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From the New Yorker:

Simon Rich's "A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids’ Table" in this week's New Yorker is hilarious.

MOM: Pass the wine, please. I want to become crazy.
DAD: O.K.
GRANDMOTHER: Did you see the politics? It made me angry.
DAD: Me, too. When it was over, I had sex.
UNCLE: I’m having sex right now.
DAD: We all are.
MOM: Let’s talk about which kid I like the best.
DAD: (laughing) You know, but you won’t tell.
MOM: If they ask me again, I might tell.
FRIEND FROM WORK: Hey, guess what! My voice is pretty loud!
DAD: (laughing) There are actual monsters in the world, but when my kids ask I pretend like there aren’t.
MOM: I’m angry! I’m angry all of a sudden!
DAD: I’m angry, too! We’re angry at each other!
MOM: Now everything is fine.
DAD: We just saw the PG-13 movie. It was so good.
MOM: There was a big sex.
FRIEND FROM WORK: I am the loudest! I am the loudest!
(Everybody laughs.)
MOM: I had a lot of wine, and now I’m crazy!
GRANDFATHER: Hey, do you guys know what God looks like?
ALL: Yes.
GRANDFATHER: Don’t tell the kids.

I’ll bet you never noticed that the word diaper, when turned around backward, spells “repaid.” Appropriate.

Well, I don’t know what I did to my parents as a five-month-old, but apparently it was something horrendous. I am definitely being repaid for something awful.

So…

Forget the hydrogen car, you could naturally power an automobile with the power of Tenzin’s ass. Strap him to the rear bumper (I’m assuming you would use duct tape) and I guarantee a 4.5 second 0-to-60 time! Clean up, however, would be another issue all together. Man is this little guy is assmazing! (That’s my word, you can’t use it)

Where is all of this coming from?

Well…….drumroll please……we had the blow out of the century! And yes, this is another poo conversation. Live with it!

I’m not even sure how to describe it. I believe it was Friday afternoon. Rachel and I enjoy the luxury of half-day Fridays every week, so we love to relax and do nothing all afternoon (see: laundry catch-up, bottle sterilization, baby stuff clean-up, bill paying, car washing, grocery runs, dishwashing, et al).

Everything is going as usual. Rachel had just finished giving Tenzin a 4 oz bottle - an amount that used to take him days to finish, but now goes down faster than a shot of Cuervo down a frat boy’s gullet (and actually comes back up just as easily). I was upstairs, catching up on some bills on the computer. Since he was finished, Rachel brought him up to see if I could get some burps out of him.

At first baby transfer, I knew that something was amiss. Now it might be easy to say that most parents intuitively know when their child has a dirty diaper, but with Tenzin you never really know. The little man has some devious gas skills that can really throw you for a loop. I used to have fun blaming bombs on the baby, but now, in fact, it’s Tenzin that can clear a room. (Fortunately, this skill wasn’t fully harnessed until AFTER the flight back from California. That could have been a disaster.)

So Rachel hands him to me and he’s a little bit funkier than usual, so I think we’ve got a definitive green light at Brown Street. Not a problem for Dad. I’ve knowingly passed him to her with a pie in the lower oven, so it’s only fair that I get one every now and then too. Off we go to the nursery to detail his trunk.

Everything is business as usual, diaper change is a go. Start routine: I undo the onesie buttons, prep the new diaper (I’m all about the no-more-than-4-seconds-at-a-time-without-a-diaper plan), open the wipes, pop both ankles into one hand, gently lift, push back the onesie, and WHAT THE…..HOLY….NOT ON MY HAND…HOLY….TURN ON THE FAUCET……WHAT ARE YOU FEEDING OUR SON….IS HE BROKEN?

Everywhere.

Let me preface this story by saying that Tenzin had been pretty constipated for the last couple of days. Tenzin is no longer constipated.

Traditionally, as far as diapers go, Pamper Swaddlers have been really good to us. There was a short time when we tried to switch to Huggies, but we kept having blow-out after blow-out and the savings just didn’t seem worth the clean up. In this situation, however, I don’t think any diaper could have survived the destructive power of the poo. We’re talking bad. Not even a titanium-lined hazmat suit would have contained this mess. Hell, not even a compact car could have contained this mess.

At this point Rachel and I are side by side, sizing up the situation; both gagging in equal intervals as we try and figure out where a good starting point will be (side note: there are no good points to start at in a situation like this). By now we’ve realized that the onesie is soaked up to the back of his neck and continues to get worse and worse the more we move him. Somehow from Point A (laying on his back) to Point B (sitting up, held by the smallest part of our fingertips), the grossness managed to get in the back of his hair and under his armpits. It’s defying all laws of physics.

The gagging has now turned into cackling laughter, back to gagging, then laughing some more, followed by some more gags.

“Should we take a picture?”
“Picture? That’s gross. Maybe.”

Long story less disgusting (and without photographic evidence, we decided it was embarrassing enough without witness), he was placed in the bathtub for the next six rinse cycles, none the wiser about anything that happened. He simply sat there in the bubbles, smiling and swimming like he always does. A child’s innocence is priceless.

Meanwhile, Rachel and I are off to the side in some kind of parental shock. It was kind of like seeing a car wreck. Neither of us could believe what transpired, but we’re just happy that everyone escaped alive. What’s more, neither of us can believe that we handled it as well as we did. Five months ago, I would have quarantined the room and called my dad to borrow his power washer. Now, a little soap and water and some Purell, and we’re good to go. I still can’t believe it.

So yea, pass it along….diaper spelled backwards is “repaid.”