Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Year 14

fresh smelly trauma

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I come to you this evening traumatized. I am not the author who wrote to you about an innocent, chiming bee last night. I live in a harsh new reality.

In a word, the difference is: poop.

Yesterday I experienced my first live baby waste incursion. EV6 and I were just hanging out in the middle of the floor, bouncing around, when suddenly I discovered an incursion from the diapered zone. Before I could take any action, it reached out to touch my leg where it was uncovered by my shorts. The inside of my thigh, to be exact.

My leg! An important part of my body I would prefer not to live without, but I would I need to burn it? Perhaps just soak it in a chemical bath until an entire layer of skin melts away to reveal a new level of epidermis that had never experienced the horrors that the one before it had so bravely defended against.

I won’t – nay, can’t – say much more about the reconciliation process that allowed me to cleanse and reclaim my fully-functioning thigh. All I will note is that EV6 seems to take no notice of my distress, nor is she distressed herself by the proximity of excrement to her own chubby thighs. No, in fact, she seemed to be quite entertained by the process.

Not me. For me, there is only terror. Every time I see a hint of that smiling poop face, hear a whisper of that disturbing gurgling noise in the diaper area, the trauma is upon me again. There is no safe time or space. As long as there is a baby near – any baby – then it can happen again.

I know I cannot be alone in this fear, yet at the same time I honestly don’t know how we’ve come this far as a human race while each generation is faced with this challenge not only to the sanctity of our bodies, but also of our minds.

I’ll drown my book

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On night three of baby EV6’s life she was having a moment of baby sleeplessness, so I decided to read her a story.

We had amassed a stack of children’s books from friends and family. It included both favorites I recognized (Sendak, especially), obscurities, and newer classics. That night I decided to go with something middle-of-the-road, and so I picked up a collection of Curious George stories and began to read.

the-tempest-folger-1709As I read, I noticed three things.

One, the story was awful. This dumb monkey was misbehaving and breaking things, and everyone both complained about it and found it endearing. I’ve noticed this is a theme in many children’s books, like the horrid Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. I’m all for a mischievous protagonist, but not for one who is clearly a villain and in need of a time out.

Two, on top of the terrible tale, the grammar was lamentable. I found myself both silently correcting punctuation and audibly rearranging words to ensure the story would not poison my young child’s future sentence construction skills.

Three, baby EV6 gave no shits. About the story, I mean. She had been pooping regularly all day. I know, she was three days old – how much did I expect her to follow the story? Not at all. Really. But, I did expect the rhythm of my reading to be pleasing to her, or else I could have just talked her to sleep (a skill I surely possess).

That last point is what made me the angriest at this stupid monkey as I tossed aside the volume in disgust. For all the crimes of bad character and bad grammar, at the very least the writing could have a bit of meter to make up for it. Most good toddler books do have a sort of a rhythm to their words, even if they don’t rhyme or make verse. But this poor primate’s tale was a clunky monkey.

EV6 in one arm, I marched the few steps from our rocking chair to the bookshelf. I wasted not a second on the shelf of children’s books where I previously dwelled. This time I went for one of my even less favorite areas – Shakespeare. I am generally no fan of the bard, but I do still have my favorites. Amongst them, The Tempest, which is what I picked up.

Compared to Spurious George, The Tempest was practically a sleeping potion. It took less than two scenes to put my newborn entirely to sleep, entranced by the rhythm of my speech as Prospero enlightened Miranda of her early life in Britain, before they were both marooned on their lonely, sunlit isle.

It was then I decided: babies don’t just need baby books. At least, not at first. Before they can comprehend a story or enjoy a colorful picture, babies aren’t too interested in the narrative. What they want to hear is your voice – that same voice that spoke to them all the time from the otherwise of the wall of their womb.

Our selection of literature was forever altered.

about that name

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You may have noticed that I made it through both my entire baby-naming post as well as my anniversary blog without actually typing out our daughter’s name.

There are some bloggers who reveal every little detail of their children’s lives. Dooce, who I’ve been reading since before she had kids (or even lost her job), famously discusses not only the names but also photos, conversations, personal details, and medical challenges of her two daughters. I feel as though I know everything but their shoe sizes, and could probably find that out with some digging.

I have zero judgement to pass on Dooce or thousands of other bloggers who share the details of their kids’ lives, but I’m not sure it’s for me.

Or, more accurately, I’m not sure it’s for me to plaster her ridiculous exploits all over my blog. Do you need to know all about her pooping? What about the face she makes that bears an uncanny resemblance to Grumpy Cat – should I post a picture? What if my daughter turns into a meme?

At the same time, I don’t want to miss out on all these fun stories! People mommy- and daddy-blog for a reason – because children are insane and unfiltered and hilarious and unreasonable. They’re instant entertainment. I’ve spent the entirety of today mostly just laughing at our baby.

What happens when those two things intersect? When in grade two I read her a post, and she says, “I’d rather you not mention that, father,” and then I say, “Oh, shit, hopefully that’s not retroactive, because otherwise I’ve got about six years worth of posts about you eating things you found on the floor to redact now.” What happens when her classmates begin GOOGLING? Aren’t my own exploits embarrassing enough for the both of us?

Parents have to make a lot of decisions for their children, so usually the consent is theirs. But there are some decisions that it’s not really fair for a parent to make. I wouldn’t permanently alter my daughter’s body, or decide who she’ll eventually marry – those things are for her to determine herself, much later. And, I don’t want to tell her story to the entire internet before she even knows it’s her story to tell.

After much deliberation, OCD Godzilla and I have reached a compromise. I will blog about some of her exploits, but nothing medical or blackmail-worthy, and not by name – especially because it is so unique. Since my wife’s moniker has become the brief E, and since my daughter is the sixth E-lady in a row in her family, she will be known as E Version 6.0, or EV6 for short.

In addition to differentiating her from wife E, this is also a terrible pun about her being a sociopathic X-Files villain and/or one of my least-favorite bands of all time. Also, it neatly resolves the possibility of a horrible nothingness being released across the internet because my baby doesn’t have a name.

Finally, in lieu of her actual name, please accept this comprehensive list of her nicknames to date:

Profussor Wiggles, Dean of Fidgets.

Grumpy Cat. Duckie. Smelly Cat. Little Bug. Frogger.

The Terrorist.

The Fusser. Fussbudget. Fussy Fusser.

Flopsy. T-Rex. Hamster Cage. Grumplepuss. Baby Hiccups. Baby the Hutt. Sidecar.

Captain Poops. Tiny Crazy Person.