A Mommy Story

Today was the return of Princess Crabby Poo.

Her return was completely by surprise. After all, Cordelia had a wonderful night. She slept through the night until 7:30am this morning.

She woke up happy, greeting everyone on the 7th floor of the Best Western Grant Park with a bright “Hi!” We packed up and prepared to walk across the park to the Shedd Aquarium.

So we were completely caught off guard when Princess Crabby Poo made her appearance shortly after we walked into the aquarium. The aquarium was packed, so she had a full audience for her scream fest. After several minutes of angry screaming (on her part) we let her out of the stroller to prevent one of the on-lookers from calling child protective services. She immediately tried to run from us.

We chased her for a half hour, trying to point out the turtles and fish and seahorses, but she didn’t care. “Look Cordy, there’s an eel! Look Cordy, there’s Nemo! Cordy? Where’d you go?” She wanted to run into the crowd and disappear. At one point she even darted between a tall man’s legs, trying to lose us. I know kids find their parents unhip at some point. I just wasn’t expecting it at 16 months.

It was time for lunch, and things were no better. We offered her milk, a banana, PB&J, but cranky-butt refused to be happy about anything.

We took her to see the dolphins, the beluga whales – she was not impressed. She was just surly.

The screaming continued when we tried to put her back into her stroller. At this point other small children were coming up to us, begging us to shut the toddler up.

Of course, their parents, trying to be polite, didn’t say a thing, and chose to just shoot us dirty looks instead. Even the Aquarium staff were making little comments, like, “I think someone needs to go take a nap.” Gee, you think? Or is that just polite speak for “Get out of our aquarium.”?

We finally decided to scrap the remainder of the day’s plans (we planned to go to the Field Museum) and walk back to the hotel for a nap. For all of us.

It’s a shame we had to spend the afternoon in the hotel. It was a gorgeous day outside, and it wasn’t even too cold. The sun was bright, the air was crisp but pleasant. Very unusual for Chicago winters.

Now, normally she’s just Princess Crabby. But today she chose to add the extra name of “Poo” to her title. She had 5, yes 5, poopy diapers today. This beats her previous record of 4, which she achieved yesterday.

You see, when we were packing on Thursday morning, Cordy must have peeked in the diaper bag and carefully counted the number of diapers I had packed. She would have noticed that I had averaged the number of diapers she tends to go through in a day (normally 4, plus one overnight diaper), and added a few more just to be safe.

Then she made it her mission to go through as many diapers as possible. As of today, with a full 24 hours of the trip remaining, we are out of diapers. *Sigh*

Plus, with all that pooping, this evening she developed the scarlet hiney. The painful, raw diaper rash from hell that no child should ever have to endure.

In the past hour we’ve had a bath, and she’s getting some much needed nakey-time. Besides, we’re out of diapers, and I still need to go beg my friend Lisa for a diaper for the night.

I’m hoping with all the energy I have left that Princess Crabby Poo will take a hike and give us back our happy little girl tomorrow.

Otherwise, it’s gonna be a long day of shopping.