Baby fist pump!
Ok, yes my topic title is a bit of geek humor (whether it pertains to programming or Star Trek, take your pick), but I’m sure by the end of this post even those who aren’t computer savvy will know what I mean by “core dump”.
So I’m sure we’ve all been there, Dads. When my little boy is being adorable and well behaved, it’s “look how cute OUR son is.” When he’s done something undesirable though, it’s “guess what YOUR son did today?” Am I right?! Well, this story pertains to one of those latter days, and in my opinion is a “That’s my boy!” moment as a Dad, though I imagine my wife remembers it differently.
For whatever strange reason my wife and I got into a system of categorizing my son’s diaper disasters. I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe in the beginning as first time parents we were so paranoid about constipation and when to bust out the prunes (and let me say…a little goes a LOOOONG way) that the #2 diapers were classified as either “small”, “medium”, or “BIG TIME”. We were always on the lookout for that BIG TIME case to know that everything was working smoothly in there. Even our nanny adopted the system, writing “S”, “M” or “BT!!” in his little daily log, without thinking to question it, which I find incredibly awesome.
Now that you have that background, the scene is the first day back at work since our baby came along. My wife is still at home on maternity leave. I come home from work excited to see my little bundle of joy and offer to go get him up from his nap. As I enter his room I see the cute little animal lamp that’s on his changing table is missing the lamp shade. So the logical question for my wife is of course, “What happened to the lamp shade?”
The response I got was just a look. A look I knew all too well. A look that before I had a kid was reserved for ME when I forgot to take the trash out even though my wife already reminded me twice to do so. Well, my son has now done something worthy of that look, and the first thing that went through my mind was “Aw, man! Whatever it is I missed it!”. Apparently, during a changing of an unremarkable diaper, he had decided to get started on filling his next diaper in a BIG TIME way, except the new diaper wasn’t on yet and we had a “heiny in the wind” situation at hand. Keep in mind this is also during the period when no solid foods are ENTERING his body, so there should be no expectations of anything solid EXITING either. Again, my thoughts start to drift to the missed opportunity. If only I were within arm’s reach of my video camera when it happened. Ah, the hilarity that could have been. Oh well.
So without going into all the details, let’s just say that the lamp shade was completely unrecoverable and my wife claims that he even hit the WALL which required cleaning. I do some quick physics calculations in my head, involving angle of flight and wind resistance…looking at the wall that stood a solid 3-4 feet from the actual changing pad edge and conclude that either this story has already evolved into a tall tale that gets taller every time it’s told (aka. “I tell ya, the neighbor felt the blast from across the street!”), or my son is a freakin’ SUPER HERO!! Granted, there’s not much room in the Avengers for a hero whose super power is a rocket propelled rear end. He would certainly strike fear into the hearts of his enemies, though.
So there you have it. The Great Diaper Incident of 2010. If it were entered in my son’s daily log, it wouldn’t be classified as “BT!”, but rather as “OMGWTF!”. And I’m proud not just of my son’s unparalleled internal pressure but also that I managed to keep this post classy by not once mentioning the word “poop”…until just now. Darn, I was so close!