How a duck must feel
There’s never much going on in a house with 2 Little Monsters we are trying to teach how to be human. We find diapers in odd places, the tv remotes in toy boxes, and puddles of liquid in the hallway. I say liquid because I’m damn sure not smelling, tasting, or even touching said puddle to find out it’s origin.
Hattie gets way more freedom to roam and explore than Keenan ever did. He was the only child for a couple years. I was never a brainiac in math class, but I’m beginning to understand exponential growth by adding the attention required for the second child.
Most of my good “dad” stories start off with “Have you seen (insert one of the kid’s names) in a while?” That’s when I also discover another aspect of their creativity and imagination. And add carpet cleaning equipment to my honey-do list.
The other night I was completely wrapped up in a work thing after dinner. It involved looking back and forth between the phone and computer and my mind was fully engaged.
Jodi came in and told me she was going to get herself and Hattie into pajamas, we planned on watching a movie together after the kids were asleep. I might have said “okay” or maybe I simply grunted, I can’t be certain. I hear the shower start. Okay, I know I have time to finish!
About 45 minutes later, I’m wrapping up and putting the pretty little bow on the work. Double checking for errors and preparing to save, when Jodi walks in,
“Where’s Hattie?”
“I assumed she was with you!”
“You said you’d get her in pajamas!”
So, it turns out I didn’t hear things correctly earlier. I inadvertently agreed to do something and failed to accomplish said chore. My mind was not present at the time, and at this exact second both Jodi and I realize that our year and a half daughter has been unsupervised and QUIET for nearly an hour!
Before I can hit the save icon, Jodi is frantically searching. Just as I shut down the ‘puter I hear “Well, You can clean her up now!”
Just inside her bedroom closet is all of the essential diaper gear; wipes, desitin, baby powder, a mountain of diapers, and Vaseline. Hattie got it all out and appeared to be conducting a sophisticated comparative tasting. The Vaseline was apparently so good that you just had to have it all over your body. There were actual globs accumulated on her knees and the back of her neck.
Baby wipes are extraordinary clean up tools, they can take sharpie marks off waiting room tables. But petroleum jelly is a different kind of monster. We used about 30 of them to start the cleaning process. Meanwhile, Hattie is laughing like only a toddler or a funny brownie eater can laugh.
I decide that tubby time is better than these wipes. I run the bath and she’s super excited to get in. I am OCD about water temperature because I screwed up once and narrowly avoided boiling my son a couple years ago. So I’m holding back her energy until I get the water right.
Once she’s in, I have the Johnson & Johnson soap ready to get to work, I attempt to get a lather. It looks like the Deepwater Horizon spill of 2010. Water and soap are just beading up on her skin. It looks like the best RainX job I’ve ever seen. I might need to recruit BP to coach me how to clean this up! That thought triggers my next idea.
On the front of our dish soap is a picture of a clean happy looking duck, the assumption is it’s just been rescued from an oil spill, right? It’s well past dusk, and now Hattie is lathered in Dawn, it must work better on feathers! I now have made my daughter exponentially more slippery.
I eventually made it halfway through the movie by the way… pretty normal for me!
Looking to buy/sell? Relocate? Upgrade? This is the most powerful team in real estate!
You are missing out on the biggest and best cinnamon roll around! And it’s less than $5!!!
GoodTalkJosh Podcast 
How a Duck Must Feel (the beginning)
Well Josh, I suppose you you don’t remember this, but once upon time, your father was in charge of his first 1 1/2 year old son. Dad worked night crew at a grocery store, and got home around 8, 8:30, and Mom went to work at the Dairy Queen, and left about 9. We didn’t have 369 channels on the TV at the time, or a remote, or cable, or dish, or directv, hulu, Apple TV, whatever. We had channel 4,5,7, and sometimes 12(Bellingham ) and sometimes 13(tacoma). So anyway, back to the Duck. Me and Josh had our routine, morning TV, and weekdays, there were no educational animated children’s shows, actually, on weekdays, there were no cartoons whatsoever (the weekend cartoons were also not children’s educational shows, they were Roadrunner repeatedly killing Wiley Coyote, or Bullwinkle IS A DOPE, rated R17 today, me thinks), anyway, our (me and Josh’s) highlight was the 10 AM rerun of Happy Days. I’m pretty sure Josh didn’t follow the story line so much, but the intro was his favorite dance tune (1,2,3,4,5 o’clock rock, we’re gonna rock, around the clock tonight) and there we were. I would try to stay up till Josh was ready for a nap, and then I would try to get up when josh did. It worked kinda good a bit of the time. Not trying to brag here. Anyway, one day, I was rudely awakened by the Big Wheel power sliding on the aggregate sidewalk outside my apartment window. Stupid parents that let their kids play outside in daylight while Im trying to sleep. I laid there for a minute, “this is nice”, then I look at the clock, somethings wrong… hmmm, what is it? MY KID! Why is he quiet? I flail out of bed and rush to the room next door. What’s that smell. No, no,no,no, Lynnard Skynard was not playing on the radio. My beautiful son was painted in poop, head to toe, the wall behind the crib, the rungs of the crib, some made it to floor, poop everywhere! Needless to say, I had a hard time getting back to sleep after seeing that. Goodnight!
LikeLike
Shitty story Dad!
LikeLike