Getting Creative

Can I just say, as an aside, that it's miraculous how a three-hour nap and a giant crap can improve a baby's mood?

I had to get creative in two ways today, because the universe is making it difficult to meet my child's simple needs, which really all boil down to: change my diaper, feed me some food I like, keep me entertained, and let me sleep. (The Four Commandments of Child Rearing?) To begin with, she seems to be teething again. The last 24 hours have been pretty miserable. I'm constantly being treated to a fussy half-cry-half-whine that most closely resembles the sound an airplane makes when, just before take-off, the pilot takes it up to full-throttle. It's hard to listen to that all day.

The last time she teethed and things got really bad, I was able to treat the problem with an occasional dose of Infant Tylenol. This time around, guess what? Every freaking bottle of Infant Tylenol in the United States has been recalled. Guess what else? Infant Motrin has been recalled, too. Guess what a third time? All the generic brands of these two medicines has flown off the shelves and is nearly impossible to find.

After visiting two markets and a drugstore with no luck, I've turned to more conventional home remedies: cold teethers, frozen washcloths, and Orajel. Okay, so Orajel isn't a "home remedy." It's a freaking remedy, and I'll take what I can get right now.

The other problem is a little more unique: we've been trying to figure out a way to get Sadie to drink more water. It might not seem like a big deal for a baby to drink water considering she drinks five bottles of formula a day, but she also eats a lot of solid food and trust me, the water helps to keep everything moving at a nice, brisk pace.

Unfortunately, she has developed an intense hatred for sippy cups. When you bring one to her mouth she turns her head away, all, "No THANK YOU ma'am." Scott discovered one day that she likes having water squirted into her mouth via squeeze bottle, which was fun for awhile, but also insanely messy. Also mock me all you want, but the idea of showing up to her new day care next week with a giant Arrowhead bottle with a squirt cap is just too embarrassing to contemplate.

"Yes, this is how she drinks water. Yes, I'm aware this is for adults. Yes, that is spilled water all over the front of her onesie. You'll probably need to change her clothes four or five times a day."

It's unlikely they'd cotton to my other method for hydrating her: wetting down a washcloth when she takes a bath and letting her suck on it, like it's her idea to drink water rather than mine.

In desperation, I've turned to the internet for help. Turns out people have all sorts of inventive methods for getting their kids to consume water, from putting ice cubes in a mesh bag that hangs from the baby's neck to feeding it to them from a spoon. Since I don't have the mesh bag and we own enough stuff, I tried the spoon option. And hey, what do you know? She was all about the spoon. Sadly the spoon is not a long-term solution, but if I have to instruct the day care employees to spoon-feed my kid water, well, I'm guessing they've heard stranger things.