"Sowwy fow da dwamatics." A bit of sheepishness enters Carlos' grin as he addresses the still-stunned pair. "I'm usuawwy not such a futhy baby - but I wanted you ta see dat you can act ath widdle ath you want here."
Bill's stiffie twitched against its cottony confines as Greg whimpered and vehemently shook his head.
"No way." He insisted with as much conviction as his two-year-old peep could muster. "Nah happening. Nevah."
"If you thay tho, tuff guy." Carlos gave Bill a knowing look as he opened the door to the playpen. "I gueth you won' be joining me an' Biwwy in da main nurthery."
"You gueth cowectwwy." Greg affirmed in a huff. Carlos sighed and shrugged as the discontent toddler turned his back on the pair.
"He'ww come awound." Carlos reassured Bill. "C'mon - you'we weady to go, wight?"
Bill gave his regressed roommate one last look. He turned back to Carlos with a stout nod and a big, bright, confident smile.
"Awight den!" Carlos piped. "Get dose chubby widdle wegs of yows goin', I'ww show you awound."
Bill's first steps out of the playpen were tiny and uncertain, and at one moment he seemed close to falling on his diapered tush. It was in that instant, however, that Carlos took the two-year-old's pudgy little hand in his own, sharing a reassuring smile as he helped the baby stabilize on his bare bite-size feet. Bill's pinchably plump cheeks went cherry red as his lips curled into a tiny grin, the smaller boy avoiding the eyes of the bigger as Carlos led him by the hand through the door and onto the main floor.
The newest addition the nursery couldn't help but gape at its current occupants, at the variety of adorable little baby boys who had presumably at one point been grown men. In one corner of the room a pair of bare-naked olive-skinned two-year-olds - twins, Bill realized as he watched them - giggled their little heads off as they clumsily tried to corner a slightly bigger, similarly nude boy with jet-black hair and laughing almond eyes.
In another corner there lay a three-year-old with ice-blue irises and skin as white as the diaper he just ruined. Though he fussed and whined much as Carlos had earlier, Bill could tell that - again, as with Carlos - he did so mainly for personal satisfaction.
And in the last there stood a trio of diapered toddlers casually conversing in a small circle. All three cuddled stuffed animals, and all three sucked the thumb of their free hand whenever they weren't speaking.
"Pretty great, huh?" Carlos beamed at Bill's obvious fascination. "You wanna go play tag with the jaybirds? Or maybe you'd like to take things easy and just talk with some new friends."