With kids, noise is a basic part of life. Yes, there are the times when they're asleep and you're awake when they don't make noise. This lasts for about an hour and a half at our house in the evening. It is a glorious time, and frankly, there is not enough of it. That time aside, when kids are awake there is sound in the house. Unless there isn't. These are the times when you need to worry. If a child, or children, are awake, and you do not hear anything from them, this is a bad sign. They only stop making sound for two reasons: They are sleeping; or they are getting into trouble. They figure out at a very early age that when they are doing something they shouldn't be doing, noise just draws attention to them, so they are quiet about it. If one of my children is out of sight, and I can't hear them, then I know I need to find them, and fast. More than likely, they are destroying something or getting into something they shouldn't be. Let me give you an example.
This is Lucy. I know, you're thinking that she is just the most adorable thing you have ever seen. And that smile is just too cute. Let me tell you about that smile. That smile is her trouble maker smile. We call her Hurricane Lucy at our house, because at any given time she is causing some kind of disaster in some room in the house. Don't get me wrong, she is cute while she is doing it, but the results are the same either way, disaster. Last night, we put all 3 girls to bed at the same time. This is always a bad idea. They stay awake much later when we do this because they decide to play or whatever instead of sleep. In fact, normally when this happens, Lucy and Eliza keep each other awake for a couple of hours, and we can hear them in their room making noise while they play. Lots of noise. Last night, that didn't happen. Erica needed to run to the store, but she was going to wait until they calmed down. Within 20 minutes, she felt like everybody had settled in and she could go. This was abnormally quick for our girls, so we should have known what was going on, but we were foolishly optimistic.
Erica went to the store and came back and we were sitting on our bed enjoying NetFlix, when we heard a thud, followed by Lucy crying. We figured she must have fallen out of her bed. Kids do that sometimes. I don't know why, but they just fall out of a perfectly good bed that is really huge compared to them, so they really have no business being that close to the edge any way. Erica went to go check on her, and she was blown away by the scene that met her when she went in there. Lucy was crying uncontrollably, and her face and hair were covered, caked in diaper rash cream. It took Erica a minute to figure out what it was, but the smell gave it away. As she walked into the room to pick Lucy up, she noticed she was near the crib, not her bed. And the crib was covered in the cream as well. As she looked more closely, she discovered they Maren, asleep at this point, also had her face covered in the cream. 9:30 at night, we were called into action. I started the bath water, and ran to our laundry to grab some clean pajamas for the two girls, while Erica began trying to while it off of Lucy's face. As she was working on her face, I retrieved Maren from the crib. First she was mad because I woke her up. Then she was mad because she had diaper rash cream all over her face. I would have been mad about both of those things as well.
As we bathed the two girls, we learned some things. We learned that Maren, who normally dislikes baths, hates baths when she is barely awake and covered in diaper rash cream. We learned that said cream does not wash off easily, regardless of how many times you put shampoo in there hair or lather up the soap. We learned that Lucy, who normally loves baths, does not like baths when she has to be dunked in the water multiple times. We also learned, or re-learned, that if they kids are not making noise in a situation where they normally would make noise, we need to see what's wrong. Something is happening, and it is sneaky and not good.
Fortunately, both girls fell back asleep pretty quickly after the baths were done and they had fresh pj's on. Of course, we couldn't get all the diaper cream out of Lucy's hair, so she fell asleep with some still stuck in there, and she will need another bath today, bout at least we got it out of her eyes and off her face. Maren spent the whole time being mad until I had the opportunity to snuggle with her until she fell asleep. Lucy just smiled after her bath. She thought the whole thing was a great time, apparently. I felt like we were just lucky to have survived another touchdown of Hurricane Lucy with minimal damage. In any case, the whole event reminded me that Kids make noise, and if they're awake, not making noise, then you have to worry about that. It is never good.
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