The Eye of the Diaper

If a Mongol horde was galloping around your living room, swinging their swords in vertical circles and occasionally lopping the heads off of your floor lamps, you’d probably have a hard time thinking about much else. Having a baby is pretty much the same thing.

The reader(s) of this column may have noticed that since my son Evan was born six weeks ago, this space has largely been devoted to our frenzied experiences with first-time parenthood. At least I think that’s what it has been about. When you’re running on two hours of sleep a night, reality can be difficult to discern, which is exactly what I told Newt Gingrich as he rode his yak across my backyard yesterday.

My buddy Johnny, who doesn’t yet have Mongolian horsemen riding circles around his coffee table, called last week and asked, “What’s new with you?”

I tried to think of something non-baby-related to tell him, but I couldn’t do it. A man can only share so many breastfeeding anecdotes with his buddies before the phone calls dry up altogether.

I’d just spent the better part of that afternoon fending off unwanted advances from our child. Evan was opening his mouth like a little bird and then plunging his face into my chest.

“Dude, what’s he doing?” I asked my wife Kara.

“It sure looks like he’s trying to breastfeed on you,” she laughed.

“Seriously? Have my man boobs gotten that bad? This is insulting,” I said.

Undeterred, Evan squeaked and tried to go in for the kill again, mushing his forehead into my T-shirt. It was a strange experience, being objectified by a six-week-old. It was also the first time I’d ever had to say, “Hey, Buddy, my eyes are up here.”

Johnny would have been chagrined if I’d have admitted to him that I now spend most of my limited time outside of the house scoping out other people’s minivans, a thought that would have been abhorrent to my childless self only recently. Say what you will about minivans, they’re honest about what they are. SUVs lie to the world, bragging about mountaintop expeditions on the outside while their insides are full of cupcakes and Lunchables.

You never think you’re going to be a minivan person until the day you try to squeeze a car seat into the backseat of your Toyota Matrix, forcing you to slide the passenger seat so far forward that you could crack a peanut between the headrest and the windshield.

“Is this going to work?” I asked Kara as she wedged herself into the remaining space.

“I guess, as long as we wipe off the dashboard. It tastes dusty,” she said.

And even if Johnny would have wanted to hear about any of that, he certainly wouldn’t have wanted to know that Kara and I pass the time and stave off the encroaching insanity by changing the lyrics to the songs that we sing to our wailing child.

Yesterday, I snuck up behind Kara to hear her singing “Where is Thumbkin?” to Evan, with the modified lyrics: “How are we today, Sir? Very tired I thank you.”

It can only be due to exhaustion that Kara and I found ourselves tag-teaming a recent diaper change, singing, “It’s the eye of the diaper, it’s waking all night. Rising up to the challenge of our chi---ild.”

Incidentally, in doing thorough and exhaustive research for this column (i.e., Googling “Eye of the Tiger lyrics”), I discovered that there are a lot of people in the world who actually believe that the lyrics go “…eye of the tiger, cream of the fight,” rather than “…thrill of the fight.” I have no idea what the cream of the fight is, but I’m almost positive I don’t want any in my coffee.

You can fill Mike Todd with cupcakes and Lunchables at mikectodd@gmail.com.