Better Than Home: Better Than Good Novella

And no, this wasn’t the first time we’d babysat Henry and Holly, but nothing overly serious had happened on our watch in the past. Thus…the panic.

Aaron held Holly close and wrapped a blanket around her.

“We’ll just do our best. Jay and Peter will be home in an hour anyway. It’ll be okay,” he assured me, wincing when Holly howled in his ear.

Henry glanced up at the commotion and dropped the plastic truck he’d been drooling over, his bottom lip trembling ominously, signaling imminent eruption.

I raked my fingers through my hair and swallowed hard. “How can I help?”

Henry burst into tears, and Holly wailed. Honestly, I wanted to join in, but Aaron smiled and took over.

“Thank you, Matty. Um…let’s divide and conquer. Will you watch Henry while I try to get Holly to sleep again? Take him downstairs and play trucks or run in the yard or something.”

“Okay. I can do that. Any special instructions?”

“No. Just play.”

No problem.

I scooped up Henry and a couple of trucks and books and headed for the stairs.

You know…for a while, I was doing pretty damn well, if I did say so myself. Henry was a jolly kid who was easily entertained by pushing toy cars and trucks across the hardwood floors. He got a chuckle out of my vroom, vroom noises and belly-laughed when I hopped one car over the others like a kangaroo. And when I added a few of the smaller stuffed animals to the mix, blowing raspberries as they jumped out of a runaway truck’s path, I knew I had a best friend for life.

Henry toddled after the toys, his blue eyes alight with the kind of joy that comes from the simplest of pleasures. He was as entertaining to me as I was to him. His wide-eyed enthusiasm and adoring gaze made me feel like a superhero.

But then…everything went south.

It happened so fast, I didn’t see it coming.

One second, we were chasing trucks and stuffed frogs around the sectional in the great room and the next, Henry was hanging on to the coffee table, red-faced, giving me a “nothing to see here” look. Maybe that was true, but there was definitely something to smell. Did I mention that I didn’t do diapers?

Shit.

Literally. Didn’t he just do that?

“Ba. Babalalabalamaba,” he chirped, plopping unceremoniously onto the floor.

“You don’t say. Um…hey, buddy. We should do something about your recurring odor situation, huh?”

“Lama baba na.”

“Good idea. Let’s call Uncle Aaron. Don’t move a muscle.” I stood slowly and sauntered toward the grand entry.

Of course, Henry followed me. He slipped his fingers through the bars on the child-proof gate barring him from climbing the stairs. It never bothered him unless he heard a familiar voice above. Like Aaron and his sister, who still sounded unhappy. He shook the gate and yelled a stream of gibberish while I tried to figure out what to do.

I couldn’t leave the kid like this, could I?

I leaned against the banister and glanced down at the pint-sized stinker who barely came up to my kneecap. He looked up at me with those big blue eyes and wrapped his arms around my leg, pointing upstairs.

“Umph.”

“Okay. Let’s do this.” I picked him up, holding him at arms’ length as I hurried up the stairs to the nursery. “Oh, fu—arts. What happened?”

Aaron’s shell-shocked expression rattled me a bit. He blinked manically at the pile of towels in the middle of the geometric-print rug anchoring the room.

“Shh. She got sick.”

Holly hiccupped and whimpered on cue, clutching Aaron’s T-shirt like a lifeline.

“Oh. Uh…is she okay now?”

Aaron gave me a wobbly smile. “I don’t know, but she’s just starting to settle.”

“That’s good. So…um, what do we do about him? He stinks again,” I whispered.

“Matty, I can’t put her down. She needs to sleep. I know this isn’t ideal, but will you please change him?”

I widened my eyes comically and gulped. “Me? How?”

“Get a diaper and wipes and…change him. It’s not hard. You can do it.”

Me?

“Can I?” I asked dubiously.

“Yes. I believe in you, Matty.”

Well, I didn’t.

At all.

But I couldn’t say that. Aaron had done more than his fair share. I had to step up and…try.

Gulp.

I shifted Henry into a football hold, grabbed a diaper and a container of wipes, and headed for the stairs like a running back with a clear shot at the goal.

Look, I won’t go into the gory details. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t pretty. Changing a wiggling toddler’s diaper was a harrowing experience. But I did it. I made “yuck” faces and gagged more than once.

Of course, when the deed was done, I wasn’t sure what to do with the bundle of poop. The dirty diaper…not the kid.

I knew there was a special bin somewhere, but this was not my usual job. Far from it. I made a point of not paying attention to gross things that didn’t concern me. So I hesitated with a wadded dirty diaper in my hand and addressed the little munchkin, staring up at me innocently.