Rose turned out the light and closed the door behind her as she left the room.

“Did he really say what I thought he said?”, she thought to herself.

The next morning Rose went in to wake him before he awoke on his own.

She wanted to see how wet the pads had gotten during the night.

Besides she didn’t want him to take off the diaper himself.

If it was as drippy as she expected it would be, it would get everywhere if he wasn’t careful.

She sat down on the bed beside him and said, softly,

“ Theodore?  Theodore, it’s time to get up! Come on, wake up!”

Theodore opened his eyes to see her sitting beside him looking down on him with loving eyes.

He hadn’t been woken that way since he was younger.

He wanted to tell her that he was too big to be mothered like that, but the words wouldn’t come out.

He moved his legs slightly to make more room for her and felt the soggy diaper squish between his legs.

Theodore blushed in embarrassment as he realized that he had done it again.

They were right! He should wear diapers to bed!

Rose nodded understandingly and took the covers out of his hand, pulling them down below his knees.

She felt the pad beneath him and said approvingly,

“Well, the brief seems to have done the trick.

Only the pad underneath your bottom is wet.

We’ll only use one pad tonight.”

Theodore started to sit up but was restrained by her hand on his chest.

“Let me get you out of that wet brief before you get out of bed.”

He lay back passively as she unfastened the tabs on the diaper and pulled the wet padding down between his legs.

She had been right, she told herself.

He had really soaked the diaper.

If he had gotten up on his own he would have dripped everywhere.

She told him, “You can sit up now.

Put your feet on the floor and stand straight up.

Be careful, I don’t want you dragging the wet brief off the bed onto the floor.

There’s a tub of hot water waiting for you in the bathroom.

Why don’t you take a bath and then I’ll get you some breakfast?”

Tony got out of the bed and trotted into the bathroom without stopping to get dressed.

It seemed silly to act modestly around someone who had just taken his pee-soaked brief off.

‘Brief’, now there was a face-saving lie if he ever heard one.

It was a diaper and he had wet it just like a toddler.

At least she didn’t insist on using a baby wipe on him and had let him go a take a bath with some dignity.

He bathed quickly and went back to his room to dress before going down to breakfast.

When he arrived, he found her at the stove cooking bacon and eggs for him.

The smell of maple-cured bacon filled the kitchen and made his mouth water in anticipation.

“The margarine and jam are in the refrigerator  Theodore, help yourself.

Your toast will be done in a minute.

Why don’t you get yourself a glass of milk while you wait?”

He took the margarine and jam out of the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of milk.

Rose brought him his breakfast and set it down on the table in front of him with some silverware and a napkin.

She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down on the other side of the table from him.

She smiled at him and said,

“Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?”, she observed as he wolfed down his breakfast.

“Bad? No, it’s great! I love maple-cured bacon!”, he said around a mouthful of food.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, dear.

I meant the brief.

I was asking you about sleeping in the briefs last night,” she said in a motherly fashion.

“Oh, it wasn’t so bad when I got used to it,” he said airily.

Rose smiled at his response, he had fallen asleep before she had finished tucking him in the bed.

She doubted he was even aware he was even wearing it while he slept.

“That’s good. I’m glad you didn’t have any problems,” she said.

“ Theodore,” she asked sweetly,

“I need to go do some shopping and I was wondering if you could watch Baby John John for me while I go up to the grocery store.

It should only take about forty-five minutes.”

Theodore agreed readily and she left for the store.

Theodore played with Baby John John for a few minutes, then turned on the TV to Nickelodeon and sat down to watch with Baby John John in his lap.

Rugrats was on and they watched an episode titled “Regarding Stuie”.

Theodore settled Baby John Johns’s pacifier in his mouth while he indulged himself in his secret pastime; sucking his thumb.

He had always enjoyed sucking his thumb and had been very upset when he was five and his mother made him stop.

He had never told her that he hadn’t really stopped, only learned to hide it from everyone.

He only sucked his thumb when he was sure he wouldn’t get caught.

Oh, sure his mother had seen him a couple of times with his thumb in his mouth,

However, he was always able to explain it away as some injury he had done to himself or something he had spilled on his fingers.

He’d take the thumb out of his mouth and hold it in his hand and say that he had mashed it in the door or something.

Last year, when he was in the kitchen making toast, she caught him with his thumb in his mouth and he had taken it out and put the rest of his fingers in his mouth one by one, licking them as he withdrew them from his mouth.

He lied with perfect aplomb, telling her that he had spilled jam on his hand.

He was sure that she believed him.

It was always easier to believe a lie that was rational than an uncomfortable truth.

She simply did not want to believe her thirteen-year-old son still sucked his thumb.

Theodore looked at Baby John Johncontentedly sucking on his pacifier and wondered if it was as satisfying for Baby John John as sucking his thumb was for him.

The cartoon started and soon the two of them were engrossed in the story.

As the cartoon unfolded, Sidney, Tarquin’s father, went up on the roof to install an electronic weather ‘goose’ and fell.

Sidney hit his head and regressed back into babyhood.

He spends the day toddling around the house in diapers like his infant son Tarquin.

Theodore wondered what it would be like to regress into a baby again.

He knew what wearing a wet diaper felt like now.

Theodore reflected that it was kind of fun, once he got over the humiliation of being diapered.

He wondered how its formula tasted and what sucking a baby bottle felt like.

Of course, now that he lived in a house with a baby there’d be plenty of opportunities to find out.

The episode ended and a new episode was beginning when he felt something warm and wet in his lower parts.

“Oh no!”, he thought in horror, “Now I’m wetting my pants during the day!”

He moved Baby John John aside and was relieved to discover that Baby John John’s diaper had been leaking.

Theodore sighed and carried Baby John John up to the nursery to change his diaper.

Baby John John was delighted by the attention of his young babysitter.

He chuckled and grinned as placed him on the changing table, removed the wet diaper, wiped him off, and rediapered him.

Theodore put Baby John John’s pacifier back in his mouth and picked him up again when something on the changing table caught his eye.

It was a plastic jar full of pacifiers!

He stopped and looked at the jar for a minute before gathering his courage to take one from the jar.

Surely one would not be missed out of so many.

He’d try it tonight when everyone was asleep.

Theodore tucked the pacifier in his pocket and took Baby John John back down to the family room.

When Rose returned, she found them watching cartoons on TV.

She asked to help her and he put Baby John John in his playpen and hastened to give her a hand.

When they finished, Rose turned to thank him for his help and saw the wet spot on the front of his trousers.

“Oh dear, !” she said in mock surprise,

“Are you having ‘accidents’ during the day, too?”

Rose looked down at his pants and realized that he had forgotten to change them after he had changed Baby John John.

Theodore stammered and said,

“But.. but it wasn’t me! It was Jay-Jay!

He was sitting on my lap and his diaper leaked!

I just changed him! Really!”

Rose chuckled and said, “I believe you.

I was just teasing.

It’s happened to me, too.

Why don’t you go up and get changed so I can get those pants in the wash before the stain sets?”

Theodore hurried up the stair and changed clothes quickly.

As he was leaving his room with the wet pants in his hand, he suddenly remembered the pacifier in the front pocket.

He ducked back into the room and took out the pacifier and hid it in the large seam in the bottom of the curtain at the head of the bed.

“Perfect!”, he thought as he smoothed the curtain back in place,

“Mrs Fields would never think to look for anything there.”