Ron got out of bed reluctantly on Saturday morning. It had been a long week and he would have rather spent the morning in bed cuddling with his wife, Deedee. But they had made plans to go shopping early that morning and he wasn't about to let his laziness triumph over his good sense. He pulled on some jeans and put on a blue chambray shirt, then went to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. A few minutes later, Deedee was up and getting dressed. They had a cup of coffee together and discussed their plans for the morning. Deedee got out her Day Runner and reviewed the notes she had made earlier in the week for Saturday's errands. She made notes as they amended their plans and added last minute jobs. When the two of them agreed that their schedule for the day had about all the shopping they could stand, Deedee put her pen away and zipped up the Day Runner while Ron unplugged the coffee pot. He didn't want the pot to remain on and cause a fire while they were gone. He had seen enough fires in his former career as a police officer and was mindful of Deedee's tendency to get distracted and forget things. They got into the car and began their shopping trip by taking a circuitous route through a residential section to avoid the heavy Saturday morning traffic. Ron had laid out a route in his head for their weekend excursion that would hit each of the stores in order, finally returning home on the last leg of the trip. Deedee looked out of the side window and watched the early risers mowing their lawns before the heat of the day. Suddenly she said, "Ron! Stop!"
Ron dutifully pulled the car to the side of the road by the curb and asked, "What is it, Honey?"
"They're having a garage sale, Ron! Look at the huge yellow toy dog! Isn't it just darling? Let's go and see what they have. We have plenty of time. Can we go see it, pleaaase?", she replied.
Ron backed the car up and parked it next to the curb, then they got out and walked over to the card tables that had been set up on the driveway. Deedee was cagey and pretended that she wasn't interested in the stuffed dog, looking over the other items on the tables to get an idea of how high the prices were. Deedee was pleasantly surprised to discover that the objects the homeowner had put on sale were being sold at giveaway prices. Deedee looked at Ron in askance, silently questioning Ron whether he thought the sale was legitimate or not. Ron gave her an almost imperceptible shrug to indicate that he couldn't be sure that it wasn't stolen merchandise. Displayed in the middle of the table that the operator of the garage sale stood behind was a grimy antique oil lamp.
Deedee saw the lamp and thought that with a little polishing, it would make a nice display piece on one of their bookcases. She picked it up and asked the homeowner, "How much is this?"
"Ten dollars," replied the man promptly.
"Ten dollars?", Deedee echoed, "Isn't that a lot for a cheap brass reproduction of an old lamp?"
The man reached out to take the lamp from Deedee's hands and said, "It would be if it was a reproduction. But this lamp is from Saudi Arabia. My father bought it in a small village market in Saudi Arabia thirty years ago when he was making a geological survey for an oil company. I'd like to keep it, but I just Don't have room."
The man traced out the complex design cast into the side of the lamp with his fingernail and said as he rubbed the egg shaped quartz crystal mounted into the center of one of the sides of the lamp, "It's a beautiful piece, isn't it? When I was a kid, I used to dream this was one of the lamps with an imprisoned genie. You know, like Aladdin's lamp. I used to polish it until it I could see my reflection in the brass, hoping that the rubbing would free the genie trapped within. Nothing ever happened though."
Ron took the lamp from the man's hands and looked at the crystal closely. It wasn't faceted like a commercial leaded glass crystal. Instead, the crystal was a slightly irregular, smooth cabochon with patches of cloudiness buried deep within the crystal. Ron suspected the owner was telling the truth about the origins of the lamp. The imperfections implied that the stone was gemstone quality quartz and the irregularities indicated that it had been cut by hand. He handed the piece to Deedee who discovered the metal was oddly warm to the touch as she took it in her hands. Her eyes seemed to be drawn into the crystal as if it were a huge diamond. The more she handled the lamp, the more she wanted it. There was something compelling about the feel of the thing that told her that what she had in her hands was far more precious than an old oil lamp. Deedee decided then and there that she had to own the lamp and wasn't going to take no for an answer. She asked the homeowner as she opened her Day Runner to get out her checkbook, "Would you take a check?"
The homeowner shook his head in the negative and said, "Cash only."
Deedee winced slightly at the news. She didn't have any cash with her. Deedee looked Ron straight in the eye and said, "Pay him, Ronny! We have to get going!"
Ron gave her an odd look and moved to pay the homeowner for the lamp. For a moment, Deedee's voice had sounded so different. It was deeper than normal and more resonant. Her tone had changed too, her words had had been so forceful and commanding. She didn't sound anything like the sweet Deedee he knew and loved. Ron wanted to get out of there before anything else happened. He didn't like the way Deedee was acting. It was easier to buy the lamp and leave than argue about it. Besides, once he saw the crystal, he thought spending ten dollars on the lamp was a wise investment. The crystal alone was probably worth a hundred dollars.
When Deedee got back into the car she was her old self again and thanked him profusely for the lamp. They drove to each of the stores in order, conducting business efficiently at each one until they were half way through the list. Then they went to the Mall to pick up some new pillow cases and sheets for the bedroom. On the way to the linen department, they stopped and looked at the baby furniture. Deedee wasn't expecting a baby, it was just that she had an.... odd hobby. Deedee was an infantilist. She loved to dress up as a baby and have Ron babysit her as if she was a real infant. Ron made the perfect Daddy for her. He was big and kind and ever so gentle with her. When he stood over her and watched while she played on the floor in her diapers, she could easily imagine that she had miraculously grown younger again and had become his baby girl. She would suck her thumb like an infant and speak in baby-talk whenever she was in her baby mode, mimicking a toddler's behavior perfectly.
Deedee went over the nursery furniture carefully, but she didn't see a single piece she wanted. Her search for the perfect nursery suite was an extended exercise in window shopping, so she wasn't disappointed. She didn't intend to buy anything for her fantasy nursery. The baby she had in mind had gotten too big over the years to use ordinary nursery furniture. Deedee only wanted to look so she could better visualize her fantasy of being a baby again. There were just about to leave when she spotted a crib mobile that caught her eye. It was composed of plastic cutouts of baby bunnies set at different levels so that when the mobile was set in motion it appeared that a brood of bunnies were gambling in abandon above the baby's head. Deedee picked up a packaged set and took it to the checkout stand without a word. Ron followed silently behind after taking one look at the expression on her face. Ron knew that baby bunnies were her favorite creatures and it would only serve to make her angry to say anything. He waited while she got out her checkbook and paid for the mobile. Then they proceeded to the linen department where Deedee picked out the new sheets they needed. The rest of the trip was uneventful and they were able to complete their errands without any detours or delays. They arrived home about two hours later and unpacked the car, putting their purchases away once the car had been unloaded. By silent agreement Ron took the mobile to hang from the ceiling in the spare bedroom that served as Deedee's nursery and playroom while Deedee got out the antique oil lamp she had bought at the garage sale. She sat down at the kitchen table to have look at it and clean it up before she made a final decision where she would display it.
Deedee noticed that the lamp had a small spot of discoloration on the side. She got the can of Ron's Brasso that he used to polish his brass on his navy reserve uniform out to try to remove the spot. When that failed, she remembered an article in Hints from Heloise that suggested she try a mixture of salt and vinegar. She rummaged through the kitchen pantry for a moment looking for the bottle of white vinegar she stored for cleaning purposes. She vaguely remembered having run out of vinegar three weeks before and putting it on her shopping list but couldn't seem to find it. Deedee decided that she must have forgotten to buy it and resolved the problem the way any good cook would handle the problem; she substituted. She got out the wine vinegar that she used to make vinaigrettes for salads from the pantry and mixed a tablespoon of the vinegar in a teacup with enough salt to form a paste, then she took a dampened paper towel and began scrubbing the moist paste into the side of the lamp. After a minute of rubbing, the mildly abrasive paste removed the spot completely. Unfortunately, it did such a good job that it made the rest of the lamp look dull by comparison. The spot she had worked on shown brightly while the rest of the lamp kept its dismal finish. Deedee scooped the balance of the paste out of the teacup and industriously cleaned the rest of the lamp. When she finished, she lay the lamp down on the newspaper she had used to protect the kitchen table and sat back to admire the piece. Ron walked in the room and said, "I finished mounting the new mobile you bought for the playroom, Honey. Would you like to come and see it?"
"I'll be right there," she answered and gave the lamp a final buff with the rag and wiped the dust from the edges of crystal mounted in the center of the lamp, "I finally managed to get all the spots off of the lamp. How do you think it looks?"
Ron bent over the table and looked at the lamp closely. The entire lamp seemed to be glowing as if there were some inner source of illumination. Ron tried to trace the patterns on the surface of the lamp and discovered that his eyes refused to follow the lines. The peculiar geometry of the lines made them look like they led off into another dimension that he wasn't equipped to perceive. It gave him a dizzying sensation of falling into the arcane design that was inscribed into the side of the lamp. He blinked his eyes and looked again at the pattern. Taken as a whole, the design had a three dimensional quality that gave it the illusion of depth. It gave him the eerie feeling that the lamp was magickal. He shook his head to clear the dizziness that threatened to make him nauseous and said, "It looks beautiful, Honey! Are you going to put it on the mantle?"
"Can you think of a better spot for it?", she asked him, then smiled and said, "Maybe I should put it in the bedroom so we could rub it and make wishes before we go to sleep."
Ron chuckled and replied, "And what would my baby wish for?"
Deedee knuckled him hard in the ribs and said, "You know exactly what I'd wish for Ronny! I'd wish to be a real baby for twenty four hours. What a baby day that would be. I wouldn't have to pretend then. It would all be real."
Ron smiled at the thought of babysitting an infant version of Deedee. He enjoyed being her Daddy and taking care of her as if she was a toddler. He could easily imagine how much fun it would be if she was transformed into a real baby.
She grinned broadly and said, "It would serve you right if I did! Twenty-four hours of changing dirty diapers would take that silly grin off of your face!"
Ron laughed and Deedee got up from the table to see her new mobile. Deedee looked at the lamp and said, "You know, that crystal looks like there's a light behind it. It must be acting like a prism. I hadn't noticed that before."
The crystal on the lamp was glimmering red in the center, apparently diffracting the sunbeam that fell on it's surface. Ron noticed as he turned that the lamp seemed to waver slightly in the sunlight as if it was an insubstantial mirage. "The sunlight must be heating the lamp up and causing the air around the lamp to diffract the light," he thought to himself as he followed Deedee into the nursery. They were about halfway there when Deedee's pink blouse seemed to take on a life of its own. Ron stopped in horrified fascination as he watched the back of the blouse get longer and crawl over Deedee's bottom and down the back of her legs. Her slacks seemed to be alive too; they slithered down her ankles and started forming gathers around the tops of her feet. When she felt the cuffs hit her ankles, Deedee halted and looked down to see what was happening. Suddenly, her loosening waistband gave way and her slacks slid down her legs to pool around her feet. A moment later, her panties followed her slacks and dropped to the floor. Deedee's body started to shrink in upon itself, getting shorter with each passing second. Deedee turned and looked at Ron with a helpless expression on her face as she perceived that her vantage point was rushing towards the floor. It looked like everything in the room was growing taller and more distant. Deedee said with a rising tone of fear, "Doooonnnnny!"
Ron froze in amazement as Deedee's height was reduced by half and her blouse descended to the floor. She appeared to be growing younger by the minute. Deedee's limbs changed proportions and became shorter with respect to her body until they looked like a baby's legs and arms. Her long hair seemed to pull itself back into her scalp, leaving her face framed by the short ringlets of early childhood. The lines of maturity in her face vanished and were replaced by the soft skin of babyhood as her cheeks became chubby with baby fat.
Deedee swayed uncertainly on her feet for a moment and then fell backwards to land on her bottom. She looked up at Ron's face for a moment in surprise and then began to cry. Ron was stunned. His wife had turned into an infant before his eyes. He knelt down beside her and removed the blouse which was draped tent-like over her torso. Ron turned her around to face him and said, "Deedee? Are you alright? Speak to me, Deedee!" "Dooo...naga!", came the melodious nonsensical reply from Deedee's nearly toothless mouth. Deedee's expression became puzzled and she tried to talk to Ron again, saying, "Mgga...Dooo!"
When she realized that the only thing that was emerging from her mouth was a high-pitched baby's babble, her face clouded over with a look of extreme frustration and she began weeping again. Ron picked her up and held her closely to him, wrapping one arm around her bottom to support her while he cupped his broad palm over her back and shoulders. He stood up, cuddling her tiny body to his chest while patting her back and saying, "There, there, Honey. It will be alright. Don't worry, Ronny's here."
She quieted down under the influence of his soothing words and let him carry her into their bedroom. Ron laid Deedee on her back on the bed and examined her infant body closely. When he was finished, he sat down beside her on the bed and said, "I don't know how you managed it, Honey, but you seemed to have gotten your wish! You're a real baby! There's not much point in taking you to the emergency room. They won't know what to do with you. I guess all I can do it try to take care of you until you get better. I guess I won't be playing at being your Daddy from now on, I'm going to be your Daddy for real!"
Deedee looked thoughtful for a moment and then began chuckling in glee as she waved her legs in front of her. She had finally become a baby. She smiled upwards at her new Daddy and grinned at the prospect of being taken care off by him. Deedee had dreamed about this moment her entire life, she intended to enjoy every minute.
Ron said, "The first thing we have to do, baby girl, is get you dressed. Maybe one of your old T-shirts would work as a nightgown."
He got up from the bed and went over to her dresser and started going through drawers. After three tries, he found what he was looking for and returned to her side. When he looked down at her to sit her up, he saw that she had peed all over the bedspread. "Deedee!", he said in exasperation, "You've peed all over the bed! Naughty baby! I guess I was wrong. The first thing I need to do is get you diapered!"
Ron left her on the bed while he went into the master bathroom and returned with some towels. He lifted her legs and laid a bathtowel beneath her bottom to soak up the pee on the bed while he found some safety pins. He went back to the dresser and rummaged around the top for a moment until he found what he wanted. Then he went to the drawer that contained the diapers they used when she pretended she was a baby, removed one and returned to his infant wife's side. Ron folded the adult diaper over to fit her small waist and lifted her legs again to slide it beneath her. He pinned one side of the diaper and then the other before sitting her up and dressing Deedee in her T-shirt. Ron chuckled at the effect that using the adult diaper made. It was bunched up between her legs and made it impossible for her to bring them together. He shook his head and said, "It looks like we're going to have to get you some real baby clothes, Honey."
He put his hands underneath her armpits and lifted her up to his chest, saying, "Come on, Baby. Daddy's going to take his baby girl to the store. Let's see how much you weigh first."
Ron carried her to the bathroom and stood on the scale, then he sat her on the bathroom counter and weighed himself alone. He subtracted his weight from their combined weights and said to himself as he looked down at Deedee, "Hmmm, twenty two pounds, that would make you about ten to twelve months old. I wonder how tall you are?" He took her into the living room and laid her down on the couch, then he got a yardstick to measure her length from the top of her head to her heels; she was twenty nine inches. He shook his head at Deedee and said, "You're too small to be a year old, Dear. I'd guess from your height that you're only about ten months old. Come on, Deedee, Daddy's taking you to WalMart to go shopping."
He took her to the car and strapped her in the seat of the passenger side. The fit of the seat belt was loose, but under the circumstances, it was the best he could do. On the way to Walmart, Ron decided that he'd have to do something about the untidy appearance of Deedee's diaper. He didn't want any of the mothers that were shopping at Wal-Mart to see on her jerry-rigged diaper before he got her into a conventional diaper. His lawyer's mind could follow the chain of logic easily. Any woman who saw it would know instantly that an infant so dressed had an unprepared caregiver. The conclusion they would draw was obvious; a caregiver that unprepared must have had the baby thrust on him suddenly. The fact that he was a man who do nothing to allay suspicion. It would probably make things worse. Women are extremely suspicious of men's ability to care for small children. If he wasn't careful, they'd see her and wonder how a man came into possession of a baby. The suspicion would be that he had committed some nefarious deed. Someone would be sure to call the police to investigate. The last thing he needed was to have to explain to the police where he got the baby girl he was with. The solution was simple. If she was properly attired, everyone would assume that he was he father and say nothing. She was sure to draw attention to herself dressed in an adult diaper. All he had to do was get her into some baby diapers before they got to the store.
He stopped at a convenience store and ran inside to get a small package of disposable diapers for her to wear. He had to hurry, it was illegal to leave a small child alone in a car. After paying for his purchase, he went around to the passenger side of the car and laid her down on the front seat. In a few minutes he had her diapered in one of the disposables he had bought and buckled safely in place. Then he got back into the car and drove the rest of the way to WalMart without incident. Ron carried her into the store and sat her facing him in the infant seat of the cart. Deedee was overjoyed with the experience. She laughed and cooed at the passerby as she gazed at the mundane shelves of merchandise with renewed interest. Everything looked so different from the vantage point of the shopping cart. The packaging seemed to be directed directly at her. The wrapping sparkled under the fluorescent light and the colors appeared more lively than she remembered. Deedee grabbed the heavy chromed wire of the cart on either side of her and rollicked enthusiastically. She was having a great time. She stuck out her tongue at several amused women shoppers as they passed by and cooed in pleasure at Ron.
Ron rolled the cart through the aisles until they came to the infant section and then proceeded to fill the cart with packages of cloth and disposable diapers, plastic pants, T-shirts, rompers, and assorted baby care goods. One of the largest packages he bought was an infant auto seat. He put it in the bottom shelf of the cart and wheeled her over to the baby furniture. Ron looked over several designs for a crib and amused several mothers when he turned to Deedee and said, "Well? Which one do you like?"
Deedee pointed to one of the cribs and said, "Gaaaaa!"
He nodded and said, "I think so too," and wrote down the model numbers from the crib and mattress to have them brought to the front. As an afterthought, he wrote down the numbers of a high chair and playpen, adding them to the list. He would have liked to have gotten more, but he was afraid that if he bought anymore, it wouldn't fit into the car. Then he took the cart to customer service. After a longish wait to be served, he explained that he needed a stockboy to bring some furniture to the front. He gave the stockboy who was assigned to the job the list of numbers and they went back to the infant furnishings department to retrieve the nursery equipment he wanted. They returned to the checkout stand and stood in line until he got to the front and the saleswoman began checking out his purchases. The saleswoman was charmed by Deedee, she made faces and commented how cute she was to Ron. She looked at all the furniture and said, "It looks like Daddy wasn't ready for his little girl. He's trying to buy a whole nursery for her."
Ron chuckled at her remark and lied casually, "Little Deedee is my niece. She and her mother have come to live with us until they get back on their feet again. They lost everything in a fire. Her mother is sick in bed and my wife is taking care of her. They sent me out to do the shopping."
They saleswoman raised her eyebrows at the news and said jokingly, "Her mother let a MAN do the shopping for her little girl? She must be ill!"
Ron favored her with a smile in appreciation of her joke and paid for his purchases, then with the help of the stockboy, he took them out to the car. Ron opened the trunk and rear doors of his car for the stockboy and took the infant auto seat out of it's box while standing in the parking lot. Then he placed it on the right side of the front seat and worked the seat belt through the holes in the seat to mount it. When he was done, he took Deedee out of the shopping cart and sat her in the auto seat, pulling the strap up between her legs and over her diaper to fasten to the straps that went over her shoulder. He cinched her in tightly and murmured some instructions about "...being a good girl for Daddy," as he closed the door on her side of the car and went around to help the stockboy. A few minutes later, they were finished and Ron got into the car to drive to the Safeway supermarket on El Camino and Bernardo.
When they arrived, Ron carried Deedee to the carts outside and put her in the seat of the cart as he had in WalMart. Then he wheeled the cart inside and went directly to the baby goods aisles to buy Deedee some baby food. He went through the selections rapidly, having some idea of the food that she liked and knowing which ones she positively couldn't stand. In a short time, the bottom of the cart was filled with enough jars of baby food to last her for at least two weeks. He took several six packs of prepared formula from the eye-height shelf and put them on top of the baby food in the cart, following them up with assorted sundries like feeding bibs, a card of pink plastic diaper pins and diaper creme. When he put the diaper creme in the cart, Ron smiled to himself in spite of his devotion to his infant wife. She had never messed in her diapers when she played baby in the past and he had been an attentive enough "Daddy" so that she had never developed diaper rash from her pee. Since she had become a real infant, however, he knew that she would soon find herself helplessly pooping in her diapers like a baby. It was best to be prepared for the worst and have the diaper creme on hand when the inevitable happened. When he had finished in the baby aisles, he went to the aisle with the detergents and got a box of Ivory Snow. As an afterthought, he added a box of diaper presoak to help get the messy stains out of the cloth diapers he had gotten at WalMart.
He had just turned out of the aisle and was going to the checkout stand when he happened to meet his mother-in-law, Jackie. Jackie recognized Ron immediately and said, "Hello, Ron! What an adorable little baby girl, she looks just like Deedee did when she was her age!" She winked at Ron and said jokingly, "And who's little girl is this? I know it's not Deedee's. Have you been doing something you shouldn't?"
Ron looked at his ditzy mother-in-law seriously. Being a lawyer had given him the experience at talking his way out of tight corners, he was not about to let the unexpected appearance of his mother-in-law buffalo him into saying something rash. Deedee on the other hand, was a basket case. She looked up from her seat in the cart at her mother in pure terror. Deedee could only think one thing in her panic, she had been discovered! Immediately, she felt a warm sensation as her tiny body rid itself of excess baggage and began dumping urine into her diaper. Ron couldn't use the excuse that he had given her the last time they were caught buying baby goods. Ron had told her they were buying the goods for his sister's baby. His niece was too old to be eating baby food out of jars. The last time her mother had spotted them, Maggie's baby was a year old and they had been visiting them. Surely even "Wacky Jackie", as they secretly called her mother, would realize that Maggie's baby would have gotten too old in the interim to be eating baby food. "We have a friend who's staying with us," Ron lied glibly as he glanced down at the diapered baby in front of him, "She's her little girl."
Jackie looked satisfied and said, "I think you should tell her mother that she needs a diaper change. She looks a little soggy to me. Where's Deedee?"
"Oh, she's around here somewhere. I think she's over in the produce aisle with our friend picking up something that they forgot," Ron prevaricated smoothly.
"There's something I want to ask her while I'm thinking about it. If I Don't ask her now, I'm sure I'll forget. I've got to go. I Don't want to miss her," Deedee's mother said hurriedly.
"I'm sure you won't miss her. Of course, she might have gone over to another aisle by now. I know she's in the store somewhere," Ron told Jackie honestly.
As Jackie turned away to find her daughter, Ron heaved a sigh of relief. It hadn't been very difficult to cozen his mother-in-law; he had had a lot of experience leading opposition attorneys down the garden path during litigation. Misdirection was as much a part of an attorney's skills as it was for a stage magician. It was all a matter of appearing to do one thing while actually engaging in something else altogether. His courtroom productions of "rabbits" had been rare but exceedingly satisfying for himself and his client. They left the opposition with a ego gratifying looks of bewilderment on their faces and brought wintry smiles of appreciation from the judges.
Ron leaned over and looked at Deedee's wet diaper and saw that her mother was right, she was in need of a diaper change. The soggy diaper had bunched together heavily between her legs and drooped down in front. He whispered in her ear, "Come on, Dee. Let's hurry and get out of here before your mother gets back. I'm sure your diaper will hold until we get home, it's not that far." Ron hasty wheeled the cart to the checkout stand before Jackie gave up and started looking for him again. He wanted to be long gone before she thought of waiting for Deedee at their car.
When Ron got home, he left Deedee in the auto seat in the car while he got the playpen he had bought at WalMart in the house. He set it up quickly and returned to the car to get Deedee and get her into the house and settled into her new playpen. Then he went back to the car and began the process of getting the furnishings unloaded and into the house. When he was finished, he began setting up Deedee's nursery. He knew she would be pleased by what he had bought. They had discussed what Deedee's dream nursery would look like many times and the furnishings he had purchased matched Deedee's descriptions fairly closely. He'd have to go out and get some more pieces to complete the suite, he knew, but the furniture he had gotten for her was a good start. Once he got her settled, he could sit down and consider the problem of what had happened to her. He had
a suspicion that the lamp was somehow implicated in Deedee's transformation. There was something decidedly odd about the feeling the lamp gave him and there wasn't anything else in the house that would account for her sudden rejuvenation.
When he had finished assembling the crib, he suddenly remembered Deedee's wet diaper and guiltily went to the playpen to get her and change her diaper. He was surprised that he had forgotten about the diaper, getting sidetracked by other jobs was Deedee's favorite trick, not his. He decided that Deedee's transformation had affected him more that he had realized. He had been stunned when he saw her change into a baby before his eyes. Since then, he had been running on autopilot trying to get a handle on things before they became overwhelming. Ron took her into the nursery and put her on the crib to change her diaper. Deedee lay back on the white sheet covered mattress and waved her legs happily. This was something she liked! She gurgled and cooed up at Ron and blew bubbles adorably. Ron thought that she looked like she was having a wonderful time. He unfastened the tapes on the diaper and carefully pulled the front of the diaper down between her legs before he lifted her feet and slide a clean diaper beneath her bottom. A quick swipe with the baby wipes he had bought and she was clean. Then he fastened the tapes of the disposable, pitched the soggy rolled-up diaper into the trash can and carried her back to the playpen so he could sit down and think. He knew she probably would have rather been wearing a cloth diaper, but he wasn't sure he wanted to fool with washing dirty diapers until he got things under control again.
Ron lowered her into the playpen and then went to the kitchen to make her a bottle of juice to drink while he investigated the lamp. He opened the small bottle of Gerber apple juice he had gotten at the grocery store and poured the contents into a baby bottle, screwing on the nipple tightly so it wouldn't leak. Then he returned to the playpen and leaned over the railing to pass it into her waiting hands. Deedee cooed in thanks as she took the bottle from him and began sucking on the nipple immediately. He left her as she was and went to the kitchen to look at the lamp. Ron picked up the lamp gingerly, not wanting to cause the lamp to change him into an infant as well. He looked it over and saw nothing out of the ordinary on the lamp. There where no inscriptions or signs to give him a clue to it's origins. Deedee had managed to get most of the stains out of the metal with the brine solution. The only spot that was left was a small brown area of discoloration. Ron dipped a corner of the cloth into the brine and rubbed the spot out with the cloth idly while he thought about the problem. He heard Deedee cooing in the next room and realized that he was going to be busy trying to take care of the house and a baby at the same time he was trying to hold down a job. He dropped the wet cloth on the lamp and thought, "I need to do something about finding a place to put her baby clothes. I can't just leave her new clothes in the shopping bags. Maybe I should get her a dresser to store them in. I could get one with a changing station on top so I can change her diapers there instead of in her crib. She's sure to make a mess on the mattress if I continue to change her diaper on the crib. Maybe I could take some emergency leave from work to go shopping for baby furniture. It's inconvenient, but I can probably manage it."
Ron thought that it was too bad that they didn't already have a nursery full of baby furniture for Deedee. After he thought about it, he realized that she was going to need a stroller too. He wished that they he wouldn't have to go shopping for more furniture the next day. Ron heard a cry from Deedee in her playpen and sighed. It was going to be a long day. He had enjoyed playing baby games with her as an adult, but he hadn't been prepared for her to become a real baby. He was sure he would enjoy being her daddy once he got used to the idea of having an infant wife, but at the moment his nerves were more frazzled than he cared to admit to himself. He was worried that whatever had changed Deedee wouldn't wear off and she would be a baby forever. Ron had been careful not to let Deedee know what he was thinking so she wouldn't get worried too. He wasn't completely sure she still had an adult mind, but he hoped for the best. In the meantime, he had to take care of her as if she was an infant. Thank God, she enjoyed playing baby. If she hadn't and she could still think, she'd be in a state. As it was, if she could still think, she was probably having the time of her life. He turned to see what Deedee needed and left the room as the lamp began to glow again.
When Ron got to the living room, he saw Deedee sitting in the playpen with the empty baby bottle lying next to her, whimpering tiredly as if she needed a nap. Ron picked her up to take her to her crib and noticed that she had wet her diaper again. He carried her to the nursery and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the room. The nursery it had been transformed! Ron was stunned by the changes in the room. The room appeared to have been freshly wallpapered with a white paper with vertical pink stripes, intertwined with a delicate, green tinted flowering vine. The room was filled with baby furniture in white enamel; next to the window there was a crib and adjacent to it was a matching changing table. A dresser stood by the opposite wall and had an acrylic apothecary jar full of pacifiers and a small nursery lamp. The entire room had a bunny motif; adorable pictures of baby bunnies seemed to be everywhere. The lamp, the curtains, the comforter draped over the end of the crib, and even the crib sheets had bunnies on them. There were three framed color prints of bunnies descending in a diagonal across one of the walls. Deedee simply adored bunnies and there they were. It was as if someone had spent weeks shopping for baby furnishings to please Deedee. Ron noticed that the mobile hanging over the end of the crib had bunnies hanging from it's wires and a diaper stacker now hung from the crib with a bunny appliquÈ. The tall yellow diaper pail next to the changing table had a decal of a group of baby rabbits romping joyfully in a patch of grass. Deedee turned her head to see the nursery and cooed in delight when she saw how the room had been decorated. She clapped her hands clumsily in applause, barely managing to strike her two palms together. Ron glanced at Deedee as if he expected her to explain the room's strange transformation, then moved his eyes back to the scene in front of him and shook his head. "This is getting stranger and stranger," he muttered to himself as he took Deedee over to the table and began changing her diaper.
He put Deedee in a clean diaper while she yawned sleepily. Ron chuckled as he finished fastening the tapes and said, "Baby girl is ready for a nap, isn't she?"
Deedee yawned again in agreement and he carried her over to the crib and tucked her in. He found a toy bunny lying in the crib at the end and tenderly placed it in Deedee's arms. She smiled up at him and hugged the bunny then closed her eyes and fell asleep immediately. Ron fussed with the comforter for a few minutes to make sure she would be comfortable and then began to quietly explore the room. The diaper stacker was filled with soft fluffy flannelette diapers of the type that Deedee liked. Ron looked at the back of the changing table and saw that everything he might need to change Deedee had been supplied. In his earlier haste to get her changed, he hadn't noticed that the back of the changing table had tub of babywipes, a jar of nursery vaseline, a tube of diaper rash ointment and a bar of soap that was forested with the pink bunny-headed diaper pins stuck into it's surface. He went through the shelves of the changing table and discovered that it was fully stocked with supplies. There were stacks of both disposable and cloth diapers and well as an amply supply of clean plastic pants and infant T-shirts. "Whoever set this up sure knew his business," Ron thought to himself as he went through the rest of the shelves, "This looks like a display in a baby boutique!"
He went to the dresser and opened each drawer in turn, finding the clothes he had bought earlier as well as other baby clothes he had never seen before. He looked in the closet and discovered that the rack was filled with hangers of baby dresses. He took out one of the infant pinafores and compared it to the clothes he had bought for her that he had found in the drawer. It was exactly her size. "Someone (or something, he amended to himself) has created a nursery just for her," he thought to himself with a growing sense of disquiet.
The problem was he couldn't be sure whether whatever had caused changes in Deedee and the room intended good or ill. Certainly Deedee was enjoying her vacation from adulthood as a baby, but if she was forced to be an infant forever it would be a curse rather than a blessing. He had to get to the bottom of what was causing the transformations and discover how to change her back. Ron thought about the lamp and remembered what he had been thinking when he had heard Deedee's cries. He had wished that they had already purchased a nursery for Deedee. If they had bought one, Ron was sure it would have looked like the nursery that had mysteriously appeared in place of the furniture he had bought. He was sure that Deedee would have liked the crib he had bought, but it wasn't exactly what she had wanted. This crib was perfect. The room looked like Deedee's description of her dream nursery. Every piece that she had wanted was in the room. It looked like she had picked each piece out herself and positioned it in the same way that she had described to him. Ron realized that the lamp was the key to the problem. Apparently if the lamp was rubbed with Deedee's cleaning paste it granted wishes, either spoken or unspoken. He had to find out if his hypothesis was true. Ron had a simple experiment in mind that would tell him what he needed to know. He went back to the kitchen and sat down at the table in front of the lamp. Then took the rag and dipped it into the brine-vinegar mixture and began to rub the lamp all over with the rag as he said, "I wish for an explanation of what's happened to Deedee. Tell me lamp, are you magic?"
Ron put the lamp down on the table and waited expectantly. The lamp glowed brightly as a parchment slowly materialized on the table next to the lamp. Ron picked up the parchment and saw that it had a verse calligraphed on the paper in jet black ink. The language was English and the script appeared to be one of the European Blackhands. It read;
Neither gold, nor silver, nor jewels, nor wealth of any kind save love, Only your heart's desire will you find illuminated by the lamp's magic. Feed the crystal of the lamp and it will grant the rightful owner's wishes.
After one thousand days of granting wishes the lamp shall find a new master.
May all your wishes be a delight unto Allah's eyes, Inshallah.
Abdul Al Karim, maker of the magic lamp. "Well!", said Ron to himself, "That explains where the nursery came from and how Deedee became a baby again. I got what I wished for and apparently so did Deedee. She wished that she would be a baby for twenty four hours and that's what she got. At least I hope that's what the lamp did."
Ron thought about the verse and realized that the homeowner had never had a wish granted so the lamp had remained with him more than one thousand days. It was the bit about "feeding" the crystal that intrigued Ron. How had he and Deedee "fed" it, when the previous owner hadn't? The man had said he had spent hours polishing the lamp when he was a child and nothing had happened so that wasn't it. Ron looked at the box of salt on the table next to the bottle of vinegar and realized that Deedee must have been using a mixture of salt and vinegar to clean the spots off the metal. Wasn't there something he had read somewhere about salt used to "feed" quartz crystals? He had a vague memory of looking at a pamphlet at a shop one time that talked about the care of quartz crystals. He had dismissed it at the time as New Age nonsense. Now he wasn't so sure. Something had activated the crystal, why not salt? Ron thought that it was interesting that the lamp had decided that both he and Deedee were the rightful owners. He wondered if the lamp knew about community property or whether it simply assumed that a wife's property was the property of her husband. Perhaps because he had paid for the lamp, it considered him the owner as well as Deedee. Ron realized that he could probably ask the lamp for an answer, but it wasn't worth the effort. The only thing that was important was that the lamp considered them both the rightful owners. From reading the first line of the verse, it was obvious that he wasn't going to be able to use it to get rich, but that was okay with him. Having a magic lamp to grant their heart's desires was enough. He could handle the rest by himself. They would have a thousand days of wishes before the lamp sought another owner, whatever that meant. Ron grinned when he thought of the uses he could put the lamp to. He and Deedee were going to have a lot of fun with this lamp. He couldn't wait to tell her what he had discovered.
Deedee napped for two hours and woke up thirsty. Ron hear her small cries and went into the nursery to see what she needed. He found her lying on her back in the crib, sucking on her toes fretfully. Her face broke into a huge grin when she saw him standing over her crib. She reached out her hands to be picked up and Ron said, "What's the matter baby girl? Are you wet? Is it time for your bottle?"
Deedee cooed in reply and Ron unlatched the side of the crib so he could check her diaper. He put three of his fingers down the front of her diaper the way women check their babies and discovered that her diaper was damp rather than wet. "You're not very wet," he said, " so you must want your ba-ba. Is that what baby Dee wants? Her ba-ba?"
Deedee giggled in agreement and held out her hands again to be picked up. It was so much fun being a baby again and having Ronny as her Daddy. Deedee was thoroughly enjoying herself. Although she couldn't speak, she was having no problems making her needs understood. Ron's attentiveness made it easy. Deedee had gotten over her panic at being changed into a baby and was determined to make the best of a bad situation. She wasn't sure when or if she would ever change back into an adult, but the opportunity to be nurtured and cherished like a real baby was too good to miss while she had the chance. She still had her adult mind and could understand what Ron was saying perfectly. She had decided that her transformation was her chance to take a complete vacation from adulthood. She didn't have to do anything as a baby but enjoy herself. Ron would take care of everything.
Ron picked her up out of the crib and took her into the living room. He set her down in the playpen while he warmed up her bottle in the kitchen. Deedee idly sucked on her thumb and played with her toys until Ron returned with her nurser in hand. This time, instead of merely handing her the bottle, Ron took her out of the playpen and sat down on the sofa with Deedee on his lap. He settled her against his arm and slipped the nipple of the bottle into her mouth. Deedee took the bottle in both hands while she latched onto the bottle with her lips and began nursing immediately. Ron smiled at his charge and said conversationally, "Enjoy your bottle, Dee. I think I've discovered what turned you into a baby again. The lamp, Dee. It's magic! All you have to do is rub salt into the crystal on the side of the lamp and make a wish. Do you remember what you said to me right after you were cleaning it?"
Deedee looked up at Ron with wide eyes as she continued to suck on the nipple. She wanted to indicate to Ron that she'd understood him, but the formula tasted too good to stop nursing. Besides, the pause in his explanation seemed rhetorical, she was sure he'd finish explaining it to her without her input. All she had to do was listen. Ron smiled at his infant wife and continued, "You said you wished you were a baby again for twenty four hours! The lamp heard what you said and took that as a real wish. The lamp grants wishes, Dee! Do you know where your nursery furniture came from? I was cleaning the lamp while I was thinking about your transformation and wished that we had already shopped for nursery furniture for you. Then presto, everything you always wanted for your dream nursery appears in the room. Do you know what this means, Dee? You can be a baby anytime you want!"
Deedee's eyes lit up when she heard the news and she sighed in contentment. She couldn't have dreamed of a better outcome. She could be a real baby anytime she wanted and still have an adult life. Maybe Ron could make a wish to be rich, then he could stay at home and be her Daddy anytime she wanted to be a baby. Ron finished his explanation by saying, "There're only two provisos with the lamp, Dee; we can only have it for a thousand days and we can't wish to be rich. Other than that, the sky's the limit, Dee. We can have anything our hearts desire."
Deedee looked at him thoughtfully and considered the limitations on the lamp. She wasn't terribly surprised to hear that there were restrictions on the wishes. It would have been nice to be able to wish to be rich. Still, half a loaf was better than none and the ability to change into a real baby whenever she wanted was a gift beyond her wildest imaginings.
Ron sighed and said, "I Don't know why I'm telling you this, Dee. You probably have the mind of an infant. If you can understand me give me a sign." Deedee looked at Ron earnestly and said, "Gooo Daaaaa!"
Ron smiled and said, "Where you trying to say "Good, Daddy" or were you babbling? There must be some way we can communicate. Hmmm. What about your Speak-and-Spell? You should be able to use that to spell out words if you can still think like an adult."
Ron carried her into the nursery and looked for her spelling toy. After a minute of fruitless searching, he put her in her crib for a few minutes while he conducted a thorough search of the room. In the end he found it in a new toy box sitting next to the wall. He took Deedee out of the crib and sat with her in the rocking chair and put the Speak-and-Spell in her hands. Immediately Deedee began tapping out a message to Ron; "H...I......D...O...N"
"You can understand me!", he said happily.
"Y...E...S", came Deedee's reply.
"Then you know that everything's going to be aright. The wish you made is only good for twenty four hours," Ron told her.
"D...A...R...N", replied Deedee whimsically.
"You can use the lamp to change into a baby anytime you want. Is there anything you need?", Ron inquired solicitously.
"H...U...N...G...R...Y", answered Deedee.
"Oops!", Ron said with an embarrassed expression, "I forgot to feed you. Would you like to try some solid food or would you like another bottle?"
"S...O...L...I...D", Deedee typed. Ron saw that there was a high chair in the corner of the room and said, "Come on. I'll take you to the kitchen and get you something to eat."
He took the Speak-and-Spell out of her hands and put it in the seat of the high chair while holding her to his hip with one hand, then he took his free hand and carried them into the kitchen. He sat Deedee in the high chair and put the tray down in front, handing her the Speak-and-Spell to use while he got her dinner together. He went through the pantry saying, "About the only thing we have that you can eat is baby food, Dee. What would you like, chicken and vegetables? Macaroni dinner?" "S...U...R...P...R....I...S....E.......M....E", answered Deedee.
"Okay," Ron said as he got a rubber coated feeding spoon out of the silverware drawer and picked up one of the new feeding bibs from the table. He stood behind the high chair and snapped the feeding bib in place around her neck, then maneuvered one of the kitchen chairs to sit in front of the high chair. He took one of the jars of baby food and popped off the lid with a single twist of his large hand before ladling out a spoonful. "Open wide!", Ron said playfully as he brought the spoon close to her mouth.
Deedee opened her mouth and let him spoon in the baby food as if she was a infant. In a very real sense she was; her muscular control had vanished along with her adult body and she was incapable of feeding herself. She closed her eyes in anticipation and swallowed the purÈed mixture. When the flavor of the food hit her taste buds, she was pleasantly surprised. Her rejuvenated sensation of taste had amplified some of the flavors while suppressing other components. Apparently Ron had selected a macaroni dinner for her to eat. Deedee decided that it wasn't half bad, although the texture left a lot to be desired. Unfortunately, her lack of teeth severely limited the range of foods she was able to eat. If she wanted to eat solid food, it would have to be baby food. Ron continued to spoon in the food, wiping the drips from her chin from time to time with a damp dishtowel.
After she had finished the jar, he opened the second jar he had selected. Deedee closed her eyes again, hoping this one would be better than the last. When she closed her mouth to swallow, an involuntary groan of pleasure escaped her lips. The flavor of the strained plums was so intense that her hypersensitive taste buds were overwhelmed. It tasted like she had quaffed a mouthful of Japanese plum wine. She held the plums in her mouth to let their fumes permeate her head. It was wonderful! Deedee opened her mouth eagerly for more. In a short time she had finished the plums and her tummy bulged in repletion. Ron wiped away the bright purple plum stains around her mouth and chin with the dishtowel, then gave her a bottle of formula. Deedee suckled the formula happily as her stomach wrapped itself contentedly around her meal. Deedee watched around the nipple as Ron made himself a sandwich and sat down at the table to eat with her. By the time he had eaten his sandwich, she was slurping the dregs of formula from her bottle. Ron unsnapped the plastic bib around her neck and rinsed it in the kitchen sink before laying it on the dish drainer to dry. The hollow sounds of the last drops of formula being sucked from the bottle greeted him as he returned to Deedee's side. He took the empty bottle from her hands and set it on the counter while he took Deedee out of the high chair. Ron laid the damp dishtowel over his shoulder and held Deedee to his chest, then began to pat Deedee gently on her back. After a moment or two, Deedee belched hugely and lay against his shoulder contentedly. He took the dishtowel from his shoulder, grinning and shaking his head in amusement when he saw the wet stain of regurgitated formula on the fabric. She had spit up her formula on the dishtowel like an infant. It looked like Deedee was experiencing all the nuances of being a baby.
Ron smiled as he carried her back into the living room to play on the floor in front of the TV while he watched the news. If she continued the way she had been going, she would mess her diapers by the time the news was over. Ron took a few of her toys out of the playpen and strew them on the carpet in a short arc in front of her before he sat down. Deedee cooed delightedly and crawled from toy to toy trying to decide which one she wanted to play with first. Finally she picked a toy from the group and sat down in front of it with her legs splayed out on either side of the toy. She grinned at Ron and picked it up to taste the toy with her renewed sense of taste. From time to time, he glanced away from his news show and grinned at Deedee's antics. She was adorable. There was no way anyone could have known that the body of the infant who crawled in front of him contained the mind of his wife. Her gurgles and coos completed the effect, making her appear like an average, unremarkable baby girl. Ron wondered idly what Deedee's younger sister, Kimberly, would think if she saw her older sister. Kimberly had been her confidant for years and knew about Deedee's desire to be regressed. On several occasions, she had even offered to "babysit" her older sister, but Deedee had been too self-conscious about being dressed in diapers in front of her younger sister to accept her offer. The ten plus years age difference between the two of them meant Deedee could remember clearly when Kimberly was in diapers and she was Kimberly's babysitter. Allowing Kimberly to actively participate in her fantasies offended Deedee's sense of propriety. It gave Deedee the uncomfortable feeling that she was somehow contributing to the delinquency of a minor even though she knew perfectly well that Kimberly was an adult. As Kimberly's older sister, Deedee's conservative nature wouldn't let her seriously consider letting Kimberly play mommy to her and change her diapers. If there was a change in Deedee's life that made diapering a practical necessity, Deedee was morally prepared to accept her sister's offer to help. But the thought of having her younger sister kneeling on the carpet at her side to change her wet diaper for fun was too incongruous to bear sober thought.
Kimberly on the other hand, was eager for the chance to exchange roles with Deedee and play the dominant older sister to a baby Dee. She had believed since she was a small child that her sister's cautious temperament was merely Deedee's way of manipulating her into accepting her pronouncements. She was as capable of making rational decisions as the next person. Although she hadn't had a child of her own, Kimberly was absolutely positive that she could take care of any problems that cropped up. Having spent the early years of her life trying to free herself from Deedee's shadow, Kimberly knew that bold assertiveness would carry her farther than any pretense of being demur. Being Deedee's babysitter would prove to her sister once and for all that she was a responsible adult.
Ron made a mental note to himself to ask Deedee after the wish had worn off whether she would mind if Kimberly babysat her the next time she changed herself into an infant. Ron doubted that Deedee would be embarrassed by her sister if she was transformed into a real baby. He sensed that Deedee's self-consciousness stemmed from the fear of how ridiculous she'd appear as an adult baby to Kimberly. If she was a real baby however, then she'd appear prosaic surrounded by the trappings of infancy. Ron looked down at his wife lovingly as she crawled around the carpet at his feet. She would stop from time to time glancing back at him to see if he was watching her. Ron would grin back at her in approval and she'd continue in her journey, secure in the knowledge that her Daddy was right there if she needed him and that he was pleased by her transformation.
After about thirty minutes, Deedee stopped crawling and perched on all fours with a quizzical expression on her face. Her face colored for a moment as if she was straining slightly and then returned to normal. She sat back on her knees in surprise as the realization of what she had just Done in her diaper hit her. She shot Ron a guilty glance and appeared as if she was looking for a place to hide. Deedee was acutely embarrassed. Peeing in her diapers was one thing, but messing in them was something else altogether! The reek from the rear of her diaper curled around and enveloped her like a palpable cloud, accusing her of the rank impropriety she had committed in her diaper. Deedee realized that in her current condition as a baby, she was unable to clean up the mess she had made. All she could do was wait for Ron to notice and change her soiled diaper. When she thought about how Ron would tease her for her lack of control, she began to cry in earnest.
Ron got up from the sofa and went over to Deedee as the odor from her whiff diaper began to fill the room. As Ron had predicted, Deedee had voided her bowels thirty minutes after eating dinner. Deedee was horribly embarrassed. She hid her face in his neck as he carried her into the nursery to change her dirty diaper. He laid her down on the changing table and unfastened the tapes on her diaper, then pulled the diaper down between her legs to see what damage she had Done. She was a mess. Deedee had managed to cover not only her bottom with the sticky goo, but it had fallen into the front of the diaper in front as she knelt on the floor and had smeared itself all over the front panel of the diaper. She was covered from stem to stern in baby poop.
Ron shook his head and grinned as he took out a baby wipe and began cleaning the mess off of his little girl. She fidgeted and fussed irritably in embarrassment as held up her legs and cleaned her bottom before lowering her back to the pad on the changing table. When he had gotten most of the smelly goop off of her behind, he deftly removed the dirty diaper with his free hand and put it aside so she could rest on the changing pad. Ron pitched the dirty baby wipe on top of the soiled diaper and took another wipe from the dispenser for a final cleansing before he rediapered her. He scrubbed the last traces of poo from her skin and dropped the wipe on top of the other soiled tissue. Then he folded the mess within the dirty diaper, taped the sides together into a neat bundle and tossed the packet into the nursery wastebasket. Deedee's embarrassment had evaporated by the time he returned his attentions to the rediapering process. Deedee lay in front of him on her back, clothed solely in a sunny smile and the perfect aplomb of infancy. She sucked on her thumb idly as she waved her legs up and down without a hint of shame at her nakedness. Ron chuckled and said as he bent over to deliver a kiss on his lover's forehead, "You're a living doll, Dee! Do you know that? You're just about the cutest baby I've ever seen."
Deedee blushed in pleasure at the unexpected praise and continued to behave like an infant as he turned her over and began to coat her bottom with a thin layer of vaseline to protect her skin during the night. Then he flipped her on her back and coated the skin between her legs in front, making sure every crevasse was covered with the waterproof gel. Ron lifted her legs again and slid a disposable diaper beneath her bottom, laying her down carefully on it's comfortable padding. Then he pulled the diaper up between her legs and taped down the sides snuggly, lest she leak all over the crib mattress while she slept. Ron looked at the time on his watch and saw that it was almost seven o'clock. While he and Deedee normally stayed up until ten o'clock on weekdays, baby Deedee was another matter, it was time for her to go to sleep.
He picked Deedee up in both arms and carried her to the crib to tuck her in for the night. Ron returned to the living room and watched TV for a while before going to bed. After the news, he decided to turn in himself. He expected that Deedee would wake up early and he wanted to be there to take care of her needs. Just to be sure, he tiptoed into her nursery and turned on the baby monitor then he took the companion unit into the bedroom with him and set it up on the bedside table. If Deedee woke in the night and began to cry, the baby monitor would amplify her cries so he would hear them in his sleep and wake up.
Ron smiled as he lay in bed and pulled the covers up to his neck. He missed sleeping next to Deedee, but he was pleased that she had been turned into a baby, albeit temporarily. Ron was enjoying the experience of being a loving father to an adorable baby girl. She looked so darned cute crawling around the room on her hands and knees wearing diapers that he wanted to pick her up and cuddle her every time he looked at her. He turned off the bedside lamp and closed his eyes, thinking of what Sunday would bring. If he was right about the lamp, then she would return to normal at approximately ten o'clock. He decided to take her out of her diapers and let her play on the living room floor in the nude at that time. That way her waist and legs wouldn't be constricted by her unchanging diaper when she began metamorphosing back into an adult. Otherwise, she would start growing until her body size forced the tapes on the disposable to pop loose. If the tapes were strong enough, she might get badly bruised before they gave way. Ron made himself a mental note to get her robe out and have it ready before her transformation. As he drifted off to sleep, he decided that he'd better have an adult diaper ready too. Twenty-four hours of freedom from toilets might make her a bit more prone to "accidents" until she was used to her adult body again. After a couple of hours, she could change into more adult wear. In the meantime, Ron wanted to make sure the furniture and carpet was protected from the aftereffects of her sojourn from potty training.
Ron woke up bright and early the next day and made himself a pot of coffee. He moved the baby monitor into the kitchen and read the Sunday paper over a cup of coffee until she woke up. At seven thirty he heard her blathering to herself in her crib and