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| I NEVER THOUGHT I'D SEE THE DAY THAT PIGGLY WIGGLY would eat a single scrap of food that wasn't tricked into her while we were making her look at something else. This, my friends, is a big day. |
I rarely break my own self-imposed fatwah on blogging but when I do it's for damn good reason. Sean Penn dabbling in journalism and inadvertently ratting out the world's most-wanted fugitive in the process being one such reason. Piggly Wiggly being another. (I can't believe I just lumped my own granddaughter into the same dirty laundry pile as Sean Penn, but there you go. I never said I was doing this sober ... and if I did I was probably drunk.) And there, in a nutshell, is the sort of literary cornholery you're missing out on by me vowing to stay off the Internet. God, how I've missed this!
Anyway, I'm sure I had some sort of point here *peers gloomily into half-empty bottle of Bombay Sapphire* ah yes! The baby! It's been ages since I had a proper visit with her, but today I got to spend an entire day with her and I can't believe how much she's changed.
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| WEE PIGGLY WIGGLY LOOKING UNDERSTANDABLY THRILLED TO SEE ME What this picture lacks is something to indicate exactly how wee she is, but just picture an eggplant towering over her and you'll get an idea. |
It's not that she's grown, exactly. She's still about the size of a large eggplant.
And it's not that she's sleeping through the night now. In fact, her mother greeted me at the door with a groan and said: "Just kill me."
"Sure!" I agreed graciously. "Wait ... is this a trick?"
"She was up all night, mom. ALL NIGHT. Just kill me."
And it's certainly not that she looks any different. At age 2 she still looks like a nine-month-old, albeit one that walks upright and screeches "OGGIE!" whenever she hears the neighbour's bitch barking.
No, the thing that stopped me in my tracks today was that Piggly Wiggly has finally decided that maybe she does like food, after all. Or at least, she doesn't loathe it as much as she used to.
One of my tasks today, the one I feared most, to be honest, was "feeding her lunch." Well this will be a hilarious waste of about 25 bucks worth of food, I thought grimly. Maybe I'll just flush two heads of cauliflower and a side of beef down the toilet and tell her mother it seemed like a less profligate option.
Because as some of you will remember, eating, not unlike sleeping, growing and anything by Sharon, Lois and Bram, is one of many things Piggly can't stand in the least. We ultimately learned there were some underlying medical issues, but still, it is a tough thing to watch a baby fight you tooth and nail when you're simply trying to feed her enough to keep a bird alive.
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| JUST MONTHS AGO: PIGGLY AT MEALTIME, EXHIBITING THE TYPE OF UNBRIDLED LETHARGY usually reserved for hangovers. |
But those days, apparently, are over. Because today, to my astonishment, the little chickadee polished off a bowl of watermelon chunks, a bowl of buttered noodles, a scrambled egg, a slice of gluten-free bread and, finally, a large piece of fried chicken. Which I was secretly hoping she'd be too full to eat because I wanted it myself.
When her mother returned from work, I gleefully rhymed off the list in full expectation of tears of joy and a raise in my liquor allowance, and got only this: "How big was the piece of chicken?"
"Excuse me?" I replied. "Just months ago you'd be lying on the floor right now if I'd told you she ate that much!"
"I guess," her mother allowed. "But she won't eat that much tomorrow, I bet."
"Tomorrow is tomorrow!" I retorted, which of course put an end to the conversation because, goddamit, how does one argue with that sort of brilliance, and also Piggly chose that very moment to make a gagging sound and hork up a goodly portion of what I assume from the brief disgusted glance I gave it was fried chicken.
We cut our losses then and there, and I took Piggly upstairs to cuddle her into naptime on a full tummy. That's right: she ate AND she slept. If her mother calls me tomorrow and tells me the child grew six inches overnight, I honestly don't think I'd be surprised. Miracles, man. They do happen. *attempts to make sign of the cross, pauses, frowns* Shit. I just made the sign of the pentagram, didn't I? It's been so long ...
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| PIGGLY'S MOM REWARDS HER ADORABLE BAIRN for the selfless act of eating by rubbing her tum ... wait. WAIT! She's not feeding herself, she's sticking her fingers down her throat! SHE'S PULLING A BULIMIA ON US! THE WHOLE TIME, SHE WAS FAKING IT! |
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