holy crap...

well, i've been hearing about it since long before tank was ever born. it seems that every parent waits... no they seem to yearn for the day to come when their friends have babies, just so they can give them endless advice, tell stories, generally impress their will upon them, and (most importantly) enjoy their suffering. i don't understand why they do it; it really is quite twisted. but i cannot cast stones, because since becoming a parent myself, i have felt the temptation myself. it's a rite of passage, i suppose.

but of all the admonishings there are to bestowe upon the poor unsuspecting suckers preparing (woefully inadequately) for parenthood, none pack quite the punch of oldest favorite- it has been handed down from generagtion to generation since the first time a mother realized the explosive nature of her infant's nether regions. yep, we're talking about loaded diapers.

sorry folks, babies don't just drop a healthy no. 2 like the rest of us... these little poop canons actually fire it at you. a friend from work recently had a precious little daughter, and he's totally in love with her. he lovingly adorns her in pink poofy dresses, and shows her off as though she were a princess. but then later when no one was around, he also whispered a story of wall splattering the likes of which are rarely rivaled in frank miller films! and what's scary is, they all do it. there's no escape. you get a baby, you get a veritable crap super-soaker. sorry.

my sweet boy is, sadly, no exception. oh, we've been changing diapers for six months, and they have been getting increasingly worse... but this weekend something horrible happened. it seems the child was somewhat ...er... stopped up. after two days, we decided to feed him a bottle of prune juice. it's what all the books recommend, and it has worked in the past for him. and...

holy crap!

the results this time were, shall we say... explosive? uh, i won't give you gory details, but let me tell you, we discovered that tank is clearly capable of defying physics. we founds cracks & crevaces we never knew were there, and we had to double team the boy, armed with protective gear just to handle the job. all i can say is wow. i'm impressed.

the good news is, this inevitable experience does serve to desensitize a parent for whatever additional unknown horrors are to come in the future. at least, i presume it does. but dang! it's all just so shocking and appalling!

so, as i say, your friends will delight in telling you the stories, and about how awful it will be, and they will look forward with glee to the day you must suffer it, but no amount of preparation can actually prepare you for it.. sorry, but you'll just have to wait & see...