Diaper Acrobatics

Boy, babies are SMART! Without even having had experience with it, they know that mats are for gymnastics and as far as they are concerned, their diaper changing pad is one of them. I become a blithering idiot when it comes to changing my child’s diaper.  As soon as I think I have a system down, he learns a new move and now the diaper won’t stay under him because now knows the arc your back to pick your butt off the mat move, or the throw both legs to one side to corkscrew your body around thus resulting in the diaper being positioned backwards trick. I sometimes feel like one of those guys on the movies that turn to just duct taping the diaper on because I lack any grace at all in the process.

A couple tricks I have up my sleeve when it comes to applying diapers:

• I keep a squeak toy next to the changing pad so as to try to distract him with the noisy chew toy and get him to focus as much energy as possible on fitting the entire giraffe (yes, it’s a Sophie) in his mouth.
• While I am changing his diaper I get right up in his face and sing some silly song or make some ridiculous noise so that he is so perplexed with that this idiot is from whence he came that he is stunned into stillness.
• Though he is learning how to Houdini out of it, I have, on many occasions, locked his legs into place by not taking his pants completely off so that they become like shackles around his ankles.

When all else fails and the mess is just too much to handle, I call for back-up. Then a really feel like a failure. I mean, it’s just a little baby and his diaper, right? Right.