuff on them! There are multi-colored buttons and ribbons and pink and green plaid. How am I supposed to find a shirt that goes with that?? Plus, all of their summer shirts are so CLEAN and NEW. I am afraid to put new shirts on them (with good reason, see below.)

Well, after stressing about the thought of picking out a new outfit for the kiddos, I made an executive decision to just wing it. I brought the kids to a park without accessible water in it (no mud, right?). We went down to Bayfront Park, where there is an awesome playground and a big field to fly kites. Julia brought her Nemo kite along and had a grand old time flying it while Mary watched and I fetched Nemo when he made bold nosedives into the gravel.

We ate a picnic lunch at the park. I packed peanut butter sandwiches, strawberries, and graham crackers. Sounds innocent, right? Well, if Mike had been taking the kids outside for a picnic, then it would have been. Unfortunately, St. Luke's Pharmacy had their reins on my husband and I was left to feed the children myself. Mary started out eating a graham cracker. I helped Julia get her sandwich out of the baggie and turned around to find Mary with both hands in the strawberry container, a huge grin on her face. She dug her fingers into the strawberries and smushed them into her face. I was incapacitated with laughter, so I didn't get there in time to stop the strawberries from making their imprint on her formerly pristine-clean white shirt. Oh well, I thought...Julia's still clean. oh wait.

Just then, I heard a shriek from The Toddler. "MAMA!!!!! There's a BUG and it's COMING for ME!!!"

A teeny tiny ANT had wandered onto our picnic blanket. It was heading for the peanut butter sandwich. One brisk moment later, I saw what I knew had been coming to me all afternoon. Julia lept up from her spot and slipped on her peanut butter sandwich, which left a smear of peanut butter along her leg and clean shorts. She fell onto her strawberry-laden sister, sharing some of the leg/peanut butter with Mary. Mary wrapped her hands around Julia's neck, and my blonde three year old was suddenly a nice shade of strawberry blonde.

Oh dear. If only I had picked a park with a body of water in it...I could have thrown the kids into it. Instead, I let Julia take her shoes and socks off and go play at the playground some more. Who was I kidding? The peanut butter might look kinda cool with playground gravel stuck into it. And Mary was merely saving some strawberry guts for later. In her ears.

We went home later on that evening and I washed the kids up in the kitchen sink. I attempted to put them to bed a little after nine. Mary stayed in her crib. Little did I know that Julia had other ideas.

Since there was frost forcasted for Duluth, I was running around our yard throwing bedsheets, tarps, and tablecloths over my precious flower beds. Every time I looked up from my work, Julia was standing at the door with her nukker and snuggly, a little devious look on her face. When I stormed in and asked her why the heck she was out of bed again, she would stutter and attempt to explain herself out of trouble. I have to hand it to her, she is pretty smart with some of her excuses. At first, it's easy stuff, like "I forgot to brush my teeth" or "Can you help me sit on the potty again?" Later, though, she had to think of more creative excuses. My favorite? "Can I sleep in your bed? I think there's a big scary bus in my bed and it wants to crunch me up." Where does she get this stuff? I tried not to laugh, and I told her it would be OK if she wanted to sleep in my bed until I came inside. I let her go upstairs by herself as I was muddy from my flower beds.

When I came in to get Julia from my bed, I found her sleeping in our bed...in a very peculiar way It was so funny that I had to leave the bedroom to get the laughing out. My little girl had somehow managed to curl up using the entire down comforter on herself. There wasn't an inch to spare for anyone else. She also had the bedside fan on high. She was snoring a little and had my feather pillow perfectly positioned on top of her head. I couldn't see her at all. I knew she was in there because I could hear her breathing. How the heck did she do that? And why?

More importantly, why did her mum have to leave the bedroom, overcome with laughter? Yeah, it's funny that she hogged the queen-sized down comforter and that there was a pillow on top of her head....But that's not why I thought it was so hilarious. You see, that's the way *I* sleep, every night. I had no idea that my kid paid attention to those little details. Apparrently, that's just what being a parents is all about.

It's a good thing I washed the peanut butter off of Julia's legs. That down comforter has my name on it.

I'm tired...

I am officially on my last month of internal medicine in residency. Some of you already know what that means...for the bulk of you, however, I'll explain it. Internal medicine rotations are difficult. You're on call every third night, you try to learn lots of obscure information, and you fufill the title that you are given...."resident." More plainly stated, you live, eat, and breathe hospital. You get your days and nights mixed up because the call room doesn't have a window. You know Marge's dog's name (she's the cashier at the hospital cafeteria.) All the days seem to run together into a big exhausted clump of sick old folks and alcoholic young ones with an occassional witty remark from an internist thrown in for good measure. ahhh..

Last night, I was on medicine call and I did something I have never done before, and I really hope to never do again. I didn't realize how tired I really was. I was up admitting some guy with abdominal pain at 1AM. When I was fininshed with the admission, I picked up the phone to dictate a note. A dictated history and physical usually takes about ten minutes and is two pages in length. After you're done dictating your patient, you get to go home. I must have been awfully comfortable in my chair on 4 West. I remember dictating this guy's current history, family history, social history, exam, labs, x-rays...*yawn...* I have to hand it to myself...the guy was a boring patient, especially in the middle of the night. He had constipation! Who comes into the hospital at midnight because they are consitpated? I know the answer to that. A bored someone, that's who.

ANYWAYS, I was dictating along in my soft warm chair with my decaffinated beverage at my side, going through this gentleman's normal labs and normal x-rays...and then I honestly don't remember anything until a nurse came and poked, me in the shoulder.

"Doctor Sprengeler?"

(jerking awake) "Huh?"

"Um, I hate to intrude, but are you sure you know what's going on? You just dictated that your patient was scared to go to school because Mister Caleb makes her go pee pee in the big potties."

...

Yes, you guessed it. I actually fell asleep while I was dictating. And I was dreaming. AND, I was dictating my dream right to the hospital transcriptionist! Bring on the ambulance chasers, this doc has gone officially insane.

Good thing I still had the receiver of the phone in my hand and I could go back and delete what I had dictated. The assessment and Plan section of poor Mr. Constipated's history and physical started out making sense....place an NG tube, pain relief, zofran....but suddenly, things changed. My dictation/dream morphed him into a little girl who wanted to sit on the potty chair instead of the big potties in the preschool room. Oh dear.

It's after eleven. I should be in bed.

...it smells like Papa in here....

I need to start writing down all of the funny things that Julia says in a day. That girl is sharp as a tack. Most of the things she notices I never would. Like this morning, when I had her at the hospital with me for a few minutes....we walked into the call room, and she says,
"It smells like Papa in here."
"Julia, why do you say that?"
"Because it stinks in here and he's a boy."

O...kay... I guess I can't blame her for her astute sense of smell. Sorry, Mike. Instead of telling you this, you are probably reading it on the web.

Another one:
I asked her what she wanted from Santa this year. Her response?
"I want Marge."
"Marge?"
"She gives me french fries."
(Marge is the cafeteria lady at St. Luke's hospital. I will have to share this one with her.)
I guess Santa is going to have to figure out how to fit Marge the cafeteria lady into his red sack on Christmas Eve. Why can't Julia just ask for a dolly or a train set?
Tonight when Mike was singing Julia her bedtime song, I walked by the bedroom door and heard a familiar tune. I couldn't place it: was it a hymn? no.... Some Christmas song??? No..... Some classical tune off of public radio? no..... I knew I had heard it before, so I strained my ears to figure it out. All of a sudden, I had flashbacks to seventh grade ballroom dancing: My husband was singing "Moon River" to our kids for a bedtime song. Whoa. What ever happened to a good old fashioned lullaby? Oh well, at least he was willing to put the kids to bed after I had them alone all evening....
Why is it that the toddler ALWAYS knows what items are most important to you? Case in point: my chapstick. Julia likes to hunt for chapstick. Before she was mobile, I swear we had twenty sticks of the stuff. - one in every room, a few in storage for later, one in every coat pocket, etc. Well, Julia thinks it's just delicious. Doesn't matter if it's menthol or sparkly or *expensive Bath and Body works chapstick that was a gift to mommy from a patient*

....!

I will let you guess which tube The Toddler decided to eat today. Above, you can see that Julia found my favorite chapstick in my jewelry box and, while I was at work, schmeared it all over her face. She did tell her papa that it was delicious.

C-can't type...too cold...*thud*

That last sound was the sound of my cold frozen body hitting the floor as I attempt to type a blog entry. They say the high temperature has been around 24 degrees or so for the last week, but I just have a hard time believing that. Sure, it's so sunny outside you'd think it was June, but the yard is one gigantic glacier. Frozen solid - no joke. Complete with frozen dog-logs. And when I heard it was supposed to be colder still this coming weekend? Almost laughed for joy. Oh wait..no, I didn't.

On the plus side, right now I am literally gobbling down the most delicious fruit salsa Sarah has never made.

We did manage to find ourselves a new camera online (to replace the stolen one that is probably in some dumpster on Grand Cayman) for a screaming good deal. No sign of it yet, but we'll keep you all posted. J is being her usual cute self. The latest: she responds to her own questions, usually allowing herself to do things that she's hoping to do. Example: "Watch a show? Watch a show? Okay!" Example: "Want some candy? Want some candy? Okay!" Here's hoping she outgrows that one real soon.

No other news, really. Found out I got hired at St Luke's Hospital last week (yay!), then promptly went out and got the stomach flu. I'll spare you all the details. Sarah is on medicine at St Luke's this month, which is a welcome change from three-times-a-week call that she had in OB last month. No more frozen TV dinners for me! (Which is too bad, because we have a GIGANTIC freezer just outside to store them in.)

Send a little heat our way, will you?

Solioquy of a single dad

This one's for you, Spork.

Lately Julia - like all toddlers, so I'm told - insists upon playing with everything but her toys. This would not be a problem if she had no toys to speak of, but that simply is not the case. Consequently, every time I'm cleaning up her last mess, she's making me a new one by "playing" with something else. ("Papa's!" - "Yes, Julia, that's Papa's razor. Can I have it, please?" - "NOOOOOO!" - *razor is forcibly removed from iron grip; child moves on to electric socket with the single word "Finger..." while Papa rapidly attempts to find an out-of-reach place for the razor; the band plays on*)

Sarah received a nice tall ceramic mug as a Christmas package a few days back. Today it was sitting on the edge of the stove, near the step that J climbs to reach whatever hot thing happens to be sizzling on the stovetop at the moment. I'm happily and blissfully washing dishes at the sink when suddenly I hear "Coffee! Coffee!" Glancing back over my shoulder, I see Julia, in one fluid motion, snatch the mug off the stove and pitch off her little step with this huge mug clutched to her chest and land flat on her face. CRUNCH. Complete and utter silence follows for about three seconds (except in my head which is going "Ohcrap-ohcrap-ohcrap-ohcrap-oh...") and then she begins screaming bloody murder.

Suds flying, Papa to the rescue. I'm imagining lacerations and stitches on her already burn-scarred chest, but luckily the mug (and the linoleum) took the hit this time. Unfortunately, I think Sarah only managed to enjoy one cuppa out of this mug before the thing bit it.

I finally managed to calm the child down and I'm attempting to get her to sit down on the floor and not move so I can sweep the thing up, when I hear another crunching sound. This time the cat has selected a bite-sized chunk of the scattered china to enjoy. He sees me looking at him, and with a shout of "BUNG! Drop it!" I'm chasing him across the dining room and behind the couch. I managed to extract him quickly, but I'm not sure what happened to the china-snack. I imagine I'll find it with my foot tomorrow. But the fun didn't stop there...oh, no.

Upon my return to the kitchen, I find Simon and Julia dancing upon the remains of the mug. I lifted them both bodily off the mess and made them sit well away from the mess before finally sweeping it into the garbage. Whew.

What did you do today?

J with her mug, post-accident. Large crack on this side; the broken-away part is hidden on the other side.

IAMS: not just for your cat

You always know that when the child is not clinging to your pant leg or squealing in the livingroom that something is up. It's the silence, usually, that tips me off, but in this case I didn't even get that. The little tyke was happily playing in the nursery while I was downstairs, doing I remember not what, when suddenly I hear: plinkplinkplinkplink!


Maniacal giggling, and more sound effects. Plinkplinkplinkplinkplinkplink! Of course we've scolded her for playing in the cat food before, but that makes it more fun. The instant I peeked into the bathroom, she saw me and started throwing faster and harder. "Gotta empty this thing out before I get picked up! Quickly, now! And grab and throw and grab and throw and..."

At least this time she didn't taste the stuff. I can't imagine why you would want to try cat food more than once, but I guess infants have a penchant for the stuff. Or at least this infant. If you've tried hairballs, then cat food is that much better. IAMS: it's not just for your cat anymore.
And yes, I did wipe her hands after this picture.

And the Gold goes to...

Sarah is doing her psychiatry rotation these days, so we're staying with the parents in St Cloud in order to allow her to come home in the evenings and see Julia and I. This also means that it's my responsibility to watch the baby during the day and to make sure that she sleeps as much as possible at night. I'm getting pretty good at it.

I think Baby Wrangling should become an Olympic event.

I can see it now: "Sprengeler snuggles down on the top bunk. And they're wheeling in the crib, baby and all. Looks like this one is sleeping soundly - but not for long, don't you worry. . . And there's the signal! The baby wails, loud and clear, and it's up to Sprengeler to make sure the lady on the bottom bunk stays sleeping! He's off the bed in one fluid motion, hits the floor with both feet - just look at that landing, ladies and gentlemen - now he's got the Nuk, and it's back in the baby's mouth! Her head hits the mattress, and she's asleep. Amazing! Did you see that? The clock stands at 3.7 seconds, and not a single movement on the bottom bunk! Let's see what the judges think - 9.7, 9.7, 9.6, 9.8 . . ."

Think about it. They could give out medals for squirting liquid ibuprofen into little mouths, or stuffing protesting babies into sleepers (with 300 snaps) while half asleep, or fishing bits of paper out from between wildly gnashing jaws while avoiding razor-sharp incisors. Points deducted if the baby draws blood. I think I could take the Gold, at least in the "Back to Sleep" event. I need to work on subduing babies with dirty diapers that need to be changed but don't want to (case in point: last night we had a poopy diaper, which became poopy diaper-back-bodysuit-romper-floor through Julia's enthusiastic efforts).