Supervising Kids

Nuha is getting to the age where objects around her are no longer to be simply observed, but to be touched, tasted, and thrown around. This makes it entertaining to watch her explore everyday items, such as our TV remotes, because she treats them as if they were alien technology meant to perform unimaginable tasks. For example, she’ll pick up the remote gingerly with both hands, look at it wide-eyed, and start turning it in different directions. After several minutes of this examination, and when she realizes that simple observation will not be enough to understand the remote's purpose, she does the only thing left – stick it as far into her mouth as possible. A cute activity quickly turns not-so-cute when you have to wipe off kid-slobber from sticky buttons every time you go to change channels.

Her other favorite activity is playing with paper napkins, because of their texture and the sound they make when crinkled. I put this fascination to great use this past weekend, when Saeeda left me and Nuha alone to run some errands. Now that I was in charge of supervision, I faced a dilemma. I badly wanted to read the newspaper (something I hadn’t done in a really long time), but also had to watch the baby. So I solved both problems in one shot. I read the paper, and gave the back page of it to Nuha to play with, correctly assuming that she would treat it like one huge paper napkin.

It was great. I got to read the Financial Times while Nuha went to town on the paper, crunching it, ripping it, throwing it, and picking it back up again to repeat the cycle. A half hour flew by like it was nothing. I had just finished reading the last page when I looked down at my daughter, and realized the folly of what I had done. You see, the Financial Times is printed on orange paper, and its ink isn’t exactly permanent (you’d think that a paper like that would be of a little higher quality, no?). At my feet sat my daughter, with her hands and mouth turned black from the ink, and with little strips of newspaper hanging from her lips.

My first thought wasn’t, “I wonder if this ink is toxic” or “I wonder if she swallowed any paper,” but “Oh $#%!, Saeeda is going to kill me.” Now in all fairness, the next two thoughts were centered around the toxicity of the ink and the ingestion of paper. But initially all I knew was that Saeeda was coming home any minute, and my daughter looked like a crazy clown.

I sprung into action. All shreds of newspaper were immediately removed from within reach of my daughter and discarded. The baby was quickly spirited to the bathroom for a complete scrub down. While she squealed murder I attempted to wash her hands and face, and to make sure that there was nothing inside her mouth. In my enthusiasm, I managed to completely drench her clothes. So then it was off to the changing table to change her into a new outfit, and then finally back to her playmat in the living room. Knowing that she had just changed out of wet clothes I cranked up the heat in the room, because the last thing I needed was for her to catch a cold.

It was only five minutes later that Saeeda returned. She walked into the living room and paused, surveying everything. Ohmygod she knows, I thought to myself. I don’t know how but she knows!

“It’s really warm in here,” she said.

I struck a casual pose as I tried to wipe some dried slobber from the TV remote. “Oh yeah?” I asked nonchalantly. “Honey, I think it’s just you – you just came in from the outside.”

She waited, hesitating, processing what I was saying. Something didn’t feel right to her. She looked at Nuha, who by now was busy playing with her stuffed bunny rabbit. She looked at me. I felt a bead of sweat start to form. Could she tell that Nuha was in a new change of clothes? Could she spot that last smudge of ink on her pinky that I had been unable to remove? Was I in trouble?

“Hmm,” she said. “I guess so,” and headed to our bedroom to sort through her shopping.

I sighed in relief, as my daughter munched on her bunny, oblivious to what had just happened. Crisis averted.