The Horror

Last night when I entered Georgia's room to wake her up from her afternoon nap (not the 2 hour morning nap, the 3 hour afternoon nap - just had to throw that in there;), I saw something that struck a terror in my heart. Something that turns every mother of a young child into a quivering ball of nerves and makes her heart race in fear. It is frightening, actually. Terrifying.

Georgia had spit up on her crib sheet.

Not the kind of spit up that you can quietly ignore and pretend is not there and allow to dry and no one will ever know that it exists. The kind of spit up that has a color to it, cannot be ignored and (here is the terrifying part) requires an immediate change of the sheet.

You KNOW what I'm talking about. If you're a little, ahem, older and don't know why this is so terrifying, let me just tell you that in order to change a crib sheet one is required to spend much time contemplating the best course of action, then when a decision is made the acrobats begin...

First, when faced with an immediate sheet change (or any crib sheet change for that matter) one must decided: Do I leave the crib bumper on and attempt to change the sheet with it in place OR do I take the time to untie all (22) ties that hold the bumper in place and retie them and refit the bumper once the sheet has been changed?

Once that decision has been made the next decision is: Do I leave the mattress in the crib or do I try to wrestle the entire mattress out (PAST the bumper if you opted to leave it on) and put the sheet on outside of the crib and try to replace the mattress?

Having made those two very important decisions, it is time to stretch and get into proper position. One must be very limber and very stretchy in order to properly change a crib sheet. This is not something one should attempt while out of shape, overly tired or under the influence of any type of altering medication. Full attention and focus is requred in all crib sheet changes. Okay, stretching completed and it starts:

Put the corner of the sheet on the corner of the mattress. Good. Stretch the next corner of the sheet onto the next corner of the mattress. Piece of cake. Go to other side of the crib... put corner of sheet on corner of mattress. Crap - the sheet on the original corner just pulled off. Okay, go back to original corner and replace sheet on mattress. Great, now the other corner pulled off. Go back to the third corner, try again. This continues on and on until there is a puddle of sweat on the floor and the dog is trying to lick it up. Now, after successfully stretching all corners of the sheet onto all corners of the mattress it is time to stick your fingers into places that were never meant to have fingers stuck - the area between the mattress and the spindles of the crib. By doing this, one is attempting to pull the sheet down to the bottom of the mattress to fully cover the depth of the mattress and make it look nice. ATTEMPT - keyword. An hour later, while wiping the sweat off of your forehead, you look at your screaming child (who is crying because you have ignored her for way too long while trying to make her bed clean) and pick her up, leave the room, shut the door and vow to only return when it is dark and you cannot see the sheet or the spit up if it exists.

At some point - or several points - during this entire process you curse yourself for choosing to leave the bumper on and leave the mattress in the crib.