getting out the door

"Aww, who's a cute baby?" I crooned at Hobbes. He yawned hugely and then blinked off somewhere to my right, apparently fascinated by dancing air particles. He's always in his best mood just after he's woken up.

Me, I'm always in my best mood when I'm sound asleep, but who's keeping track. I blush to admit that I've taken to talking to my son like I'm a helium-snorting escapee from a gingerbread house-building witch community. Three months with little adult interaction and constant exposure to a small infant will do that to you.

"Mommy has to get ready for work," I told Hobbes, bouncing him on my hip. "That's why Mommy is going to put you down, so she can change her clothes."

Hobbes turned his head, blinked several times, gave me a glorious and toothless smile -- then regurgitated a good two ounces of milk all over my shoulder and right breast. This would have been more severe if I'd been wearing a shirt.

Motherhood accustoms one to certain things. Wet diapers. Spit up. Smelling like baby vomit. Sounding like a complete idiot.

"Awww," I said. Hobbes promptly planted his face in the white, gooey patch of his puke and rubbed it around, eventually coming up wearing most of it on his cheeks and eyebrows.

"Ew," I said.

Hobbes hiccuped dolefully.

I washed the baby and his clothes off and put him down on the changing table, where he tried to eat his fist while I washed my shoulder and bra off. "Silly boy," I said, like the fond and mentally deficient mother I am. "I should put a burp cloth on so you don't spit up on me anymore."

Yes, I really talk like this now.

I put the burp cloth down over my bare (and now clean) right shoulder, picked up my child, and held him up with one arm while I tossed the spit-up cloth into the laundry pile. Hobbes stared moodily at my ear, then dove unexpectedly for my other, unprotected breast ... and deposited another ounce of dribbly milk vomit into my bra's left cup.

"Shit," I said. He rolled off my boob and hung almost upside-down from my arm to go solemnly cross-eyed at the changing table. Hi, changing table.

I washed up and changed my bra while he played soccer with the comforter on my bed. For good measure, I put on a shirt and pants in preparation for work. While the half-naked look is in in California during most of the year, the day was a nippy 50 degrees and at no time is the sight of my naked torso an uplifting experience for unwary onlookers.

This time I covered my shoulder and breast with a blanket before picking the baby up and settling him comfortably in the crook of my arm. "There. Mommy is all dressed up," I cooed. "Will you miss her while she's at work?"

He stared at me, busily gumming the half of his fist that he had managed to take in, and mumbled something. I kissed him. He dove at me with an open mouth, in the hopes that my nose would turn out to be a nipple and my face an unorthodox breast. Past experience had not given him any indications that this was the case, but hope sprang eternal. I dodged. He ended up with a mouthful of my hair, which I had stupidly not pulled back yet.

Hi, hair. He spit up on it.

The wad of spit-up dripped warmly down my hair onto my cheek, and then onto my neck, where it slid down into my neckline before I could catch it and smeared like bile-scented taffy all over my chest.

For a long moment I seriously considered just leaving it there and just ... going to work. Cutting my losses. I stood there, smelling like baby puke, and thought really hard.

Hobbes burped and gave me another wet, happy smile.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I was an hour late to work.