A Bouncing Baby and Sour Milk

I have two unrelated short stories this morning.

A Bouncing Baby

With all due respect to everyone else, my one year old niece is the sweetest and cutest little girl ever. My wife and I had the joy to babysit her all day on Saturday. We heard that she had a meltdown and rough night Friday night but we were blessed with sweet Violet all day on Saturday. Violet danced and sang (well her 1 year old version of singing anyway) to both her favorite kids CD as well as to Christmas music. She ran around in her walker thing. And she took rides in her train–which her Grandpa made out of wooden boxes and caster type wheels. And when it was nap time she went to sleep right away. (The only trouble we had was a user error where I forgot to give her a pacifier.)

It was a long but enjoyable day. The few things that I realized is just how much work a 1 year old can be. It is something that I was cognitively aware of but is now something that I have experienced. We have babysat her when she was younger where she needed constant supervision. But it's different now. She is vastly more mobile which means she can go from being in a benign situation to a dangerous situation in the blink of an eye. It reminds me of being an adult. We can do the same thing except we can get into even more dangerous situations even quicker. 

Sour Milk

This morning I was attempting to use up the last of the milk in my cereal. It was getting to the bottom of the container and it has been in the fridge for a bit so I went through my "end of the milk" ritual. First I looked at the date. It said sell by December 2, 2011. It is only the 5th so I figured that we might still be good. So on to the second step. I opened the container and did the eyeball test. I swished it around and it looked ok. Then came the third step. I sniffed the milk...and it smelled ok. So I poured it on my cereal.

I shoveled the first spoonful into my mouth and "Houston we have a problem." It is amazing the things that can go through your head in a split second. I was eating an off brand rice crispy cereal and so I was initially trying to decide if it was just a poor rendition of cereal, the lingering affect of taking a sip of coffee immediately before a spoonful of cereal or if the milk was in fact starting to sour. I was simultaneously debating what to do with the now mouthful spoonful of cereal. 

If it was merely the bad effects of a pre-cereal coffee sip and I spit the cereal back into the bowl then I would have a sullied bowl of perfectly good cereal. If it was bad cereal then I could choke it down and dump the rest of the bowl. However if it was bad milk I didn't want that bad boy making a round trip through the food canal.

I quickly decided that the milk was bad and took immediate action. Sometimes the difficulty of dealing with a difficult situation is what makes the situation so difficult...if you know what I mean.