I’m talking about the bathroom. We’ve all been there. But have we all been there with a freshly crawling baby? It’s a super-heroic feat in itself. It was also one of those things that no one warned me about before becoming a dad. I had to learn it the hard way. So IncrediDads-to-be, this post is my gift to you.
In the old days, my morning routine revolved around the three S’s (Shit, Shower, Shave). By the time I finished, my morning coffee was brewed. On a good day, I even had time to sit and enjoy it before running out the door. These days, most of that routine is long gone. Every thing is fluid now. We spend most mornings home together, so I usually find myself adjusting to his routine. It’s easier to grab a shower while he’s taking a nap. And yes, I do shave in the shower. All the precious seconds I save doing small tasks like that add up to a minute or even two that I get to enjoy my coffee before he wakes up. Some days it doesn’t work out, and I wind up microwaving the same cup of coffee three times and still manage to drink it cold. My point is that two of my three S’s are flexible. The other one, not so much. When I’m crowning, there’s no way to reschedule that during nap time. So, I have no choice but to bring him into the throne room with me.
Despite what I’ve said before about the bathroom being a family board room, I had some stage fright the first couple of times I had to do this. It wasn’t because I had an audience though his giggling does increase the awkwardness of the situation. It was because I had left the door open. He had started to wiggle around that way as soon as I put him down. “Don’t even think about it buddy.” I warned. Naturally, he waited until I was mid-loaf to scoot just out of my reach and out the door. You can imagine my squatting posture as I waddled after him. After that incident, the door remained shut at all times.
So, now I’ve confined him in there with me. This incarceration gives him temporary insanity as he becomes a maniacal super-villain. He crawls from wall to wall, pulls all the socks out of our closet, stacks up and knocks down a tower of toilet paper, and occasionally babbles at me in his baby-talk. I assume he’s telling me to pinch it off. I call it temporary, because as soon as I open that bathroom door he’s all smiles and giggles again.
On the plus side, between sleeping in a closet and this, he’ll never have a shortage of stories to tell his therapist.