Thoughts on Fatherhood 5

I was sitting on my couch this morning, baby on my lap, watching the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” and having a fantastic time. The baby was happy, daddy was happy, and mommy was happy. Things were great until my lovely wife asked me if she could feed our wonderful child. I passed her the little bundle of joy and saw my wife’s expression changed from contentment to confusion.

“Why is the baby wet?” she asked me. “She can’t be wet”, I responded, “I’m not wet”. She gave me the once over and laughed, “Yeah you are you big dope!” My shorts were soaked, my shirt was soaked, and if I was wearing socks they would have been soaked as well. Rather than attend to myself I did the noble thing and unwrapped my soggy child.

I unbuttoned her outfit and noticed that the moisture did not smell like baby pee. I unfastened her undershirt and the smell of poop quaffed into my unprotected nose. I stripped my child down to her diaper and saw streaks of feces running up and down her tiny little body and when I removed the diaper I turned to my wife and “tagged” out. In the process of switching clean up crew captains my spirited child reached down to her waist and retrieved a handful of baby mud. My wife then rationally explained (she reads the blog) that it would take the two of us to deal with the unbelievably messy situation.

I feel as though I have done lot of complaining on the challenges encountered in my fatherhood experience thus far so I would like to change the pace a bit. In fact, things progressed significantly better from that point forward. After we removed as much of the poop as possible, considering how much of it there was, we decided it was time for an unscheduled baby bath. We ran the water and plopped her in the sink and the kid literally smiled from ear to ear.

She loves her bath time so much that I am beginning to think that she purposely saves her poop for hours on end. Therefore, by the time she has decided to unleash it upon the world the buildup is so massive that no diaper could possibly contain it therefore leading her to a bath. I know that would mean my child is some kind of poop/parent manipulating prodigy but I firmly and proudly believe it is possible.

If it seems odd to use the word “proudly” when describing my daughters bowel movement, consider all the other peculiar accomplishments we as parents ascribe to our littlest babies. We cheer for their burps and farts because they were able to move air out of their tiny gastrointestinal systems. We call our own parents and brag when our little ones sleep uninterrupted for more than 20 minutes. We wax poetic about how brilliant they are when they focus their eyes on a person or object. We count the seconds they are able to hold their heads up without assistance and then tweet their record times for the world to see (maybe that last one is just me).

The stars truly seem to align when my child looks directly at me and smiles. That moment is quite possibly the best feeling in the world and one I truly cherish every time my little girl makes it happen.