Tragic Sandwich

Tag: SCUBA

  • Talking About Sleep (But Not Doing Much Actual Sleeping)

    Saturday was weird. Baguette woke up and then decided to nap at 9:45 a.m. for abut 45 minutes–just long enough to get a second wind. She finally fell asleep again at 3:30, which is about three and a half hours later than I want her to nap so that she stays on schedule for day care.

    Even when she was awake, though, she was only interested in me. We went to the park, because she loves to run free. Except that this time, she sat down on my lap and leaned back against me. Very sweet, and I savored it–but hardly the outdoor exercise I wanted her to get.

    After her belated nap, we went out for frisbee. This does not involve playing Frisbee, although I can understand why you would think that. No, that’s what we call “going for a walk around the block” at our house. Why? Not for Baguette, although I can understand why you would think that, too. It’s actually for Wicket. This dog loves to walk, and when we say “walk,” her ears perk up and her eyes shine. She’s ready. So if you don’t put her in the harness and leave right away, she concludes that she has done something so horrible that no walk is forthcoming, and she starts to cower sadly. The guilt was too much for us. We started spelling it out, saying, “Should we go for a W-A-L-K?”

    That worked really well, except that after about a month, the dog learned to spell. So we came up for a code word, and that’s been working for about two years (This is what inspired us to refer to Baguette’s baths as SCUBA. Seriously, it works. Although I’m still surprised that the Dog Who Can Spell hasn’t picked up code-breaking.)

    After frisbee, Baguette was bouncy with energy–again, all over me. She wasn’t particularly interested in food, but she did enjoy SCUBA. Apparently that washed any residual tired right off of her, because she clambered all over me for over an hour. There was no distracting her, not even with Red Puppet (again with the code words).

    This inspired the following conversation:

    Me: Do you think maybe it’s the pajamas?
    Mr. Sandwich: You mean, they’re inspiring her?
    Me: Maybe. It might be the red stripes giving her energy.
    Mr. Sandwich: Or the shark.
    Me: Like a shark, she can’t stop moving.
    Mr. Sandwich: Ever.
    Me: Maybe.
    Mr. Sandwich: I’m pretty sure that’s it.

    Meanwhile, Wicket will sleep at the drop of a hat.

  • Bathtime for Baguette

    Early Bath 1956

    As a newborn, Baguette hated sponge baths. They were an affront to humanity. Then she graduated to the whale tub with its infant insert. And she hated it. Last summer, with much trepidation, we introduced her to the pool.

    And she loved it.

    We decided that maybe we had to make the tub more like a pool. So we filled it deeper and started referring to it as the “pool-tub.”

    Then she hated it.

    For about the past six weeks, though, we’ve been in a new phase. Baths are one of her favorite things. She will even ask for “Bubbles!” And we have finally been able to make baths part of her evening routine, instead of a regular source of conflict. Because you can’t just let kids go about unbathed forever.

    She loves them so much, in fact, that we’ve had to come up with a code word so that we can refer to them without raising her immediate expectations. And that word is SCUBA.

    Photo by Smabs Sputzer, via Flickr.