I Bet Some People Who Find This Post Through an Internet Search Will Be Very Disappointed

We have a nudist in our house. It’s not one of the boys; they’re adept at wriggling out of their pants, but they haven’t figured out how to unsnap a onesie yet. It’s not one of the parents, although I often spend an hour or more wearing only an undershirt up top after washing dishes and struggling to find the time to slip my shirt back on.

Our nudist is Abbie. She’s always hated clothing. As a baby, we’d take her outside bundled up to protect her from the chill like responsible parents would do. She’d scream furiously until we removed her coat, or at least her footwear. She’s never tolerated footwear, and we still don’t try to make her wear socks around the house, just socks and shoes when we go outside. We spent many battles getting dressed for outdoors as she pulled off her socks faster than I could slip them on her feet. Now I put her shoe on immediately after her sock, double knot it, and let her yank the laces while I put her other shoe and sock on.

Abbie’s always hated shirts, too, but she never bothered removing them until recently. Far too often these days I’ll see her running around the house topless with her day’s shirt crumpled in the living room. I think she likes removing her shirt to take a closer look at it, examining the flowers decorating it, possibly to compare and contrast them to the flowers decorating yesterday’s shirt.

I know she also likes trying on different shirts, but she’s not as skilled at dressing as she is at undressing. She tends to throw new shirts on the floor after they frustrate her by refusing to admit her head through the sleeve. She also tends to dump shirts after they don’t fit right because she pulled her entire upper body through the neck hole and they drape across her torso like a skirt.

I also help Abbie’s toplessness by removing her shirt before meals. There’s plenty of time to teach her the “no shirt, no shoes, no service” rule later in life. For now, I want to keep her tops clean during meals, and since I can’t find the time to put my own shirt back on after meals, she usually runs around topless until naptime. She may look uncouth, but my laziness saved yesterday’s shirt after she found a pen and decided to give herself a full upper body tattoo. I think she was going for a rosebush thorn design.

Abbie running around barefoot and topless doesn’t bother me. Abbie running around pantsless bothers me, especially since the diaper always comes off right after the pants. Abbie started removing her pants independently a few days ago. This is probably nature’s way of telling me it’s time to potty train her. I wish nature would send me a nanny instead.

I hate hearing that familiar “shrip” from around the corner. It means the pants are off, the diaper is coming off, and I’d better tend to her immediately or I’ll have to grab the towels.

In her defense, she’s often has a good reason for removing her diaper, such as the gigantic amount of poop in it. I can say from experience, though, that if there’s anything worse than a buck-naked toddler running around the house, it’s a buck-naked and poopy toddler running around the house while a poopy diaper sits wide open in a mystery location that’s within full reach of babies and pets.

I find myself needing to prioritize things I never thought to rank when I find her naked. If I’m doing something worthless, like folding laundry, when I notice she’s naked, I tend to her immediately. If I’m doing something important, like changing her brother, I suddenly have to determine which urgent chore can wait a minute. A wet brother is trumped by a naked Abbie, which is trumped by a poopy brother, which is trumped by a naked poopy Abbie. Heaven help us when she shows up at my side naked and poopy while the poopy diaper is off her brother.

I just keep dressing her when I see her naked. She’ll learn to keep her clothes on eventually. Probably about the time her brothers start disrobing.