Smelly baby woes

Sonny is pretty amenable to baths these days, which is a good thing since he gets three - yep, count 'em - a day: In the morning and afternoon at the infant care centre, then again at night.

Of late, however, even this prodigious expenditure of bath water and baby soap has been unable to tamp down a rather fragrant problem: Sonny smells, basically, and usually within an hour or so of his immersion in the tub. There's no great mystery attached to this, mind. It's not as though he falls asleep freshly-scented and awakes giving off a completely new olfactory vibe.

One major cause is that the little fella is too energetic for his own good. He's forever trying to beat his record in the 5m crawl-dash, or so it can seem from the way he scuttles along towards the nearest slippers or shiny new thing. If we try and grasp him, he will try to squirm free, and can be counted on to attempt to climb any wall of cushions erected to keep him at bay. The perspiration is pretty soon pouring off him, and the inevitable decline in aromatic well-being follows closely behind.

That said, nothing precipitates this process more rapidly than locking Sonny up in our little play pen (so that, not to introduce irrelevant concepts here, Mum can catch her breath). Sonny, as it turns out, was probably a POW in a former life - so fierce is his dislike of being incarcerated. We blogged about this in'Crazed Crawler II: Caged Beast' - unaware then of the pong problem imprisonment would exacerbate. There's no 'scaling up' to the little fella's wailing: Almost immediately, rivulets of tears and sweat come gushing - his nose running furiously too - as he yells defiance. Three minutes of this and he starts to smell as though he hasn't showered for two days.

We've done what we can to ameliorate things. Soft-hearted Mum tries to limit Sonny's time in the pen, though when she's pottering about in the evenings with only Sonny for company, he must occasionally be deposited there so she can tend to her other chores. We can't really ramp up his bath regimen, since he might dissolve if immersed too many times in one day. We are reminded of the story of how enterprising mice tried to attach a bell to a cat, so they could tell by the jangling where Kitty was. With Sonny, if things continue as they are, we'll soon be able to tell by the smell-trail he leaves.