I Hate to Say it Stryder, But I Told You So…

I’m sure by now you have all read about how Stryder has become a devoted La Niña follower. Part of this devotion is he now feels the constant need to groom her every opportunity he gets.

Stryder especially loves to clean the baby’s hands and feet. He starts by sneaking over to where she is — sometimes an inch at a time (imagine him whistling and looking around the room as he is doing this). Then he will look at either dP or I to see if we will reprimand him for getting too close to the baby. If we aren’t saying “no!” he will quickly start with the feet and move his way upwards to her hands, arms, and armpits.

Then he makes an “attempt” to clean her face.

I say attempt because he has been told repeatedly: don’t lick the baby’s face and when he tries he gets a stern “no” and is shooed away. Nonetheless, he will still try because he is obsessed with cleaning the baby.

On Friday he was doing his usual cleaning ritual starting with the hands and moving his way up. When it came time for him to “attempt” to clean the face he looked at me and I gave him the “if you try I will yell at you” look.

But, he insisted on taking a crack at it anyway.

Just as he made a quick dart at the baby’s face and just as his tongue popped out of his mouth, La Niña opened her mouth and did a projectile curdled milk spit up all over his tongue, his nose and right into his partially opened mouth.

Not expecting this he jumped back, made some sort of funny gagging noise, and then hid under the coffee table where he tried to figure out what had just happened.

I’m sure in his mind he was thinking: “The baby has spoken. No more face licking.” And, he actually listened for once because for a couple of days after this he didn’t attempt to clean her face.