Chapter 15

I stood at the window and stared out over the lake. I had wanted to go swimming today, but Mommy said it was too cold. She said we probably couldn’t go swimming again until next Spring, but I wasn’t sure what that meant. Maybe she’d take me tomorrow or next week. I thought I’d heard Mommy say it might snow next week though, and we were never allowed to swim when it snowed. That was okay though; snow meant building snowmen and making snow angels with Sabrina.

Hopefully Sabrina would be home from daycare soon. That was another thing I wanted to do, but Mommy kept saying I wasn’t big enough. Mommy said when I was big enough to wear pull-ups, then I could go to daycare occasionally, but I had no idea how long it would be before I was big enough for that. Mommy said daycare wasn’t for babies that still needed to be kept in diapers. Besides, it was hardly fair. Sabrina wore pull-ups sometimes, but it seemed like she always ended up peeing in them anyway, and then Mommy put her back in diapers too. Then there was the time Sabrina through a temper tantrum because she didn’t want to wear a diaper—Mommy spanked her and she ended up wearing diapers like me for a week.

Sabrina wasn’t that much bigger than me, why did she get to go to daycare while I stayed home bored?

Sometimes I thought I remembered a time when I got to wear big girl panties, but I knew that was silly. Those were probably just dreams I had. There was no way Mommy would let me wear big girl panties, I would just make a mess out of my clothes. Not even Sabrina ever got to wear those. It was like how I sometimes remember that I used to live in a house a little further along the lake shore, even though I knew I had always lived in this nursery. Sometimes I remember other things too, like driving a car or having a job, but I knew I was just a baby and babies didn’t do those things.

I turned away from the window and waddled back to where I had left my coloring book open in the middle of the floor. I plopped down in front of the coloring book, my diaper squishing as I did, and picked up the crayon I had been using. Hopefully Sabrina would be home soon, then she would play with me.

Vaguely, I was aware that my diaper badly needed changing. Vaguely, I was aware of fresh warmth spreading through it. I was even vaguely aware of a certain tactile pleasure I took in the sensation. But only vaguely. I no longer had to be more than vaguely aware of these things—in truth, I didn’t even have to be that aware. That was because, above all, I knew Mommy would take care of those things for me.

The door to the nursery opened and I looked up, a big grin spreading out behind my pacifier. Sabrina and Mommy were here.