When I was but a wee lad, there were three red-letter dates on my calendar: my birthday, Christmas, and the beginning of daylight savings time in the spring. Ah, daylight savings time... was there anything sweeter? Sure, birthdays and Christmas were nice, but daylight savings was the gift that kept on giving. As spring began to ripen into summer, the days grew longer and longer until the glorious evenings of June and July when dinner was no longer an end but merely an interruption of that afternoon's game of baseball or touch football. What could be better than daylight savings?
Now I know better. I suppose it's nice to be able to play basketball until after eight o'clock, but have you ever tried to convince a four-year-old that it's time for bed when it's not dark outside yet? And then tried to wake up that same child an hour early the next morning? Trust me when I say that it's no picnic.
Things here have gone relatively smoothly so far, but it's early yet. Alison and Henry haven't objected too much, and it even feels like they've been napping a bit more consistently. The unexpected monkey wrench, however, has been Kate.
Our usually sweet and easy Kate has been acting up a bit lately, and I'm not just talking about her tiresome habit of grabbing for your neck and squeezing a fistful of skin. No, this is much worse.
Diaper changes have become an adventure. Earlier this week I took Kate back to her room to change a diaper that smelled particularly foul. I set her down on her changing table, pulled off her pants, and slowly undid the velcro fasteners on the diaper. The second I opened her diaper, her hands darted down below her waist and into the sloppy mess. Seeing nothing but diaster ahead, I quickly grabbed both her hands, hoping to minimize the damage. I had used both of my hands to grab her arms, and she thought this was absolutely hilarious. So hilarious, in fact, that she started giggling maniacally, kicking her feet, and bucking like Little Yellow Jacket -- and each kick placed a heel squarely in the middle of the diaper I hadn't had time to close.
I was completely overmatched. If I let go of her hands, they would only get dirtier than they already were. If I didn't, her feet would eventually cover every square inch of the the changing table, the wall, and me with tiny fecal footprints. And so I let go of her hands and my dignity at the same time...
I somehow wrangled both of her ankles into one hand and grabbed a fistful of wipes in the other. My three seconds of indecision had been enough time to turn the changing table into a disaster area. She had stamped every surface, including my hands and jacket, and she had even managed to slide the diaper all the way under her back. And yet somehow, she was still smiling.
I wiped her off as much as I could, then picked her up and wrapped her in one of my arms, leaving the other hand free to gather up everything on the changing table -- mattress cover, socks, pants, shirt, and the previous night's pajamas. Bath time.
When we got to the bathroom I dropped the soiled clothes on the floor and stood her up next to the bathtub while I waited for the water to get warm enough for her. She was having a wonderful time standing between my knees as I sat on a stool in front of the tub. And then a strange thing happened. I realized that water from the tub was somehow leaking out onto my leg. This made no sense, though, because our tub does not leak, and it was only just beginning to fill. And then it made perfect sense. Kate had just peed on my leg.
And you know what was really weird? I didn't mind at all. It was merely the punchline to a joke that wouldn't seem funny for at least another fifteen or twenty minutes. I took off my poo-stained jacket, used it to wipe the urine off my leg, and then tossed it in the pile of debris next to the tub. All in a day's work.
The good news, though, was that I had an extra hour of daylight to look forward to, which was nice.
Kudos on the imagery. I can feel Kate's very delight as she step by step (literally) reinforces to you and to the watching cosmos that you, her beloved Daddy, are 'pwned'.
Posted by: Patti | April 06, 2006 at 08:46 AM