The Zen Art of Changing Diapers

Before you even begin this month's article, I feel that it's only fair and proper to tell you that this is my "Halloween" edition. It contains a whole lot of horrifying junk, the whole dang thing is basically about poop. Consider yourself duly warned.

There are lots of things I could discuss in this blog only weeks after the birth of a second child into our growing empi-, er , family. Deep, meaningful subjects that would likely spur furious but polite debates for months to come in the comments section of this blog. Concepts run the gamut from large to small, here's a short list of some blog entries I thought about writing about:

• The confidence of being on the second child
• Sibling rivalry, day 1
• How a hospital treats a new dad.
• The household division of labour
• Home, baby, work, cleaning, cooking, maintaining, entertaining, and you.
• Attitudes people immediately have about boys vs. girls
• How to unhear a screaming baby.
• Things to do with one available hand at 3:00 A.M.
• Grandmas and Grandpas: a Love Letter
• Colic is a myth.
• Oh God how are we ever going to pay for this on just my salary if only the readers of my irregularly updated blog would just send us massive gobs of money we could afford to eat occasionally and what ever will we do if the car breaks down or the house needs maintenance we're doomed that’s it just doomed. (Alternatively titled : "Interesting recipes involving instant noodles and water.)
• Hand me downs
• Don't shake the baby Vol II.

I was very seriously considering writing Don't Shake the Baby: Vol. II (but really that would have been just me posting pictures of cement mixers, paint shakers, and jackhammers to make myself feel better) , when it hit me full on in the face.

Pee.

After cleaning myself off and desperately trying to save the laptop from watery doom, I put the boy's diaper back on and said "to hell with it with all that deep crap, I'm going to write about crap!"

Or, perhaps more universally, bodily fluids. Odds are good that if you're actually taking the time to read this and not just skimming it to make the author feel better, you've had most of life's available bodily fluids spilled, splashed, dashed, sloshed, or dropped on you voluntarily or involuntarily (and hey, who am I to judge?) at some point in your adult life. It's even possible that if you look back and make a tally, most of those are probably your own! Good for you!




then.

now.

look how far you've come!

Most often, you will find yourself coming in contact with urine. Urine, as far as the soon to be discussed subjects go, is the least offensive of the lot. It is sterile, generally not foul smelling, and comparatively easy to clean. It’s a damn good thing too, because you'll be positively bathing in the stuff before your newborn is a few months old.

Kids pee. A lot. Newborns, in particular, pee when they are cold. The #1 time a newborn is cold, is when the diaper is removed, therefore, evolution has conspired for the perfect set of circumstances to completely ruin any and all of your shirts before you leave the house on a Monday morning.

One is told stories, myths, legends even, of what it is like when a baby boy pees. It is said that dams are broken, flood waters rise, and species are eliminated from the face of this now yellowed Earth. So deep seated is this fear that there actually exist products to attempt to prevent you from drowning. These are, however, really dumb. We were lucky, we thought, we had a girl first.

What no one tells you is that girls are nearly as deadly. The same confluence of events occurs and you find yourself with a diaper in one hand, while your other is thrust before you trying desperately to keep the spray from hitting your face or filling your shoes. You see, no one sex has a moratorium on bodily fluids, despite what those dirty websites might imply.

The difference between baby boys and baby girls however, isn't the volume of the stuff, its in the projection (which right there probably explains a significant portion of the history of relations between the sexes). Boys don't just have simple tube there, it's a precision instrument ultimately designed to fling fluid as far as is physically possible. Because of this, your dodge pattern is all messed up from changing girl diapers and honestly you can never expect where the spray will go. It's like in cartoons when a fire hose would get turned on and just start to whirl around soaking everything except the fire. Only, you know, its pee.




ohgod there is pea everywhere

Of course pee isn't the only thing that will be fired, launched even, from your new child. No, that would be far too easy. Instead, you'll be treated to a whole new milieu of substances!

Children can, for example, actually projectile vomit. Now to give you some hope for your future, if you're planning on spending time around a child, this is a rare occurrence, and should it happen the poor thing should be taken to a doctor immediately. Projectile vomiting is one of those things written into things like "What to Expect the First Year" that a person who has not had a child for a significant amount of times looks at and says to themselves "This is not a real thing, this doesn't actually happen." I mean, you remember Freshman year, right? You know what throwing up is. Why do they bother calling it projectile vomit instead of simply "vomit"? When it happens, you will know.

There will be no doubt in your mind. No doubt on your shirt. No doubt on your pants, your couch, the walls behind the couch, Grandpa, nor any small furry animal who happens to have the unfortunate luck to be in the house at the time. Doubt itself will have had the good sense to have left the room seconds before your adorable little baby transforms in less than a second from the one you know and love to something resembling a broken fire hydrant.

We originally had a "Home Game" section here, but I finally admitted that honestly, there is nothing that can prepare you for this.




an unforgettable experience to be sure

It is amazing though, what a person can get used to, and what they can't. Several of my non-parent friends have expressed both fascination and horror that my wife and are able to stomach (as it were) changing diapers. The studied response to this is "It's different when it's your kid." which is by all means true. Changing your own child's diaper is somehow very different than mis-stepping in a downtown alleyway and finding the results of a stranger's bran muffin bender. It's a significantly more pleasant experience than one might otherwise imagine getting your face inches from human feces might be. But perhaps the statement can be made more accurate and more descriptive by changing the emphasis and saying instead, "It's different when it's your kid."

Even as a parent, few and far between are the people who aren't just as disgusted as you are when their finger slips through the 1-ply in the airport restroom, the major difference is that a parent probably has disinfectant wipes on-hand.

So why then, isn't a parent as grossed out as they should be when changing a diaper? Perhaps its because we're largely in charge of determining what goes into the kid in the first place (excepting rocks, slugs, small bits of fluff from the carpet, and Lego bricks). Breastfed babies are the easiest. Milk goes in one end, something vaguely spoiled milk-like comes out the other. Really at that stage its less like the kid is an animal eating and pooping and a whole lot more like the worlds least exciting luge track. Formula fed babies smell worse, but are otherwise functionally the same.

Things change, however, when you start feeding your children solid foods. This is when the kid's product goes from a mustard-esque sticky cream to a semi-solid, foul smelling, creeping-crawling pile of dark essence, determined to do whatever it can to attach itself to your flesh long enough to travel, sap-like, into your nice white carpet.

But really, in the back of your head, you know that despite its costuming as the devils own tile spackle, you know its really just a smashed composition of cheerios, goldfish crackers and apple juice anyway, so you plug your nose and get to work.




baby diapers, the home game

Not knowing makes all the difference. Hell I don't remember what I had for breakfast today, let alone yesterday morning. Whatever is coming out of me is certainly a combination of things I never ever wanted to see again. That's half the reason I ate it in the first place, to make it suffer.
This is then magnified when encountering "strange poop" that of someone who's diet is a mystery to you. Add in the fact that most sane people (read: people without kids) don't tend to encounter poop on a regular basis, and its easy to understand why people are disgusted by the stuff.

But hey, just because you don't have kids (or have grown up kids) doesn’t mean you need to feel left out. With my simple guide, you too can re-create the baby experience without all that nasty, uncomfortable, sticky sexual reproduction.
Just follow the below instructions, and you can grin at your friends who are parents and tell them that they can't whine to you anymore about how hard it is because NOW YOU KNOW!

Level I. Newborn:

1. Empty your bank account
2. Purchase diapers with your debit card knowing you'll have to just pay the overdraft fee.
3. Purchase a small, squeeze bottle of mustard
4. On returning home, pour mustard from bottle into a small, quart sized bowl.
5. Carefully measure one (1) rounded tablespoon of mustard, and return it to the bottle. Tighten lid.
6. Discard bowl of mustard
7. Wrap diaper clumsily around bottle, as a drunk might wrap MadDog 20/20 at 2 am on a Saturday night.
8. Place bottle/diaper on a flat, floor level surface carpeted bedrooms work well for this.
9. Weighing either 150 lbs, or finding someone who does, jump on bottle.
10. The resulting spray will likely blow the diaper clean across your room, spattering a thin layer of mustard in an arc not unlike a Jackson Pollock painting. Contemplate what you have done to deserve this.
11. Didn't you feed the mustard bottle?
12. Didn't you care for it?
13. You bought it clothes, and keep it warm right?
14. As you attempt to clean the harrowing mess, contemplate how exactly you went from being the clever, cute guy at parties to being on your hands and knees, wrist deep in shi- er, mustard.

Today,

My son was born at 10:12 pm today, 9.15.09.
7 lbs, 0 oz

A way with words.

Learning to speak is one of the most exciting parts of a child's development. Oh certainly partly because you're starting to get a glimpse as to the thought processes and opinions and ideas that make up this little person you've been really wanting to get to *know* so badly. But there's also another, lesser known aspect of the whole process. The sense of adventure.

Few parents know what exactly they're getting into when bringing a developing one or two year old into the public sphere. What makes this truly dangerous is the fact that your child's sponge like brain is absorbing everything at a disturbing rate. Even, almost especially, things you don't pay attention to in your everyday speech.

You already know the basic idea that this article is built on, little kids pick up words that you don't want them to say.

It just takes once, really. When changing a diaper, you accidentally dip your finger in the peanut butter-like sludge that leaks from your child on a regular schedule, and the next thing you know, she's happily trotting up to things and saying "DAMMIT!" It happens to everyone, and not only is it not new or special, for the most part its also incredibly easy to correct.




oh god, we don't own any peanut butter...

Specifically, you use a counter-phrase. Kids in general simply want two things, attention and praise. In this case, you simply need to convince them that "Dammit" is the improper pronunciation of "Dangit", and when she says "Dangit" you praise her, and everyone wins.
These counter-phrases diffuse almost all inappropriate words…

This wouldn't be a very interesting read though, if it were that easy. And honestly raising kids would be cake if that's all it took to change a kid's mind.

Counter-phrases are fantastic things in select situations, but they don’t always work. There are plenty of times in your child's life that they'll simply incorporate your great idea into material they'll use for the book they'll write and later split the profits with the therapist.

For example;

Apparently, my wife and I apologize a lot. This is something that I kind of already knew. But nothing in this world has been able to highlight it quite like my daughter bumping into my leg and saying in her tiny, adorable voice, "sory."

At first of course this seems like a great thing, what a polite little girl you say. And you smile. But then, you notice her saying it, a lot. She'll say it when it is not appropriate to say, she'll say it when it is *least* appropriate to say.

"sory." she says when trying to grab for something she shouldn't have.
"sory." she says when dropping a stuffed animal.
"sory." she says, when walking down the street and she trips .
"sory." she says, when playing quietly by herself, in the corner, facing the wall.

You, of course, being a parent, chuckle quietly to yourself and tell yourself that this is just a phase, and you take steps to correct it with a counter-phrase. How about "No, honey, it was my fault", as an example?
She learns this too, and now, when the nice cashier lady smiles and waves, she's treated to "sory, my faut."
Then, people stop smiling as much.
Instead, they turn their gaze to you, with a look that says "what have you done to this poor thing?"
And as subtly as possible ask for your drivers license while looking for the number for the police.






just insert dirty words any old fucking where.

There are other situations where a counter-phrase simply can't do the job, as the problem isn't the wrong word, its that little lips, throats and vocal chords simply cannot pronounce the proper words.

My daughter, genius though she is, still lives in a world where zoos are populated by "Arigadors" (alligators) and "Warus" (walrus). She eats "geddy" (spaghetti) and "chapup" (Ketchup), her favourite fruit seems to be "sawberries" (strawberries) and "balalas" (bananas). Most, but not all of these are easy enough to puzzle out, largely because at this stage, she can point and grab for what she wants, or what she's referring to.

This, non-parents, is why it seems like parents are able to understand what their kids are speaking. Sure there's a little bit of parent/kid translation, but mostly we just get used to it because by the time you see our little works-in-progress, they've already said "chapup" eight billion times…
…by breakfast.

There are, of course, certain times that this deficiency passes from the realm of cute or annoying into the downright embarrassing. Of course, even if you aren't a parent you've heard the stories or even heard children directly mispronounce "Truck" or "Frog" at the opportune moment for the 13 year old that lives in the back of your brain to pop up and giggle.




Oh yeah you're real mature.

Other words that provide a great deal of entertainment when shouted loudly in public:

Fog
Ship
Pitch

Essentially, think about words a 13 year old would use trying to get around the rules and your two year old is probably saying them "unintentionally". Finally then, you can come to the horrific conclusion I have… they're practicing.

But this is all a basic part of growing up, as we learn what is and is not appropriate in any given situation. So we are granted plenty "teachable moments" wherein our children get a chance to encounter these options.

You can imagine it now, you're walking through a Big Box retailer, because this is what you do with your days. (Big box stores are the entertaining, child-safe alternative for having a life.) This is the moment your little one has decided upon, the moment that you and she will learn together.

She reaches her hand up as far and as excited as she possibly can at her height and age. This happens to be about the realm of your crotch, and only a quick dodge can save you.

She then shouts excitedly at the latest object of her affection, just as the big box employee comes around the corner, to see you leaning over your daughter as she shouts.

"Very good" you say "that is indeed a clock."

"Next time, see if you can pronounce the 'L'".

Dad Time

"Well spent" weekends take on a whole new meaning when you're a father. It's not that I don't still occasionally get out of work on a Friday afternoon and announce to the world while ripping off my tie that "IMMA GET TORE UP!", it's really just that the phrase means something a little different than it used to. Instead of being a portend to me slogging enough Ketel One to void the warranty on my rental liver, its now a dedication to myself. Indeed, you could call it a pact, to say that I will do whatever it is that I can do to absolutely destroy whatever vestiges of connective tissue may remain in my knee joints.

This is a two part process.

Step 1: Feed child breakfast.
Step 2: Attempt to go outside of your home.

Inevitably, at some point near the beginning of your adventure, the child will ask to be carried. This is understandable as evolution has cursed them with short, stubby legs better suited for kicking fathers in places that will reduce the possibilities of siblings than for actually getting them from place to place.

Carrying your kid, combined with breakfast, and the sack of lead-dust quick-crete she somehow managed to devour overnight is the perfect recipe for guaranteeing that you'll be using a walking cane at the ripe old age of 30.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here, and that's just the morning.

First, we'll set the scene.
On the weekends, I take over and become chief parent in charge. I do this for a few reasons.

First, doing the same job 24 hours a day, 7 days a week sucks. So I like to give my wife a break.

Second, it's important to spend dedicated time with your kids. Specifically, it's important to spend time with the kids that isn't all fun and games. It’s not fair for Mom to be the only person who says "no", and for Dad to be all Parks and Zoos. I'm sure there's a whole web community dedicated to the issues that come out of that kind of lack of balance.

Third, my wife is pregnant. And any human being that asks a pregnant woman to do something that they themselves are capable of will swiftly find themselves reduced to a steaming pile of ash, if they are lucky. Unlucky ones will only be able to wish for such a gloriously quick death.

So with this stuff in mind, Friday evening comes, and Dad takes over the household. In a smooth swift transition that third world governments can only dream of, my crack team of experts (read: me and my wife) decide on a plan for the weekend, and I become its enforcer.

Now, I say enforcer for a reason. I'm a bit more dedicated to schedules than my wife is. When I say "a bit" I really mean that I am a Drill Sergeant, who's only goal becomes getting what needs to be done, and done on time. Perhaps this is a male thing, perhaps instead it lies in my upbringing, or, more likely, it has to do with the fact that I don't stay home with the kid all day and therefore have the renewed energy and patience only achievable by one who is not exposed to someone who wanders around holding the bowl of her practice potty taking sips from it and calling it soup for 8 hours a day (though my co-workers may disagree).

So, when Dad is on duty, we follow the rules. The Schedule. The Plan.
The Plan is as follows;

8:00 AM : Wake.
8:02 AM : Brush teeth, brush child's teeth
8:04 AM : Downstairs for breakfast
8:05 AM - 8:35 AM : Prepare/Eat breakfast (preferably waffles, or maybe crepes with fresh cut fruit)
8:35 AM - 9:00 AM: Get dressed
9:00 AM - 11:00 AM: Errands (usually grocery shopping)
11:30 AM - 12:00 PM: Lunch, this must be timed precisely because of the next entry
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM: Naptime. The child will sleep during this period to refresh herself for the day.
2:00 PM - 2:30 PM: Break. This is where we warm up for the afternoon. Cool off for a while.
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM: Play at the park! I'm not heartless, the kid gets to go outside and play for a bit, get some fresh air.
4:00 PM - 4:15 PM: Snack time.
4:15 PM - 6:00 PM: Attend to afternoon errands if any remain. If not, calm play in the house.
6:00 PM - 6:30 PM: Prepare Dinner
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM: Eat dinner
7:30 PM - 8:00 PM: Cleanup, then calm play.
8:00 PM - 8:15 PM: Bedtime ritual, change diaper, brush teeth, read a book.
8:15 PM : Sleep until 8:00 AM Sunday, repeat.

This is Dad's day. Note that when Dad is in charge, no detail is left untended to.
When Dad is in charge, this shit is on the ball.

Now, with such a regimented day, it’s probably easy to imagine that things might go a little off course here and there. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The end result of the above schedule essentially boils down to the following:

6:30 AM: Kid wakes up screaming about the fact that she has a trail of poop from one end of the bed to the other. Honestly, I'd scream too. I change the diaper, and put her back to bed, maybe with a book or two to keep her entertained, so I can sleep till 8.

9:30 AM: Wake up, stagger to get the kid, who has since given up on her parents and gone back to sleep. Wake her up, talk about how awesome the park will be, especially the swings.

9:50 AM: Facebook

10:20 AM: Breakfast, I guess. (Cereal) Assure her that if she does well at breakfast, we'll spend extra time on the slide at the park!

10:50 AM: Oh hell we needed to run errands we still have time don't we quick get her dressed no she doesn't care if she wore it yesterday there are no stains on it its good lets go!

11:59 AM: Continued behavior such as crying and rubbing eyes indicates that child is hungry and exhausted, prompting parents to actually look at clock. Promise that it's going to be okay because after her nap we'll go to the park.

12:50 PM: Lunch, but oh God all the food we have is frozen or needs to be prepared.

1:30 PM: Lunch (Cereal) Assure her that if she does well at lunch, we'll spend extra time on the climbing wall at the park!

2:00 PM: Naptime

3:30 PM: Kid stops screaming and is now (probably) asleep, but you don't dare check on her because you might wake her up.

3:45 PM: she's up.

3:46 PM: maybe?

3:47 PM: yep she's up

3:57 PM: After a successful diaper change she is now sleeping peacefully at last thank God and all the Saints in Heaven above. Console yourself that some time at the park will make up for all of this.

5:00 PM: Wake from nap

6:10 PM: Kid wakes from nap.

6:11 PM: Facebook.

7:00 PM: Oh crap we forgot to get Groceries earlier and all that's in the fridge is potential half-meals, cursed by the laws of nature to live a dual, semi-life until their companion parts are brought to bear. But its cool we'll just pop over to the grocery store that's 5 minutes away, get what's on the list and come home, eat and put the kid to bed. Oh, and stop at the park for just a few minutes.

8:30 PM: Finish picking up Chick-Fil-A because it was the healthiest thing you could think of at the last minute that wouldn't take an hour to get ready.

8:45 PM: The kid has successfully eaten one grape, and now refuses to listen to the slightest indication that she should so much as put her tongue on her $6 chicken sandwich that you spent ten minutes and a half a pint of blood cutting into baby-bite sized chunks.

9:10 PM: Kid eats. (cereal)

9:30 PM: Bedtime ritual (all joking aside, this is the holy grail of the day. this stays the same if at all humanly possible)

2:30 AM: AW FUCK WE NEVER WENT TO THE PARK

So essentially what this boils down to is that I get a taste of not only what my Wife's day is like when I'm at work, but I also get a nifty taste of Humble Pie. When you're exhausted at the end of a day that's been utterly ruined by nothing in particular, and you climb into bed, in shambles and wracked with guilt for the things that left undone, there is one thing that should make it all worthwhile;

That special moment when you're putting your daughter to bed.

When you lay her down on her new toddler bed, whose sizable mattress makes the poor thing look minuscule and tiny and helpless, and she looks up at you in the room lit only by her nightlight, and you can see her huge, soulful eyes staring up at you.

Those pools of light that gaze upon you with the awe and reverence only the very young can have for their parents, that seem to say with every tiny breath of her body that you are the arbiter of all that is good in her world.

That despite the ravages of the day, she loves you implicitly, and trusts you more than any other human being alive to do what is right and necessary to protect her, and teach her, and help her, and keep her clean, healthy and happy. When she looks up at you and you understand that parents are the God for all children. And that everything she'll ever need she can entrust in you.

And she looks up at you,
and you look down at her.
And you say "Goodnight honey."
and she says "nite!"

And you look down at her,
And she looks up at you.
And you say "I love you..."
and she says "love 'oo!"

And she looks up at you,
and you look down at her.
And you kiss her on the forehead and say "My darling daughter"
and she says "Mom."