the mermaid amputee

baby girl loves spending time in her crib.  she's always been a good sleeper, and combine that with the fact that she just really enjoys playing in her crib and umm, she logs a ton of hours in there.  she normally only sleeps for an hour or an hour and a half in her crib for nap but she plays for a while before and after so she's in there for at least three hours.  a week or two ago i had to make the call and stop allowing her to play with books in her crib because they were taking too much of a beating.  so now she just has a blanket, a few stuffed animals, a water bottle, and two trains.  because she doesn't have a stack of books to read anymore, she's been spending more and more of her time getting naked.  it's typical these days to see her naked on on her video monitor (or "crib cam" as weed likes to call it). sometimes i'm aware of this, but sometimes i just go into her room to get her and find that she's fully dressed but has taken her diaper off and has a bare bum underneath those footie pjs.  sometimes she gets real rowdy and just yells and jumps naked until i tell her to calm down and sometimes she just hangs out in the nude for a little while before getting redressed and calling for me to come get her so we can play.

several nights ago, i was on the phone with my dear friend weed and our conversation turned to amputees (she was sitting in her car at a QT when she saw a husband carrying his wife into the gas station.  wondering why he was doing this, she looked more closely and realized it was because she only had one leg.  how does she always find herself in these situations?!).  the next morning i saw my kid undressing herself in her crib.  no big deal.

but then a few minutes later i heard her yelling "help!  mommy help!  i'm stuck!" so i checked out the monitor to try and figure out what was going on.  and she kept yelling "mommy!  i'm stuck!  i can't walk!" which really confused me.  so i went to get her out.  when i saw her, i seriously couldn't stop laughing.  she was tripping and falling down in her crib because she kept trying to stand up and hop around but couldn't really do so without toppling over.  it was hilarious.

in her attempts to redress herself, she'd accidentally put both of her legs in one leg of the pj's and couldn't get them out again.

and i guess she'd been messing with her diaper too because the flaps were all pulled out.

so i took her out and laid her on the floor and... BAM!  she transformed from an amputee to a mermaid!

which is only appropriate because that book behind her (thomas and the castle) is the one she calls thomas and the sand castle.

and it was also especially appropriate because weed has red hair and has always loved ariel from the little mermaid.  does it get more perfect than that?  i'm pretty sure it doesn't.

maybe these pictures will work... even if they are out of order.