The Blue-Eyed Purple Paper Eater, or How I Totally Dodged A Bullet

The baby likes to fuss and grump before he falls asleep, and to help him occupy himself before The Sandman knocks him out, I leave a couple of toys in his crib.

Until last week, I also left a board book or two.

The Poo always loved books; she would take a couple to bed with her every night, and we’d hear her coo and chatter over the monitor while she leafed through them. She still does that, only now it’s mermaid pop-up books and early-reader novels about rainbow fairies instead of Sandra Boynton classics.

Shaggy likes books, too. He will sit still long enough to get about halfway through a short baby book, and then he starts lunging at the pretty pictures. He wants to hold them in his hands and get up close and personal with the illustrations.

I usually read to him before I leave him to his own devices, and then I hand him the book, kiss his pretty head and close the door on his outraged screams.

Last week he had a particularly rough landing, and yelled and complained for about 30 minutes before finally falling asleep. He slept hard after that, and I had to wake him up (quel horreur!) at 6:15 p.m.

I went into his dimly lit room and looked at his sleeping form. After I smiled at his marvelous cute-i-tude, I squinted at his crib sheet.

What the hell is that? I thought. There were wet little mounds of some kind of substance all over his bed. At first I thought he had a diaper blow-out, and then I saw this:

He ate a book.

No, really, he ate a book. That book was intact, shiny and new when it went to bed with him. The spine had nary a crack, being a special book that lives upstairs in his bookcase, the one my dad took to college with him more than 30 years ago.

HE ATE THAT BOOK.

After my confused mind understood what it was looking at, I FREAKED THE FUCK OUT. Because OH MY GOD he could have CHOKED TO DEATH! And I had turned the monitor down while I worked in the kitchen, annoyed by his crying, and only watched the red lights instead of listening to him scream.

Because I just assumed he was OK, just pissed off about being forced to rest.

This is funny only because he’s fine. Only because he DIDN’T choke. But he totally could have, and I would not have known because I was just so sick of hearing wah-wah-wah all day long.

I dodged a very large bullet.

No more books in bed for Shaggy. And as for me? No more assuming that I know everything there is to know about babies, just because I’ve been around this block before. Shaggy shows me every day that detours abound, and he doesn’t have any intention of following my playbook.

The monitor? Right now as he naps? Turned up to ELEVEN.