The Best of It

Noel’s Christmas – Saturday, December 4th

“The Best of It”

Noel stood behind the kitchen door, making certain to stay well behind it to shield herself from the cold air rushing in from the outside. Burping, she covered her mouth – an unintentional gesture reminding her of what she had just had for lunch. It was early afternoon and the kitchen door was partially open because Nick had just stepped outside to measure the snow that had already fallen since last night.

The weather forecast had called for six to eight inches of snows. Yet now, more than 18 hours after the first arrival of snow last evening, the flakes were still coming down – slowly and lightly but still constantly. They had to have exceeded eight inches by that point.

Shivering a little, she bounced up-n-down – her naked feet feeling the chill of the air as it rushed in under the door and made her nearly naked body break out into goosebumps all over. Her bottom was nice and warm, tucked inside her diaper. But that was it. Being naked and wintertime were not good bed fellows sometimes. Finally, Nick came back inside, declaring that they were at 9 inches of snow and still piling up.

They were snowed in, until this all ended. No plows had come by to dig out the roads yet. Not even a truck had driven by. Nothing looked like it would happen until the snowfall stopped. But when was that going to be?

Ugh! Cabin fever was now a real concern. But Noel knew she was just going to have to make the best of it.

She had slept in until 8am, then sleeping some more on the couch until 9 when she woke up and got all of her snow gear ready as well as all of Nick’s snow gear ready – the kitchen table now not able to host any meals because it was completely covered with their snow gear. She didn’t believe the storm would continue much longer, but she was wrong.

That morning, they watched TV and did silly Christmas Mad Libs to occupy their time – Noel laughing so hard that her stomach began to grow sore from the laughter. Lunch was BLT sandwiches, Noel being the princess of sandwich making and having this amazing ability to cook bacon to a point when it was crisp but still with juice. She had become a magician at knowing when to stop cooking the bacon.

She actually had this gift with any meat she cooked, from steak to chicken to fish.

And now in the afternoon, Noel was getting bored. All but stomping as she crinkled her way back into the living room, she plopped down on the couch – putting her pacifier in her mouth to hide her pouty lips and picking up her teddy bear … wrapping her arms around him. She figured, by now, they would be shoveled out or at least currently outside – in the process of shoveling. But they weren’t.

Nick could easily tell how disappointed she was and in an effort to keep her spirits up, he decided to appeal to her playfulness as the distraction of the moment that would aid in cheering her up.

“Does Mr. Bear need his diaper changed?” Nick asked with playful concern, the teddy bear in her arms wearing a makeshift diaper Nick had fashioned out of a white dinner napkin.

Noel nodded, nursing on her pacifier as she placed the teddy bear on the coffee table and undid its cloth diaper. Nick got another dinner napkin from a drawer in the kitchen. Then an idea came to mind that he knew would take her mind off the never-ending snowstorm.

“Do you think all your stuffies need their diapers changed?” he asked, walking back into the living room and handing her the dinner napkin.

Noel looked up at him with a dead pan stare and then started laughing. Mumbling behind her pacifier, she spoke.

“Not ahll uh mah thtuffith ah in dahpuhs, Daddih,” she mumbled, then putting the dinner napkin on her teddy bear.

So Nick set the plan in motion.

“Well,” he started, pretending to contemplate what to do. “We will fix that, right now.”

Noel looked at him with confusion, tilting her head to the side and nursing her pacifier as she tried to figure out what he was up to. He raised an eyebrow and she raised an eyebrow right back at him. Then he went back to her nursery, Noel setting her teddy bear down and crinkling a waddly sprint after him.

In Noel’s nursery, a most adorable room, there was a pile of stuffed animals in the corner – an enormous pile with every stuffed animal she had ever been given in her life … dating all the way back to her birth. Nick scooped up a huge amount of the stuffies in his arms and carried them out to the living room. Noel grabbed as many stuffies as she could hold and did the same with them.

It took several trips back-n-forth to get all the stuffies out to the living room, but when they were all out there in a huge pile of the living room rug, Nick went to the kitchen. Retrieving every dinner napkin and tea towel he could find, he went back into the living room. And the stuffed animal diapering extravaganza began.

Each of them took a stuffed animals and a dinner napkin and got to work.

“Now, let’s see. I’ve done this once or twice before,” Nick said jokingly, Noel snorting with laughter and then covering her face.

Of course he had changed diapers before! Duh! Who was he trying to fool?

“So I just put this here and that there aaaand ….. voila!” he said, holding up the puppy dog stuffie that he had just diapered the head of.

Noel broke out into hysterical laughter, spitting her pacifier out as she howled. Laying down on the rug, she held her ribs as her stomach was still sore from the morning bout of laughter. He had just the diapered the head of a puppy dog!

A few minutes went by of her trying to recover from laughter. Nick sat silently, looking at the diapered head of the puppy dog and pretending to try to figure out what he had done wrong. This only cause her to laugh some more, to the point when she couldn’t look at him because the sight of him would make her laugh.

A few more minutes went by and she sat back up, continuing to diaper the monkey in front of her. But she kept looking away from him, not even wanting him to fall into her peripheral vision as that would set her off into laughter again. But he wasn’t making it any easier on her, pretending to be very confused.

She set the diapered monkey aside and picked up a kitten from her collection. And he was still sitting there with the puppy dog that now had a diaper on its head.

“So ….. I take it this isn’t right?” he asked, causing Noel to howl with laughter again and fall back to the rug, holding her ribs as she laughed.

Nick picked up a stuffed snake and held it up.

“How am I going to put a diaper on this?” he asked, tears streaming down Noel’s face as he looked at the snake. “Where would the diaper even go? Does snakes have butts?”

All the stuffies would indeed get their cloth diapers, but not before Nick got confused several more times. Oh, this was such a good idea. It had totally taken her mind off the snowfall – which still was coming down.

To keep the entertainment going, Nick suggested that, since it was snowing so much outside, perhaps it should also snow just as much inside. Getting a ream of paper from the printer, he and Noel started making paper snowflakes – loading up the coffee table with them.

Then Nick got an email from work, going back to his office to read and reply to it. Sitting there and looking at the mound of paper snowflakes on the coffee table as well as the mound of diapered stuffed animals on the rug, Noel decided that the paper snowflakes needed to be as close to their friends as possible. So she crinkled her waddle all over the house, attaching the paper snowflakes to the windows so the snowflakes could see their friends.

Putting the last snowflake on the front window, Noel took the Nestea plunge and lay back on the mound of diapered stuffies on the living room rug – opting to wait right there until her Daddy was done answering his work email.

When Nick came back out from his office, he saw the paper snowflakes on the windows and his BabyGirl laying on the pile of stuffies – wearing nothing but her diaper and steadily nursing on her pacifier … fast asleep.

She hadn’t even been prompted to take her nap. But she was such a good girl, she knew it was time for her nap. And with a little judicial fanning, she also knew how to take lemons and make lemonade, how to take an unfortunate situation of being snowed in and deciding to make the best of it.

Continue on to Sunday, December 5th