I will be honest with you all…I don’t write much. While you are all picking your collective jaws up off the collective floor (hmm wonder how that works) the only proof you will need is to look at the number of posts I have had over the last six months (spoiler alert…it’s one). I promise that my intentions have been to post early and often and to vote at least once a week…or something like that. However, I am confident that all of the things I didn’t write would have been so phenomenal that it would leave you all weeping and undoubtedly lead to my reception of a publishing contract with Random House. The President would then call and have no choice but to appoint me national Blog Laureate. Fame and fortune would follow and Outside the New York City Public Library they would erect a bronze statue of me sitting in a wingback chair wearing a smoking jacket and stylish glasses, with one eyebrow raised in thought. But here is the bad news…someone forgot to inform my free time that working two jobs, attempting to get a Master’s degree, and raising a baby left just enough space for my daily ritual of wiping spit-up off of my face (ahh me time). While I may have missed my window of fame and fortune (for now) I have discovered something better…being the coolest dad in the entire universe! Sorry all other dads…you lose.
Okay…I may not be the coolest dad in the entire universe (although I would contend I have to be somewhere in the top ten) but being a dad is one of the greatest things anyone could experience (it’s right up there with being the King of Monaco, guessing the ending of the Sixth Sense, and peeing off the top of Mt. Everest). The first three months of my sons life, fatherhood consisted of me holding him two inches from my face and making absurdly stupid noises while he looked at me with a scowl that said, “My gosh this idiot is suppose to raise me? I think I’m going to pee on him next time he takes off my diaper.” Then an amazing thing happened, Jackson started smiling which lead to me making even more absurdly stupid noises in an attempt to get him to smile more. Our latest antic is that I will pretend to eat his face and he smiles and laughs uncontrollably…yes you read that right…I pretend to eat my son’s face. It is never too early to prepare your child for the zombie apocalypse (though if a real zombie were to show up I hope Jack wouldn’t try to laugh him away…machetes work so much better).
I’m not sure what the interview process is for a NASCAR pit crew member but if any crew chief saw me change a diaper they would offer me a job as the tire man. I can change Jack’s diaper in less than eleven seconds (if it’s a twosie it obviously takes a bit longer to clean up the oil slick). This is a skill that has been mastered over six months. When we first brought him home I would carefully change each diaper fearful that anything more intense than a white fluffy cloud or tears from a baby bunny rabbit would seriously injure my fragile infant…things changed. The first time I got peed on I did not handle it well (nor were clouds or bunny tears applied). While holding up Jack’s legs to gently wipe his posterior of any remaining concentrated evil, an arch of liquid began streaming towards my face. With agile ninja reflexes I used both hands to guard my face as I jumped away from the changing table. I soon realized that one of those hands had been holding half of my son in the air. When Jackson dropped to the mat of his changing table the pee that was previously aimed at me ended up all over him. Crying and a bath ensued.
If I were to create a list of things that come naturally to me fatherhood would be number three, right behind my ability to randomly burst into songs from musical theater and the skill of not doing cartwheels (seriously no one doesn’t do a cartwheel like me). Okay so maybe there was a bit of a learning curve (it s a good thing children don’t remember the first year of their lives) but overall I rate my first six months as a parent as successful. In order to understand the success or fail rate of a parent over a period of time I refer anyone to the following survey:
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My father use to tell my sisters and I that when we had children the word “gross” would disappears from our vocabulary. Seven months ago if I had poop on my hand it would be the most disgusting thing in the world (the reasons poop would be on my hand are not important for this story but strangely scenes from Operation Dumbo Drop and Jurassic Park come to mind). If I get poop on my hand now, I just wipe it off on the closest disposable baby sanitation product and move on. One of my favorite things to do with Jackson is to raise him up over my head. He looks down at me and smiles and I make the before mentions absurdly stupid noises. My wife has continually warned me not to do this after he eats because he is going to spit up on me. I always inform my wife that he has never spit up on me before and that I am always right. While in every other instance in my marriage I have always been right about everything, two days ago something happened and planets aligned with an ending Mayan calendar and Tom Curise’s space ship…spit up…all over my face (I did manage to close my mouth in time on to eat and throw up what my son had just eaten and thrown up). By the way my wife doesn’t know this yet so lets all collectively agree not to tell her.
I hope you enjoyed my post…who am I kidding of course you did…and when you finish wiping the tears from your eyes, rereading this post, and wiping the tears away from your eyes again…feel free to forward this to Random House. Jackson’s birthday is coming up in a little less than six moths so maybe by then I will have another post but in all honesty these days there is something much more fun than writing a blog, and I have to go because the much more fun thing is starting to wake up.