John and Christine did a little house shopping on Saturday. Elise and I babysat Jack. Shortly after John and Christine left our house, Elise put Jack down for a nap. Shortly after that, Elise had to go to work. Your humble narrator and Jack were home alone. About an hour after Elise left, Jack woke up. I picked him up out of his crib and we went and sat on the living room floor and talked.
Jack sits up on his own now so it makes conversation a lot easier. We talked mostly about girls. I explained to him how society has adopted an image of what female beauty is by means of television and magazines. He absorbed that pretty quickly and mentioned how earlier this week he was at HEB and while waiting in the checkout line, he noticed the recent issue of Cosmo that features Jessica Simpson on the cover. He said he thought Jessica Simpon is quite an attractive young lady, but he prefers a woman who can provide vast intellectual stimulation.
I decided to play a few tunes on the guitar for Jack. I’m really out of practice but he didn’t seem to care. He sat there and closely watched both of my hands. When I finger picked a song, he watched my left hand on the bridge. When I strummed, he watched my right hand.
Midway through my third song Jack leaned back, held his breath, clenched his body and a sound came from his backside that could easily compete with his dad’s. I looked at him for a while. I looked away and thought about what that noise might have been. I looked at him again. He looked at me. I looked away. He was still looking at me. Then I smelled something.
I looked at Jack again. “Jack, did you just fart?” He didn’t say anything. “Jack, you farted, right?… That was just a fart, wasn’t it?”
“Uncle Josh, I just pooed my pants and now you’re going to have to do something about it.”
I have never changed a diaper. This was a new challenge for yours truly.
I called John for a consult. Specific things you need when changing a 6 month-old’s diaper: a diaper and approximately seventeen wet wipe things. John warned me that Jack might pee on me while changing him so I’d need to put a wet wipe thing over his “thing”. I hung up the phone.
With Jack in tow, I walked to the dining room to find a diaper out of the diaper bag. I couldn’t find one as I didn’t know how a diaper bag worked. We have a full bag of diapers in our house for occasions like this. We also have a box of wet wipe things. Left arm has Jack, right arm has bag of diapers, I have a box of wet wipe things between my legs and I have to walk across the house because I was instructed that I am to change Jack on our bed. So I’m duck waddling through the house with a box of wet wipes twixt my thighs, John calls so now I have a phone attached to my shoulder and Jack thinks that this is the perfect time to pick my nose.
I somehow made it to the bed. I removed Jack’s diaper and was greeted by it. Well, it was more like them. Three little gifts resembling tootsie rolls for Uncle Josh to deal with. What’s worse is there was a bit of backside paint smears.
I stuck my chest out, accepted the task, grabbed a wet wipe thing and gagged. I have an iron stomach but I swear to you that I almost threw up on my Godson. I seriously almost lost my lunch. That was absolutely one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
The whole process only took me about 20 minutes and I think I did a mighty fine job. It’s not a job that I like, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.