BABY, IT AIN'T OVER 'TIL IT'S OVER

To my dismay I've discovered, now twice over, that when the baby's made a dirty diaper, like any bad news there may be more forthcoming.  Like when she announces that her new self-produced single is about to drop right after she tells you that she's going to major in the liberal arts.

Actually, it's been more than twice;  there was that one time a couple of posts ago (please recall:  shart in daddy's face), and today, two more times.  The first was with a diaper change in the morning, when whilst I was cleaning her she then proceeded to urinate and stool at the same time, the results of which ran up her poor wrinkly little back, prompting a quick spot-cleaning in the kitchen sink.

The second time today was while everyone was out of the house except the baby (who, of course, can't yet drive) and her father (who, of course, probably shouldn't be left alone with a helpless baby, but that's perhaps the subject of another blog, the-father's-father-who'd or something crazy meta like that).  A wet fart not my own signalled yet another rise in the stock price of Huggies or Pampers or whatever diaper it is that we have on hand, so I changed the little one, and noticing some mild redness (perhaps irritation from over-conscientious wiping, perhaps from repeated nasty nappies) decided I'd let her air-dry.  I set her down on the little ballerina-hippo play pad and scurried up to dispatch the diaper.  I picked the baby back up to carry her with me while I visited various parts of the house, and I noticed that the baby-wipe solution hadn't really yet dried on her bottom, which, of course, I realized wasn't cleaning elixir but rather was urine.  I'm still glad that she isn't yet eating asparagus.  Anyway, that revelation didn't quite have the emotional impact of the Keyser Soze reveal, perhaps instead more along the lines of the sinking sensation Kobayashi must feel whenever he looks up at the scoreboard and sees how many dogs he'll have to eat to catch up with Joey Chestnut.  That feeling was compounded when I went back down to the hippo cushion and realized that the trail of urine had actually started there, and that the pachyderm pad had been soaked through with pee.

So the day was spent with bodily second chances, I guess;  the challenge as a parent is to be not so compulsive as to change the baby after every single squeaky fart, but balanced by not allowing your precious child's tender skin to stew in expelled juices, that is, change often, but not to often, not too soon, but not too late, diapering is a zen koan, but unlike meditation it won't bring you inner peace, just raw, chapped hands from washing them all the dang time.

Or, forget all of that stuff above, maybe the point is just that an appropriate alternate title for the post could have been, after the potty is the after-potty.

Perhaps the only part of the baby's body that doesn't excrete stuff that needs to be wiped away.  Yet.