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David Spates Have you sniffed her pants lately? I had a hard time deciding whether this week's
column should be serious or silly. Like my fellow Americans,
I'm still feeling wounded and angry. With that being said, I decided to do a silly
column this week -- not because I think the country is ready
to move on to other things, but because I feel like victims of
this horrific tragedy would want us to smile again. If I were
one of the victims, I know I'd want my friends and relatives
to smile as soon as possible. Please don't mope around too much
on my account. Just because we begin to enjoy life once again
doesn't mean we forget what happened. We will never forget. What
happened on Sept. 11 is a turning point in American history and
culture, and it's not something we can shrug off in a few days
or months or even years. So onward we go. There's nothing like a baby to cheer you up.
Well, let me be more precise. There's nothing like my
baby to cheer me up -- I have no delusions that everyone
is so enthusiastic about my baby as I. There is much about caring for a little baby
that I did not expect, and I'm certain there are infinitely more
surprises on the horizon for the next, say, 25 years or so. But
of all the things that have caught me off guard in the past five
months, probably some of the funniest have been the sentences
coming out of my mouth. You parents know that when you're dealing
with an infant, you say things that would sound utterly ridiculous
under any other set of circumstances. "Have you sniffed her pants lately?" Now there's a sentence that, had I not had a baby,
I'm fairly certain never would have come up in conversation --
ever. We adults almost never sniff one another's pants, but a
parent sniffing an infant's pants is literally an everyday occurrence.
Make that an every hour occurrence. The nose knows, and new parents
like me learn quickly that you can discern diaper status with
a simple whiff. "She's 5 months old." When do we stop counting months and start counting
years? Is there a generally accepted age at which this happens?
I can understand counting months until the kid is 2 years old,
maybe, but after that it just seems odd, and yet I know plenty
of parents who say, when asked how old their child is, "She's
27 months old." To me, that's a sign that those parents
don't want their child to stop being a baby. Perhaps they think
that if they continue to count months rather than years, their
little baby will never grow up, buy a bikini, ask for a car,
and introduce her parents to Spike, her prom date. Me, I'm 375
months old, but I don't look a day over 360 months old. My wife
is 381 months old. I've always been a sucker for older women. "Can you help me get that carrot out
of her nose?" I said this Thursday,
and I started to giggle immediately. Without a baby in the equation,
that's a sentence you will never hear. Of course, the carrots
in question were of the pulverized Gerber variety. Apart from
Jamie Farr, you won't find too many folks who need to concern
themselves with nasal veggies. Charles De Gaulle probably could
have snorted a salad, if the spirit had moved him. "She's been awake for three hours.
I wonder what's wrong." Only
cats nap more than babies. It's really a tough life babies have,
isn't it? Wake up from your nap, someone changes your diaper
and then shoves mushy carrots up your nose, you play with your
toys for a little while and then, utterly exhausted from the
past hours' events, you retire to your crib for another nap,
after which you begin the process again until nighttime when
you go down for a nice, long slumber. With a life so demanding,
it's no wonder she grins all the time. Enjoy it now, kid. It
doesn't last long. "Look at those chubby little legs! How cute!" Indeed, chubby little legs on a baby are cute. However, babies are the only ones whose legs we can openly and publicly describe as chubby. Tell anyone between the ages of 4 and 104 that their legs are chubby, and you had better be prepared to explain yourself. "Don't put that (fill in the blank)
in your mouth." Anna's 5 months
old, and she doesn't understand what I'm saying, but I say it
anyway. It's a babies-only kind of sentence -- I don't know a
single adult who has an insatiable desire to put a stapler in
his mouth. Babies, on the other hand, are different. Anything
they can lift they put in their mouths, and if I didn't have
a baby I suspect I could have lived my entire life without asking
someone else to get the sweat-soaked sock out of her mouth. These are just a few of the sentences I can't believe I've actually said, and I'm just a few months in. More absurdities are no doubt on the way. I can't wait to utter phrases like "get the book out of your pants," "don't put the kitty in the lettuce crisper," and "are you absolutely sure that's really chocolate?" · · · |