Naked baby time

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a two-year old in possession of a cute tush must be in want of excessive time to run around with said tush unencumbered by clothing.*

It started a few weeks ago, when I began noticing that Zeke was displaying an aversion to getting dressed in the morning. All of a sudden, he was giving me a hard time about what he was going to wear, requiring much cajoling and trickery on my part to get him to cooperate.

"No shirt, honey? OK, why don't we put on pants first. Look, let's watch Diego! Diego wears pants. Don't you want to be like Diego? Oh, and look, your shirt has a fire truck on it. What noise does a fire truck make? Right! You're a fireman!"

Etcetera.

Then he started wanting to take a bath 40 times a day. I think partly because it's fun to splash around, but mostly because he gets to be naked. Then he didn't want to put clothes on after getting out of the tub. Or I'll change his diaper, but as soon as I get him de-diapered and cleaned up, he scampers off, bare-assed, to the playroom.

Every kid I know has gone through this. When Emma was 2, we went on a family vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. She spent the entire vacation, save for times we were either at the store or a restaurant, buck naked. This coincided with her obsession with the movie The Jungle Book. So every afternoon, she would ask one of the grownups to put in her Jungle Book video, and she would stand there, this little tan, blonde, gorgeous teeny girl, and watch the movie and then start dancing around naked when the Bare Necessities and I Wanna Be Like You songs came on. And those songs are seriously catchy and danceable -- I would usually join her in bopping around the living room (I wasn't naked, though), and then she would say, "Again, Again!" It was the cutest thing ever.

Tonight when Zeke got out of the tub, he put on his shoes all by himself -- which is a big deal -- but nothing else. First he sat with me on the couch and wanted to look at family pictures on the computer, but then he took off to push one of his big trucks around.

I find no look funnier than the "naked with shoes" look. I don't care who you are. You could be the hottest, most gorgeous person on the face of the earth, but put on a pair of sneakers and nothing else, and you're going to look ridiculous. Which is good, because I needed a little levity after days and days of being worried and nervous.

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*My apologies to Jane Austen. Can you tell Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite books?