Tuesday, December 5, 2006

In My House...Baby Mexican Hat Dance


In my house, the ten month old rules the roost. Where I used to enjoy the piece of mind of knowing I'm better at Wheel of Fortune than every Wheel of Fortune contestant ever (going all the way back to the days of the $150.00 ceramic dalmatian), the living room is now the baby's domain, and the baby likes to listen to Justin Roberts in the evening while he eats his dinner. My big TV, so big that Pat Sajak's face-lift scars show up, becomes wasted, as I am banished to another room or forced into indentured service to the baby. Washing his bottles, running his bath, sterilizing his pacifiers and powerless to complain (which you can tell is my nature) because the baby doesn't care and my wife has been doing it twice as much, three times as often, and seems absolutely fine with the fact that in the space of a millisecond we ceded power to someone that constantly tries to stick his hands in his own poo during a diaper change.

We are both waiting for the day when we can look back and say, "Wasn't that cute", or "That was so funny." About a month ago our neighborhood lost power. As we laid down in the darkened living room, the coolest room without A/C, the baby seemed content in his exersaucer (if you have no idea what an exersaucer is) trying to put each of its small toys in his toothless mouth. We both stepped into the kitchen for a few minutes, we had grilled the soon to be spoiled chicken breasts and when we caught view of the exersaucer something was different. The baby was laughing, not the usual innocent laugh but a sadistic, "I am dancing in my own shit," chuckle, that turned the mood from a resigned melancholy because of the power outage to a hyperalert analytical fever trying to figure out how to clean both the baby and the exersaucer without covering the entire house in diarrhea as the baby flailed his crap covered feet. As we stood there, synapses firing, the baby smiled his widest toothless smile and skated and sloshed through the mess, threatening to send it careening over the side of the saucer and into the tiny cracks between the planks of our wood floor.

Our strategy was simple and effective, the baby was only covered in poo from the waste down, we lifted him halfway so he was standing on the harness. We wiped him down and I ran with him extended at arm's length into the shower where we both were rinsed of all fecal material. We then turned our attention to the sullied baby containment device. We detached the harness, brilliantly constructed of machine washable poly-blend, and rinsed it in our laundry room/garage utility sink, before placing it all alone in a superhot cycle through the washing machine. Any house with a baby should have such a sink. A sink appropriate to functions that you would not want to accomplish in the same sink where you prepare food or brush teeth. The exersaucer was then lifted, carefully, to that same glorious sink where it was part by part scrubbed and washed with Clorox and an old toothbrush. My wife and I jokingly threw jabs at each other about who had changed the last diaper but no diaper is made to handle the half gallon of diarrhea that every 8 month old produces at least once.

We now have two exersaucers. The baby is outgrowing them and they'll probably become hand-me-downs soon. I honestly cannot remember which one was covered in shit. Somebody's going to have a previously soiled exersaucer.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good post!

I knew it was only a matter of time until one of your stories involved shitting.

Looking forward to the next installment.

Craig