Brown Sugar

Experts say that babies do their growing while they are asleep. Their little brains absorb all of the day's information while their bodies physically get bigger. All while sleeping. How cool is that? No one can watch it happen, but it really is true. It is one of life's little mysteries and coolest tricks.

Beatrice grows in her sleep. I remember when she was around 2 months old, one day she woke up and had outgrown the outfit that fit her the night before. It was such a weird thing to have a noticeably bigger baby than you had the day before. But do you want to know what is even weirder than having your baby grow in her sleep? Her waking up every morning for the past couple of months with sticky hair that smells like brown sugar. That is life's biggest mystery.

At least in our house it is. I can't figure it out. I bathe her before bed and let her clean, combed hair dry before I put her in her crib. The crib is clean with only a few of her "babies" in the corners. There is no food up there and she is not yet agile enough to climb out of her crib, walk downstairs to the pantry, rub brown sugar in her hair, go back upstairs and climb back into her crib. I have faith that with a little more sleep growing, she will be capable of this pretty soon. So you can understand my profound befuddlement when I find my little baby's hair looking like this every morning:

I spend the first few minutes of morning milkies raking my fingers through the sticky rat's nests. But the strangest thing of all is the way it smells. Nothing like the Johnson's and Johnson's baby shampoo. It smells like molasses. Don't get me wrong, I like it. But I have no idea what happens during the 12 hours she's in that crib at night to end up with brown sugar hair. Don't judge me but I licked it one morning and it tastes sweet too. What? You would lick your baby's hair too if it inexplicably smelled like cookies. 


I may never figure out why Beatrice's hair smells like sugar every morning. I do know that her little body needs sleep to grow and I'm not gonna mess with that. And no matter what happens at night in her crib, waking up to hair that looks like this and tastes good is pretty amazing.