Done Adulting Vol. 1 Ch. 88

“So what are we celebrating this time,” Jamie asked.

“Harvest Day,” Becky explained. “Each neighborhood holds a big potluck dinner to celebrate the harvest.”

“Do people do much harvesting around here?”

“Not that far away, but you know, it’s an old tradition.”

“So what are you bringing?”

“We’re bringing brownies. Do you want to help me make them?”

“Can I lick the beaters?”

“’Til your heart’s content.” Rebecca wasn’t an expert baker, but she knew how to follow a recipe. A brownie recipe is pretty easy: just enough flour to hold the sugar, chocolate and butter together. Rebecca laid out all the ingredients on the countertop and pulled a chair over for Jamie to stand on, something she permitted him only when she or Amanda were with him. “Let’s wash our hands first.” Rebecca pulled the chair to the sink, helped Jamie on top of it, and turned on the tap for him. “Open your hands.” She poured a little dish soap in his palms, then helped Jamie lather his hands. Not that he couldn’t wash them on his own, but he liked the feel of her hands massaging the soap into his own. She scrubbed up to his elbows, then rinsed him off and patted him dry before washing her own hands.

“How about you break the eggs while I mix the dry ingredients.” Becky measured out flour and sugar by weight while Jamie cracked eggs the size of soft balls into a giant bowl. The shells were hard to crack.

“This is hard,” Jamie said as he picked shell fragments out of the goo, some of which was on the counter. Becky got him a clean towel to wipe his hands on when he was done. She poured a large bag of chocolate chips into another bowl and placed them in the microwave.

“By the way,” Becky said, “I talked to Ella’s big, Stacy, and the two of you have a playdate this week at her house.”

“O. Uh, thank you.” Jamie was happy to hear that, but he was also apprehensive. Something about Ella still put him on edge. She was blunt, and she was usually right. She didn’t have patience for Jamie’s sulking attitudes. He felt he learned more from her than just how to draw. Still, it was time with a human away from a bunch of regressed littles and nosy caregivers. All he really wanted was to sit across a dinner table from her and talk uninterrupted for a while.

“Stacy is going to pick you up early one day.”

“Uh-huh.” The timer beeped on the microwave, and Becky took out the bowl of melted chocolatey goodness.

“We could probably just serve it like this, and people would be happy with it,” Becky joked. She got out a stand mixer and put the dry ingredients under the beaters, turning them on low. Jamie watched passively as she added vanilla extract to the eggs, stirred them, and slowly pour the mixture into the dry ingredients. When they were mixed but not overly so, she took the bowl of chocolate and poured it in, using a rubber spatula to get as much as she could into the batter.

“Here ya ago,” she said as she handed the spatula to Jamie as a down payment on the beaters. Becky added some more chocolate chips to the brownie batter while Jamie happily licked the chocolate off the spatula.

Becky pulled the bowl, now too heavy for Jamie to lift, out from under the mixer and poured the batter into a cake pan. She put the pan in the oven, set it, and turned the timer on for three hours, the perfect amount of time for a giant’s pan of fudgy brownies.

“You’re not gonna sugar crash on me, are ya,” Becky said as Jamie got the last bit of chocolate off the spatula.

“No,” Jamie replied with eyes already a touch brighter than normal. Becky gave him one of the beaters and put the other one in the sink with the rest of the dishes. Jamie did his best to lick the batter off without getting too much on his face, not easy to do considering the size of the thing.

“Hey,” Amanda said when she came in from a morning out with Mel and Donna. “Ooo, did you save me one of the beaters?”

“Sorry, hun, you’re too late.”

“Aw, no fair.” She approached Jamie and ran her index finger down his cheek, then licked off the batter she’d collected. “Hmmm. Those are gonna be good. Shame we have to bake them. You’re looking a little chocolatey, buddy. Maybe we could keep the brownies and serve chocolate-covered Jamie instead.”

“He’s gonna need a bath anyway before dinner.” Jamie blushed and handed Becky the nearly clean beater. She put it in the sink and laughed as she wiped off Jamie’s face.

“Can I take a nap first,” he asked.

“Sure. Plenty of time. In fact, I think we should all do that. It’ll be a late night,” Becky said.

Amanda scooped up Jamie. He thought on how often he was being carried around the house these days. It still was the easiest way to get up the stairs. He could climb them, but it was an effort, though one he had gotten pretty good at. “Do you want your bear,” she asked.

Jamie smiled; that meant he got to take a nap in Amanda’s bed. “Yes, please.” The two of them went into his room to get the bear.

“James Patrick, I think you need to spend a little time cleaning your room after your nap,” Amanda said as she stepped over and around toys spread across the carpet.

“Okay,” Jamie replied, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I just don’t want to step on a block and do a half gainer onto the floor.” She leaned into the crib and picked up the bear. “And neither does your bear.” She turned around and started up the stairs.

“He doesn’t walk.”

“Not when you’re around.”

“Um, I’m pretty sure he never walks.”

“How do you know? Maybe he just saves it for when he’s alone. He probably paces back and forth in the crib waiting for you to come back. See, he’s lonely.”

“He’s lonely?”

“Yeah, look at his face.”

“He’s smiling.”

“He’s just being brave. It’s a lonely smile.” She sat down on the bed with Jamie on her hip still. “I’ll show you.” Taking the bear by the back of its neck, she walked it up to Jamie. “A boo boo boo boo boop.” She touched its nose to his, and walked the bear backward and did it again. Jamie smiled; he liked that Manda paid this kind of attention to him, the kind that Mel paid him, and he was no longer nervous it would stray from a game to a lifestyle. When she paid him that kind of attention, it always seemed random, and he’d play along with a warm sensation in his belly, thinking how much she loved him.

“You’re being awfully silly today, Manda.”

“That’s because it’s fun. I like being silly with you. I bet you’ll nap better minus the pants.” She removed Jamie’s pants and then her own jeans. Jamie didn’t mind; he didn’t even blush. She pulled back the covers, climbed under, and snuggled Jamie up close to her. Jamie did the same with his bear, three spoons in a drawer, falling asleep with smiles on their faces.

Amanda woke up an hour and a half later to an unpleasantly familiar, cold, wet feeling. She felt under the covers and found it emanated from Jamie rather than herself. She sighed in relief. It didn’t bother her enough to wake Jamie. He was still snuggled against her fast asleep. She put her nose to his hair and smelled the sweet little shampoo and ran her hands through his hair. She told herself to try his shampoo to see if it made her hair so soft and tangle-free. Her fingers made Jamie stir.

“Hey, baby,” she said, delivering a kiss to his head, “you definitely need a bath now.” Jamie felt the wetness under him.

“How do you know I did it,” he teased.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re a bedwetter too.”

“Former bedwetter, you little stink rat.”

“But how can you be sure?”

“Because my panties are dry and your diaper is saturated. Also, I can tell because …” She was up quickly and tickling him under his arms. He tried to clamp them to his sides, but her fingers found their way in anyway, and when she got tired of tickling him there, she tickled his ribs and belly and went back to his underarms until Jamie was squealing and apologizing.

“I give! I give,” he pleaded before she let up.

“Bath time for the Jamester,” she said, tossing him over her shoulder and delivering three swats to his thickly diapered butt as she carried him down the stairs like a sack of rice.

“This isn’t very comfortable,” he protested.

“Sounds like a you problem, diaper butt.” She swatted his butt again. “In fact, if there’s anything else you want to inflict on that diaper before your bath, now would be a good time.”

She set Jamie down in his room and went to run the bath. Jamie did his business and started putting away toys while he waited for Amanda to come back. She returned and found him waddling to his toy chest with an armful of toys. She shook her head, thinking on how much more comfortable he was being himself, being a little now. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” she said.

When his legs were in the air and she was cleaning him off, he said, “Manda?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not wearing any pants.”

“Well, duh! Neither are you, and I didn’t want you to feel awkward being the only person in the room without pants.”

“My bear doesn’t wear pants.”

“That you know of. He probably paces back and forth in the crib wearing his pants and wishing you were home to play with.”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous.”

Becky stopped in the doorway with Amanda’s sheets in her arms. “I stopped in to see if the two of you were up and found these.” Amanda blushed. “You’re not, ya know, again, are you?”

“Jamie did it, Mom.”

“O, well, okay. But you know if you ever do …”

“Jamie did it!”

“Okay.” Amanda rolled her eyes as her mom left to go start a load of laundry. She looked down at Jamie. He was biting his lip.

“If you don’t stop laughing, that bath might be a lot colder than normal.”

“On one condition.”

“Condition?”

“Do you think we could start emptying my diaper pail twice a day?”

She chuckled. “I think we can do that.”