The watch on Maribel’s wrist vibrated her awake and she tapped it to quiet it. She very quickly went into the bathroom with a roll of Tuesday’s clothes and her timeless Nike shoes. Ken and Karen were still asleep when she came back in with her night gown rolled up and wasted no time to get them ready for the morning.
Maribel was wearing bell-bottoms, which had a pink butterfly and an orange-centered daisy with white spoon-shaped petals on the pant legs, as was a mimicking of the baby-boomer era, with the exception that jeans in the baby-boomer era were usually plain blue with maybe a patch or safety pin, and the childish butterfly and daisies were more likely to be on Volks Wagan Beetles than jeans. Cutesy combinations had always been requirements for kid clothes. Maribel did not mind. After all, the jeans did go with her Hello Kitty sweatshirt which was the exact same shade of pink as the butterfly, and of course the pink Nike Swoosh on her shoes. Three decades in one were Maribel’s clothes today: 70s, 80s, and 90s, and they looked great, … so clashes between decade icons be darned.
She had to pull the sides down by hand because the cribs do not automatically respond to children, no exceptions. “Sleeping beauty number one!” she sang to Karen as she picked her up out of the crib, not an easy task when your own body is not all that large. Karen made a few reflexive, protest hacks before being able to settle herself with the help of the “shhh, shhh” from Maribel. She placed Karen down on one of the changing pads she had already had ready and went to get Ken to put on the other one. At Maribel’s request, mommy was downstairs the first morning to allow Maribel to be the only one taking care of them. The purpose was to test their behavior when their morning routine was a little bit different than usual, with someone other than their mommy taking care of them first thing in the morning. As she got both of them ready, both Ken and Karen were wondering why they weren’t as wet today as they were the other morning. Their anklets with their CCVSes were not on them yet so they couldn’t ask yet. Karen was dressed into an infant’s romper, which consisted of a pale blue top with had a white toy poodle in her upper left side, and dark blue bottoms. Ken’s outfit was a race car sweatshirt and blue jean overalls with fasteners along the crotch, no doubt for diaper access. Maribel finally affixed the CCVSes to Ken and Karen.
“Did you change us in the middle of the night without waking us?” asked Ken.
“My little boy is observant!” giggled the consultant. Ken didn’t mind language consistent with what someone would say to an infant, when it would otherwise sound a little condescending if said to him when he was an adult. “I took care of your diapers and gave you a bottle in your sleep. With a tiny amount of chamomile tea and other gentle good-for-you herbs both last evening and last night, you probably noticed you two are not quite as hungry this morning either. You don’t remember the bah-bahs, do you?” The two managed to shake their heads “no” despite being unable to lift them from the pads. Maribel put them in their caddies.
“I was wondering,” began Karen, “why you took your tablet to bed but did not turn on its back light so you could see?”
“Let me show you my little secret…” said Maribel as she got her tablet out to present to her. Realizing tiny visual cortexes didn’t have much experience processing 3-D, she ran Karen’s finger across the tiny lumps on the tablet. The tablet was capable of displaying in braille!
“Ah. … Did you ever have family members or friends who were blind?”
“Nope.”
“Clients.”
“Nuh-uh,” shook Maribel’s head.
“Why the braille?” asked Karen.
“Just so I don’t disturb you while you need your sleepy-byes,” she said with a tickle-finger to Karen’s tummy, causing another cackle reflex. The little eccentric learned braille just so she could read at night!