A Happy Fool

I’m chasing a half naked baby across the floor with a diaper in my hand and trying to figure out how to get it on him while he makes strides towards my phone. He’s a like a little piglet and as soon as I set him down he’s off.  He scampers towards whatever he’s not supposed to get into.  And he's fast, blink your eyes and you only have a slug trail to follow.

 

My palm narrowly misses the soiled diaper I stripped off of his bum moments ago when I thought that this would be a routine diaper change.  But I'm still gagging from the smell. I talk and sing through the stinging tears in my eyes, saying things that I never, ever, under no foreseeable circumstance would have imagined myself saying.

And my voice. Who is that? Not that I used to sound like Mr. T or anything, but now it's s a mix of Bozo and Barney, maybe some Mr. Rogers sprinkled in.  Or what Mr. Rogers might sound like with a hunk of poop on his thumb. 

Then I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I’m on all fours, wearing 9-12 month old pants on my head with the legs dangling over my face.  I look like a jester.  Welcome to parenthood.

I turn away and pull myself together, wrangling up my son. Eventually I get a diaper wrapped around his waist. A little crooked but it will have to do. I take the pants off of my head--they used to keep him entertained and facing me, so I would…you know what? Just forget it. The diaper is changed and that's what matters.

I was once told that once you have kids that life becomes like the movie groundhog day. For me at least, things couldn’t be further from the truth. Sure, we stay on a schedule with bath times and bedtimes, dinner and the like, but every day he does something new, something ordinary and miniscule that blows me away. So if I have to wear pants on my head and talk in high pitched voices so be it. After all, I’ve spent most of my life making a fool of myself, why stop now?