Beauma Goes to Quebec City: Part Deux

When Tripp awoke from his nap, he let me know immediately that he was hungry. 


"Aaaa-AN!" he told me, babyspeak for "Where the hell is my food?"


"Hold on, buddy," I said, "Let's get you changed."


Tripp does not like to be changed, nor confined by an inept grandmother with vaseline on her fingers and a diaper in her teeth. It's sort of like wrestling a baby otter, but with me proffering shiny things like my watch or his mother's tooth brush to keep him from flipping his nakey butt off the end of the bed.


As we shared lunch, I played mama bird to my fledgling. I picked apart strawberries, peeled kiwi, bit blueberries in two, peeled grapes, diced bananas and shredded turkey.


"Dickum," proclaimed Tripp with approval.

Next, we played Stack the Plastic Containers of Coffee and Creamer.

We cleaned the carpet with mama's toothbrush, played Where's Beauma? (Behind the door.) Then, "Bu," said Tripp and it was time to read Baby Baa Baa, Moo Ba La La La ("And three singing pigs say la la la,") Truck Duck, and Carl's Crane. We read the books, stacked the books, toppled the books, then read them all again. And again.

We made faces.

And cracked each other up.

Then, we donned our outside clothes and strolled the Promenade des Gouverneurs boardwalk, waving to passersby; while Beauma made a few expensive phone calls, Tripp decided to inspect the grit inside these fascinating screw things.

When Tripp's mama heard about it, she was not happy.

"You let the baby play on the sidewalk?" 

"It's not a sidewalk, it's a boardwalk," I said. "There's a big difference."

"People spit on it, don't they?"

But, she didn't stay mad for too long, because we invented a game called EEK, the rules of which involved Beauma crawling into her room and hiding behind the bed, then squeaking to be found. The baby grabbed his mother's fingers and followed. 

"Eek," I hinted.

"Eeek," squeaked Tripp. And then he discovered me, and we giggled and played again and again. And again. 

We had a little Perrier break.

Then, the really exciting thing happened. We sort of knew it might happen, but still. We were just hanging out in the tonier of the two rooms, scruffling around on the floor, me just back from my single allotted hour at the gym, and I said to Tripp, "Go give your mama a kiss," and he WALKED over to her just like that, and licked her face or sort of nibbled her with his new teeth.

"Tripp!" We exclaimed. "Tripp, go give Beauma a kiss," Katherine said, and he toddled over a few steps, then a few more steps, and I got sort of teary, and sort of squeaked a few teary "eeks" to help him forget he was walking.

Katherine filmed her precious son with her I Phone, and she sent it to Tripp's Daddy immediately so he could feel all excited too, and not mind Beauma squeaking in the background all that much.