Robot Babies

For Ian B.

We can’t sell them because no one wants them. We could probably give them away but in the end, decided to give them to La Niña to see what she’d do; after all, she’s constantly complaining that no one wants to have a tea party with her. For those of you not familiar with the First Aid world, THEY are the Actar 911 Infantry used to teach infant CPR.

To La Niña they are: Egon, Bob, Bob Too, Jay, and Sam; and, when she first saw them she proudly announced that these were her robot babies and immediately began taking care of them.

Their first instructions were to take a nap together; everyone but Bob Too because he wasn’t feeling well and needed to be separated from the herd. I’m not sure why she thinks they’re a herd, but we’ve also recently been watching Ice Age over and over and over and over and over again. I’m a little surprised the babies weren’t named Manny, Sid, Sid Too, Diego and Zeke.

Once the other babies were asleep, Bob Too was swaddled, burped and put on the couch. Here La Niña made sure he was warm by covering him with every single blanket in the house (both large and small — a tea towel counts as a blanket in our house).

And, it was a happy moment when she realized she was mothering something that didn’t get up and flee in exasperation after the 10th or 11th blanket (like the dogs).

Later in the day, Egon, Bob, Bob Too, Jay, and Sam all piled into a train and went for a ride to the doctor’s office. In the background, someone kept shouting: Help! My baby’s not breathing! as they made their rounds through the house.

While at the doctor’s office, Jay, Egon and Bob needed surgery. After their surgery, Bob needed extra fluids because he was severely dehydrated and really really thirsty. However, even after sips from a cup La Niña quickly realized that Bob needed more water or he would die and took drastic life-saving measures.

Believe it or not, below is not Bob having his diaper changed (even after all the water he drank), but rather Egon who would not settle down in the midst of the change; he kept trying to dance to a Madonna song that was playing on the radio. Eventually, Egon had to be put into the “playpen” until he settled down.

In the end, La Niña decided she needed a break from her quintuplet robot babies. To use her own words: “I don’t want to play with the robot babies anymore because all they want to do is go for train rides.”