Baby Balls
by Kara Carlson
After au
pairing for five children in New Zealand over the
last few months, my knowledge of babies and
children has mushroomed. I now know shit.
Intimately. I know nappies, feeding child mobs,
locating unwanted bunnies, and all about little
penises. My brother lectured me that I couldn't
tell the three-year-old not to play with himself,
as he would have psychological masturbation
issues when older. My mom told me to entice
little kids to bathe by creating bubble baths. I
am now a bubble bath lord.
Tonight, after
the bubble bath that three of the children
resolved to get into together, the bathroom floor
was an inch deep in water and three inches deep
in bubbles. The mom observed the explosion and
asked me to bathe the baby and then get him ready
for bed while she and her husband read the kids
stories.
The bathtub
edge is three feet too high to comfortably kneel
on the floor and cup the baby's head in my hand
above the water. The tub rim attacks my armpits
like rabid Indian monkeys and, after previously
bathing the baby for two nights, my back felt as
if a raging elephant had trampled it. After each
bath, I shuffled around for three days knowing I
required an old-people walker.
When the baby
lays down splashing in the tub, I torture my back
to hold the baby's head. Tonight's solution: I
sat him up in the water and sat myself on a child
footstool by the side of the bathtub. As I turned
and cracked my back, the mom entered with the
three-year-old to brush his teeth. She screamed.
The baby has only been able to sit up without
assistance for six days. At the mom's request, I
leaned him back. He pissed in the bath water.
I soaped him
in the urine-water and then carried him in a
towel to the changing table in his bedroom. His
balls aren't as giant as they have been in the
past, but they do get violently red. The mom
clubbed her head into the room to remind me to
put Vicks Vaporub on the baby's chest, as he had
a cough, and Sudocrem on his balls, for the
redness. The mom left and the baby started to
roll over. I seized a jar of cream and smeared it
across his sack. He screamed like he had been
dropped on his head. I had switched the Sudocrem
and Vicks. I had coated the baby's testicles in
Vicks. The vaporub smells like Icy Hot.
|
