Confessions of a butt-sniffer...

This posting was written a few weeks ago, but I am only now getting around to posting it....


Hi, my name is Rich, and I am a butt-sniffer. I last sniffed a butt just a few minutes ago as Anouk lay sleeping in bed. Thankfully, it was only farts.

Actually, I am concerned that butt-sniffing is a behavioral gateway: kind of like smoking pot is supposed to be a gateway to more hardcore drugs, sniffing butts is a gateway to worse actions. I have become desensitized to all manner of bodily emissions.

When I comment that it was just baby farts, there is no longer that tell-tale lie in my voice that I was actually the culprit.

Runny nose. Wipe it on anything handy: my sleeve, sock, my own fingers and then wipe them on my pants.

Changing a pee-filled diaper at night is an act of desperation: desperation to change it as quickly as possible so as not to wake the baby and to get back to sleep as soon as possible myself. Wiping her little pee-soaked fanny...forget-about-it. Just change the damn diaper, and quick. Are my hands dirty afterwards. I don't know (and I don't care), I am too exhausted to care about anything except the one thing I can't have: a decent night's sleep.

Poopy diapers? See above. Fortunately, with one exception in her 21 months of life, Anouk has never pooped at night.

Vomit. Fortunately (for me) Anouk seems to only like to vomit on Natalie, and those efforts have been voluminous! Which is not to suggest I have not come in contact with this particular textured fluid, but we will not talk about cleaning up after sick family members (yes, plural) on the coastal steamer to Francois, Newfoundland. As I lay in bed writing these thoughts, Anouk just had a little gag reflex and a few teaspoons of regurgitant came up. Wipe it up with the ever-present rag, toss the rag in farthest reaches of the nightstand (so it is still within reach should I need it again), flip the soiled pillow over, and call it good.

Sleep. What is that? I am getting so conditioned by a little girl who does not sleep through the night that even when she is asleep, I am on the edge. Lately I find myself waking in the middle of the night, checking that everything is okay in our little nest, and then lying there for an hour, sometimes two, once even three, trying, desperately wanting to go back to sleep. Natalie and I take turns with baby duty at night. Tonight is my turn. It is only 9:00 p.m. and I have been in bed for an hour-and-a-half. I'm wide awake, hence playing on the computer with email. I will probably drift to sleep just about the time Anouk decides it is time for a crying jag, or worse, a screaming fit.

I think I am getting senile, though. Anouk will arise for the day anywhere between 4:30 a.m. and 7:00. She will lean over to me, pat my chest, and say in the absolutely most sweetest voice ever, "Papa." Within 15 minutes of waking up, I will be alert and ready for the day (albeit a bit bleary-eyed). Half an hour after she first greeted me for the day I will have completely forgotten that it was not many hours ago that I thought the notion of eating your young was an increasingly reasonable idea. Tomorrow (Saturday) we will go birding on a Downeast Audubon field trip and many people will comment on what a cute baby she is (Heck, isn't EVERY baby cute?), and I will be one proud papa.