Family bonding and a diaper diatribe

We had the most amazing weekend up north, and I'm not just saying that because I'm in the deeply thrilling delirium of a second week of spring break. OK, maybe I am, but it was still a fantabulous adventure. We hung out, went for walks, cooked fabulous food and watched our darling C. play and wave. She waved at us. She waved at her reflection in the windows. She waved at the stools and the counter and the bed. She is indiscriminate. She just waves all the time, and it is heart-meltingly adorable because she smiles at the same time and sometimes even hisses or makes her "ffff" noise. I'm not sure why, but it's pretty damn cute. She was uninterested in the lake completely and fell asleep whenever we walked her up and down the deserted shore, but I loved imagining our future trips when she will walk alongside us in the sand fascinated by every wave, every rock and probably every dead fish. There isn't much to do up north, especially in the winter when antique stores and sub shops are closed but all the bars are still open, but it was great to get away and stay in a house that is clutter free and beautiful, its huge windows looking out on Lake Huron. We mostly sat around and stared at one another, hopelessly in love and were grateful we didn't need to Swiffer under the couch, sort our CDs, reorganize the cabinets or pay our taxes, all stuff waiting for us at home.

Now I don't want to jinx anything, but Clementine turned a big corner on food this weekend. No, she's not letting us feed her with a spoon, and despite my many efforts to do so and tantalizing variety of both homemade and store-bought purees, she'll still squirm and clench her lips together, maybe allowing for a single bite to penetrate the perimeter before spitting it out emphatically. But if we let her feed herself, she's golden, voracious even. We didn't have a high chair with us over the weekend, and were she a spoonfed baby we probably would have been OK with the Bumbo seat. As it was, we were not OK. Everything she heartily enjoyed--avocado, sweet potatoes, beets, cheese, pita bread, etc.--ended up smashed into her pants and shirts. Smarter parents would have fed her naked (that is with her naked, not us), but as we have proved many times, we know no such smarter parents and took her again and again to the Bumbo fully clothed to ingest and wear equal amounts of the food we served.

This is where my diaper diatribe begins. I was psyched to see her eat and thought maybe it would help her sleep better/longer, too. What I hadn't anticipated was the poop--the lack of it and the stink of it when it finally came. I've not talked too much about poop in the past because, frankly, I can't get too ramped up about it. Some moms turn into one-track CDs, spinning the same tune of poop this and poop that throughout the newborn months, but after the initial journaling and counting the pediatrician recommended (lasted about 3 days for me), I didn't think much about it. Books and nurses talked about those early "sweet-smelling breastmilk poops" like something beautiful and magical, and I kind of thought they were crazy--baby shit doesn't smell good--it's shit. But whatever, it wasn't like it was toxic. I could deal with it. We had our daily blowouts, ruining whatever outfit was first in the rotation that day, but most of the time poop was dealt with quietly and quickly. This weekend, however, after much experimental eating, darling C. didn't poop. We waited and waited for the daily blowout, but nothing came. We waited overnight, gave her more delicious goodies including tons of breastmilk, and no poop. And then on Sunday it happened--she pooped the nastiest, thickest, stinkiest paste I could never have anticipated coming out of someone so beautiful. And since then she has been farting (not pooping, thank heavens for I fear what I will face) and it stinks! I mean really stinks, so much so that I'm afraid people will start thinking it's me. Will I look like a total asshole if I start saying "Oh, that was my kid" to the supermoms at Target? So while I'm happy she's eating and enjoying food (I put some lasagna in her little feed bag last night and she LOVED it), this whole new frontier on the diaper fronts sucks. I wish someone had warned me. Oh, right, I guess they did. Yuck.