4:45pm: An early dinner — homemade bread and homemade potato chowder.  H. gets a slice of the bread and some diced potato; also his sippy cup with some water.

4:46pm: H. manages to get himself wet from squirting the water all over himself.  Que sera sera. Take away the sippy cup, for now.

4:51pm: H. has chewed up about half of a palm-sized piece of sea-salt encrusted herb bread.  He doesn’t really seem to be swallowing it.  It’s just taking up space in there.  We try to coax him to spit some out without any real success.  Take away the other half of the bread to encourage him to eat the bits of potato.  Marginal success there.

4:57pm: Winding down our own dinner, we scrutinize H.’s palate again.  Much of the potato is gone from his tray, surprisingly little of it is on the floor, but he’s still got quite a bit of bread on the roof of his mouth.  We hazard a little biting and screaming while we scrape some out.  The bolus isn’t as large as a ping pong ball but it sure seems that way.

5:04pm: Clear the table.  A. takes The Boy to get cleaned up and out of his diaper.  I clear the table.

5:10pm: Start the water in the tub.  H. crawls around the house, fast as ball lightning and naked as a jaybird.

5:12pm: Drop H. in the tub.  Commence splashing.  A. retrieves the S.S. Mr. T to attempt slight abatement of splashing.

5:13pm: H. tries to hydrate by sucking bathwater from the washcloth.  Let that one go.

5:16pm: Commence actual washing of H.

5:22pm: Washing is done.  Allow H. to splash for a few more minutes.

5:25pm: Remove H. from tub, bundle up in a towel.  A. moves the drying/dressing operation into H.’s room; I drain the tub and clean up as best I can.

5:30pm: Five more minutes of naked crawling is enough, right?

5:35pm: Okay, ten minutes is enough.  Getting the diaper on is easy.  The pajamas, less so.

5:40pm: When did five whole minutes becomes “quick” for putting pajamas on an infant?

5:41pm: A. notices more bread bolus on the roof of H.’s mouth.  How did that get there?

5:42pm: Suffer a slight bite while retrieving the bolus.  If you put the two bits together, surely they add up to a ping pong ball.  It’s ridiculous, really.

5:44pm: Retrieve toothbrush.  (Side note:  has anyone else noticed that the “baby safe” toothpaste comes in a tube like model cement?  If it weren’t for the fruity smell, I’d swear they were just putting a different label on this stuff.)  Attempt to brush H.’s six teeth.  He lets me go at it for a minute or two.

5:46pm: Steal the toothbrush back from H.; the oral hygiene portion of the evening is over.

5:47pm: Kiss H. on the forehead and tip-toe out while A. nurses him (more/less) to sleep.

6:11pm: A. emerges and H.’s room is very quiet indeed.