This town is a definitely different place when there's a surf tournament. The street smells of something delicious being fried and kettle corn. Tons of shirtless and overly tan people camp out on the pier on beach chairs and the speakers announcing the next surfer competes with the unnecessarily loud music.
The surfer girls are the best. If I could restart my life I would come back as a California teenager that drives an old, huge, and beat up van just because it fits all her friends and everyone's surf boards.
I'm paying attention to all this when I realized my kid is eating sand and grass, because they must be, hmm, so delicious. He makes a face and spits it out, just to reach for some more. I just shake my head, whereas a few days ago I would have pulled out an OCD on baby and wiped his whole baby body with a disinfecting liquid that I use like its holy water, as if it would have kept all evil away. I also believe that my milk has super powers and if it was up to me he would drink it until he is 30, so he would never get sick.
For some reason, though, my baby's cheeks are a magnet for germy people. Everyone wants a piece of it. And his hands. His hands must be really necessary to hold. As a newborn I actually contemplated putting up a sign over his stroller that said, "If you touch my baby I will punch you on the face."
The host of the restaurant we like to go likes my kid's cheeks so much that she waits outside when she sees us parking, and waves her hands full of fingers, eager for his cheeks. From the car, I think, "look at her, waving all those germs in the air!" I wipe him as I eat my sushi, every single freakin time.
But then baby got sick with diarrhea. Where it came from, I have no idea. I can't get any more obsessive about cleaning. I like to blame it on oatmeal and all its mean fiber properties.
So I am arriving to a baby gathering (I refuse to call it play date because it makes me sound like I have no life, which is true, but anyway), and I am imagining that all moms are thinking, "here comes that germy kid with the runs." I prepare myself to just sit in a corner with my germy kid and sigh, when a hand steals him from me and says, "ooow, Matthew, how are you doooooing?" Matthew lets her know he is doing fine with giggle and a shy smile. Then he gets passed on from hand to hand.
A girl wants to eat his cheeks and my baby finds the opportunity suitable to throw up on her back. I apologize and she says, "oh, don't worry, my kid does that all the time."
Huh.
Then someone hands my germy baby her baby's toy so he can chew on it and I warn her,"You know he had a bug last week, right?" and she shrugs, "but that was last week!"
So as my kid eats sand and we watch the surfers pass by, I have decided I will no longer be a germaphobe. He will get sick sometimes, and I just have to get over it, although some of these people here could really use a freshwater shower.
He wiggles, throws his head back, pulls the blanket hanging behind me and fluffs it. I put the blanket away and he pulls my lower lip instead, hard! Then he pushes the sides of the rocker with little legs, shaking my entire body side to side, only stopping to throw his head back again to look at the clock glowing by the side table. I turn the clock away. Then cries, pulls my hair and slaps my face. He shoves his face in my armpit and wiggles himself down. We wrestle. He pulls my hair, my lower lip, squeezes my nose, scratches my cheek, pokes my eye. I tell him, "you are tired! What is your deal? If you're tired, close your eyes and sleep!" Twenty minutes of this and many battle wounds to count all is quiet and I can finally lay the beast in his crib, just to hear him cry two seconds later because he already lost his paci.
