MY SON HAS ‘THE SMELLY PILLOW’ ?!

September 5, 2008 by · Leave a Comment
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First of all, I pride myself on being a pretty neat and tidy person. I have a place for everything, I have my lists; I’m pretty organized.

I plan all my meals for the week, and am right now, in all of my spare time-
cleaning out our attic. After that I am going to re-organize all of the closets.

I do lots of laundry and change sheets all the time. And I like it this way. I’m a no-clutter mom and I like things clean.

Don’t get me wrong, almost every room in our house has toys is it, but there are also baskets, sized appropriately (and in colors to complement the room), to keep all the toys, for that particular room in.

No, I’m not anal.

But, I like things to be straight, no clutter (oh, I mentioned that already).

So, with that said, I took a big blow this week…

I tucked my 4-year-old in bed, kissed his little cheek and said good night. I closed his door, heard him take a deep breath and sigh and expected him to go right to sleep.

Ahh, nothing like a nice routine. But then, after a few minutes, I heard him calling for me. It wasn’t a distressed call; I figured that he was stalling and had to ‘tell me something he had forgotten during the day’. I went back upstairs.

“Mommy, something smells.”

I chuckled to myself and sniffed the air in his bedroom.

“I don’t smell anything, sweetheart.”

“No Mommy, over here.”

I walked over to his bed and still couldn’t smell anything.

“No, Mommy, down here, by me.”

I leaned down to his bed and his head and I did smell something… that bad, stale, sweat smell… yuck.

“I think it’s my pillow.”

I picked up his little round pillow decorated with animals that he loves, and insists on sleeping on EVERY night (because my mom gave it to him), even though we have tried offering much more comfortable pillows routinely.

It was the pillow.

“Whew!” he said.

“This does smell bad,” I confessed. “I’ll put this in the wash.”

“But I HAVE to sleep with that pillow!”

Then he sniffed it again, crinkled his nose and with no further words, thrust it upward to me, and asked me to put it in the wash right away, while taking the other pillow I offered him without a second thought.

I walked downstairs, my bruised ego in hand, and said to my husband,

“This pillow stinks!” Holding my chest, I continued, “our kid has the smelly pillow.”

I felt like Adam Sandler in Big Daddy (“You mean, I have the smelly kid?”). I love that movie. But I don’t like comparing myself to the lead character- a single, hapless, trying-the-best-he-can but NOT KNOWING WHAT HE IS DOING brand new dad. I make lists, for gosh sakes! I even ironed my son’s shorts for the first day of school!

How did this happen? How did I get to the point where my son cannot sleep because of the foul odor coming from the little pillow upon which he rests his head? He had to ask me to wash it! I can provide for him a clean pillow and I didn’t; and this is pretty basic. The shame…

“I am not Adam Sandler, I am not Adam Sandler.”

Okay, I’m over it.

An abbreviated version of this can be read at DC Metro Moms.

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