As of today, our second daughter has been alive on this planet for five weeks. I’ve been on parental leave that whole time, and it has really flown by. Having a kid at the end of the year is really disorienting, since time already feels more compressed than usual with all the holidays packed into the final quarter of the American calendar.
But it’s also a bit boring, since most of our time has been spent at home, overseeing the baby’s three main activities (sleeping, eating, pooping). Today, against my better judgment (meaning that of my wife), I ventured with our baby out into the Great Unknown to shop for a new e-bike at REI.
I felt good going into this. The ice axe door handles at the store’s entrance reinforced the feeling that life is an adventure, and here I was, seizing the moment. I had a backpack full of supplies, namely, two bottles full of expressed milk, a change of baby clothes, wipes, burp cloths. I was ready to climb Mt. Everest. Or buy a bike. Whatever came my way.
But first, as the saying goes, coffee. The NoMa REI had me covered with an in-house La Colombe. Only a few sips in, however, my daughter began to wail uncontrollably. I tried picking her up to see what she needed, and was rewarded with a handful of the poopiest baby I have ever encountered in my entire existence. The mess was incredible. Her onesie was 90% engulfed.
In the coffee shop’s bathroom I did what I could to swab up the worst of the disaster, silenting ruing the obvious folly of ignoring my wife’s warning that this exact thing would happen. That’s when I discovered the change of clothes I’d packed was from two weeks–and one whole size–ago. She’d grown so much since then I could only get her lower half in.
That’s how I found myself in La Colombe, holding a half-naked, screaming baby, waiting for our four year old’s swim lesson to end so I could be picked up and put out of my misery.
How was your Sunday? Better I hope? Because I am never leaving my house again.