In the words of Al Capone “grrr.” We’ve had a really busy and hectic week. In addition to having bizarre sleep patterns and killing Baby Einstein,* we’ve also had other interesting adventures.
Probably the most interesting discovery this week is the mutant chiggers we seem to have brought home from Missouri. Saturday night Rakicy was changing Al Capone’s diaper in the parking lot of the restaurant and managed to find a nest of chiggers. Al Capone and I felt sorry for him, but didn’t think too much more about it until Sunday night when I woke up with chigger bites and realized my pajamas had been in the suitcase on top of Rakicy’s chigger infested jeans.**
I changed pajamas in the middle of the night when I was up “playing” with the baby who didn’t want to sleep, but it didn’t occur to me that Al Capone might have gotten bitten. Sure enough, Monday morning he has chigger bites. I’ve never met chiggers who are so determined to find dinner. These chiggers were alive and thriving on our semi-dirty laundry a full 24 hours after they first arrived. I am seriously wondering if Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael know that they might have competition brewing in Missouri.
In an effort to eliminate TMNC (Teenage Mutant Ninja Chiggers) we put EVERYTHING we took to Missouri in the laundry. Baby blankets, clean cloth diapers, dirty clothes, clean clothes. Needless to say, we have piles of laundry.
My piles of laundry quickly turned into mountains of laundry when I decided to add a little bit more dairy back into my diet to see what would happen. I’d been eating a little more cheese and Al Capone seem fine, so I went all out and ate cereal with milk on it. I’m not sure what I was thinking, but this was a very bad idea.
Not only did the fussy, gassy baby who doesn’t really sleep, but will sleep in someone’s arms return, but about 10 hours after I ate the milk he also started developing baby eczema and a horrible diaper rash.
Diaper rash and cloth diapers do not go together. It’s a Catch-22. We cannot use rash cream with our Bumgenius, but they wick the moisture away better than the prefolds. So he either stays drier or gets rash cream, but not both. So I decided that I would try to just change him more often (more laundry) and then I tried out the diaperless airdry remedy (way more laundry) for diaper rash.*** At some point I gave in and put him in disposables with rash cream for the afternoon because we were running out of diapers. Piles of laundry turned into mountains of laundry.
The mountains of laundry didn’t really get washed because Al Capone was still the very fussy baby who wants to be held all the time after he gets dairy. He still has some diaper rash and after 2 days of being allowed to air dry after diaper changes, I think he’s decided that he’d like to become a nudist. He laughs and plays (and occasionally pees) on the changing table while naked, but the second I put a diaper and clothes back on, he growls at me. If he could figure out how to take his own clothes off, he would. I’ve seriously considered lining the tub with towels and letting him play naked in the tub.
Al Capone seems to be the only one not exhausted by TMNC, diaper rash, and dairy experiments. I think we may have a lazy weekend. The kind were we don’t even leave the house again until Monday morning. Although if anyone is bored and looking for something to do, we still have mountains of laundry to do.
*who by the way will be raised from the dead tonight because I need sleep.
**Yes, I realize this wouldn’t happen if we weren’t rewearing clothes, but we’re horribly dirty people who rewear jeans and pajamas multiple times before washing. If we didn’t, we’d never have clean clothes. I consider it a success if I get a shower in a given day, washing pajamas that have been slept in only once is way low on my to-do list.
***Whoever suggested this method clearly has never tried it with a boy.
