so, pretend your child is the cutest thing on fat legs.

especially when he sleeps…because, now that he’s finally free of that pesky (read: invaluable to mommy) sleep positioner thingy that kept him safely on his back or side for all those months, he’s taking to sprawling face-down on the bed like it’s Farrah Fawcett and he’s a lovesick teenager from 1977. (erm…well…perhaps that isn’t the most appropriate visual…)

what he’s taking to doing is falling asleep with his little face smushed down into the mattress and his sweet diaper-puffed bumtail up in the air, waving like a little mushroom.

it’s adorable. it’s the sweetest, most beautiful sight you have ever laid eyes on in this life. it’s cuter than kittens.

your child is so heartwarmingly dear that he could make Dick Cheney coo and ovulate.

so what do you do? well, obviously, like any proud mother, you swagger into his room after bedtime with the camera, to photograph his little rump bump for all the world to admire. then, you reason, they too can say “awwww” and share in the preciousness that is your offspring, and his cute butt. it would be selfish to do otherwise, to hoard this bounty of adorableness for just you, right?

bad plan, mommy.

flash photography, particularly when executed in dark peaceful nurseries, can apparently be very disturbing to what may otherwise appear to be a sound sleep. cute sleeping infants, when disturbed, can - it’s rumoured - quickly morph into loud, wailing, inconsolable infants, whose little bumtails are not so arrestingly adorable when topped by flailing arms and screaming heads as they were when at rest. and teething babies, so it’s said, when wakened by their irresponsibly idiotic mothers from their innocent, bum-waving sleep, have a very difficult time returning to any semblance of that sleep for, oh say, the rest of the night.

or something like that. serves you right, really.

…and perhaps goes a ways to show why i don’t have any pictures to decorate this post and explain why i’m still up at two am? the wee butt is back up in the air, and the sweet boy is back in dreamland. but i’ll have to leave the visual to your imagination.