Grand Achievements of Mommyhood

MOMMY GENIUS IN THE MAKING

You ever have one of those breakthrough moments in parenting? It sure makes you wish that there were a Nobel Prize for Grand Achievements of Mommyhood, because you know that in that moment, you'd clinch it. Sure, your "invention" wouldn't actually improve anyone else's lives, but for you and your baby, the improvement in quality of life is vast. You've solved a centuries-old problem (hey, in baby years a couple of problematic months can feel like centuries) simply through your own ingenuity and perserverance. You should at least get a cookie or a sticker or *something*.

My grand accomplishment this week has been to improve the Changing of the Dirty Diaper. Our previous routine went something like this:
-Unfasten diaper and groan when you see that poop is smeared front to back.
-Grasp both baby ankles in one hand to hoist the little poopy butt in the air.
-Do the famous First-Pass Wipe with the soiled diaper itself.
-Continue holding baby's ankles in the air to keep still-poopy butt from smearing all over the changing table mat.
-Pause to catch and restrain your little boy's grabby hands when he suddenly realizes that he's free down there.
-Alternate between wiping poop off with wet wipes and keeping boy's hands away from poop-covered genitals, all the while keeping his ankles aloft and butt off the mat, until the twisting baby is ready to fling himself off the table in screaming distress and you feel like jumping out the window yourself.

As you can see, this routine had some obvious need for improvement. Even when offered a toy as distraction, Jake was still not too wild about being partially hog-tied for several minutes, and who could blame him? But it seemed my only alternatives were either to let Jake grab his poop-covered self with little hands that always find their way back to his mouth, or to buy enough mat covers to have on hand to change after every dirty diaper. Since the first option is just plain gross, and the second option would cause Dan to question why I needed to do a laundry load of nothing but mat covers every day, I knew there had to be a better way.

Okay, so I didn't *know* there had to be a better way, but I pleaded with the universe at large to please let this whole experience get a little easier. And miraculously, it did!

Our most recent dirty diaper change routine was drastically changed by the use of one extra baby wipe:
-Unfasten diaper, still groaning over the mess one little boy can make.
-Use the diaper to wipe away poop from the genitals only, keeping the rear end covered.
-STOP, and wipe poop off genitals with wet wipes before he realizes he's free.
-Once genitals are poop-free, allow the happy little boy to grab himself at will while you continue cleaning.
-VERY quickly, hoist the baby up by the ankles JUST long enough to finish the dirty-diaper wipe, and to spread a clean wet wipe under his poopy butt, which can now be set down.
-Leisurely wipe off remaining poopy areas with wet wipes, eventually discarding the now-poopy spare wet wipe from under his now-clean butt, while he happily continues to play with himself and to babble to the wall about the experience.

Of course, like any new breakthrough with a baby, this will take repeated testing to verify that it wasn't just the novelty of the situation that pacified the baby. I've bragged before about wonderful routine changes and how much better Jake behaved, blah blah blah. Almost as soon as the words are out of my mouth, Jake quickly gets used to the new routine and rebels against it with every bit as much vigor (and sometimes more) as he did before.

So maybe we shouldn't have Nobel Prizes for Grand Achievements of Mommyhood. After each annual award acceptance, the next week's newspaper headlines would feature an internationally embarrassed mommy returning the award because her little darling figured out a way to overcome her improvements. No pat on the back would be worth that much potential risk of humiliation. It's bad enough facing the glint in your little one's eyes when he knows, and you know, that he's got you figured out yet again.