Have you ever sat through a boring lecture or sermon when all of a sudden the speaker decides to throw in what would appear to be their version of humor. Strictly speaking this isn’t really humor, in the sense that jokes should be funny. This horrifyingly pathetic attempt at humor somehow becomes a great beam of light into a dreary room. Next thing you know you are laughing until your sides ache.
This is much like the first few months of life with an infant. They sleep, poo and cry. Many babies scream for hours as if you were a communist torturing a pastor until finally your ears ring with blissful deafness. They screech for hours and there is nothing you can do but distract them and bounce them. You bounce them all the early hours of the morning until your thigh-master legs cramp and you worry about what abusive “shaking a baby” entails. Because, unless you bounce her, your ears will bleed.
So now I am going deaf. Ever since my daughter was born my hearing has gotten worse. Loud screaming in ones ear at anytime can be bad for the eardrums, but especially, I believe, at 3am. I love every sound she makes, especially since I can barely hear each sound she makes. To clarify, I’m not yet truly deaf, I just can’t hear ambient noise anymore. It used to be that I had only minimal difficulty hearing phrases like, “could you do the dishes.” But now, despite the best of intentions, I can only hear one thing at a time. If the baby is crying then the phrases “Can you change the diaper” or “can you get up and go check on your daughter” are phrases that will likely go unheard. Eventually, I respond to a more efficient communication system, an elbow in the gut. So I go and get my daughter and brace myself for the scream-fest.
Then all of a sudden, like a beam of sunlight after a storm, she smiles. she giggles. Your heart is filled with a brief moment of joy. This is the only thing you will later remember when you consider having another child.
This brief smile of love is as addictive as cocaine but your high is rare and as unpredictable as gambling. Somehow that 2-minute period of a 24-hour day spent in hyper vigilance is enough to give you patience and stamina for the next 24-hours.
A smile from a baby is the purest high on the planet. Even now, I’m hoping that I can be awake the next time it happens. If you reply to this blog, I probably won’t reply because I think my fingers are starting to go deaf, too. Maybe they are asleep. After 3 months of sleep deprivation with my sweet little addiction I need some assistance to stay strong. So tell me a stupid joke and pass the espresso.
There is a secret word that people use to describe when a baby throws-up on you. It is called “Posit.” It may be short for “deposit” but it is nothing like the experience you get when putting money in the bank. It is more like the experience you have when asking for a loan, as in, “the loan-officer rudely “posited” his opinions regarding my financial situation all over me.” Then our child can posit all over his tie before we withdraw ourselves from the premises.
I would rather we use a more descriptive word like “marsh-mellowing,” as in, “After an extra long feed, my little tyke likes to ‘marsh-mellow’ all over my newly ironed work shirt.” Either that, or “Cottage cheesing” because either one of those phrases would be accurately more descriptive than “positing.”
You can easily tell who the dads are out there. They are the ones who no longer care about the “marsh-mellow shirt stains” or even the magic marker doodles on their kakis. Fashion becomes a luxury and what becomes important is how many baby-tools he can carry with him. This road-warrior dad is proud that his portable baby-bag can store wipes, rash cream, and pacifiers without ever dampening his accounting reports. Imagine a waterproof laptop that doubles as a changing table.
The only flaw in this is that dad’s tend to be male, which means that there will always be some important items left behind like the diapers. Even a snazzy laptop changing-table wouldn’t be able to correct that mistake. That’s ok though, that’s why men don’t have the same sense of smell that women do. We can easily allow our baby to wallow in the same pee drenched diaper for hours.
On a yuckier note, in the interest of informing my readers about things that they would have been happier remaining ignorant about, I want to discuss poo. The first kind of poo that every baby first drops into their diapers is called meconium. It is a black tar substance and you can’t wait for it to change. It doesn’t, at least not quickly. Once this sticky black tar substance is out of your child’s system, it is replaced by the same stuff, only it is now colored brown. I refer to this as “leach poo” because it sticks to the butt like little brown leaches. That really is what it looks like. Little brown leaches that refuse to come off. This is interspersed with “Cottage cheese” poo. It looks almost identical to what if often “posited” on your shoulder. It is very easy to clean off your child’s bum.
After several months though, you are going to want to give your child solid food. The more solid the food the more solid and smelly the poo is going to be. Brave souls who could endure the sight of infant poo’s may wretch at the smell of toddler poo’s. This is why I am going to do everything I can to toilet-train my child. Unfortunately, I left my training manual behind. For now, I’m going to ignore the smell until my wife gags and deals with it.
I’ll be hiding under the bed. Don’t tell her.