What Happens At 9 Months? Teeth, Annoying Toys, And Massive Poops.

            It has now been nine months since my little minion entered this world, and I have learned a lot about babies and parenting in that short amount of time. I honestly can tell you that almost every book or website my wife and I read was a complete waste of time. In fact, those sources got me even more freaked out about having a mini-version of myself slowly crawling about our un-child-proofed house. There is nothing that can prepare you for the rapid changes that occur to an infant between 0 – 9 months. Only your own wits, advice from your parents (which is usually well intended but completely wrong for your own child), and being able to read your little one like a color-by-numbers book can help you during this ever changing time.

The Teeth Are Coming!

            I would like to take a moment to thank every baby book I read, every bit of advice my wife and I got from anyone, every website, and all the doctors and nurses for not telling us about teething. Holy uncontrollable tantrums Batman! My wife and I both got blindsided by the early onset teething that my minion is enduring. Around the seven-month mark, her first tooth started to come in. We had no idea. None. We were totally unaware that our little girl could get a tooth that early. That small, shitty tooth screwed up everything.

            We had a system going. A good system! Our minion was fine and happy at night. She even had a few nights were she slept for eight straight hours. EIGHT HOURS OF SLEEP! That’s a vacation in parental terms. Those were good nights. But that freaking tooth reared its ugly, enameled head and sent our plans into a tailspin. We are now finally able to comb through the wreckage and assess where we went wrong so this never happens again during our involvement with a teething child. Or at least we can minimize future casualties.

Our minion had to be held constantly, given Tylenol every three hours, and Orajel every four hours to help with the pain and suffering. With all that love and drugs, we were still hard pressed to get a good night where she was sleeping more than three hours a stretch and she needed to be calmed with bottle or boob. Not my boob that would be weird. We had to sleep with her in our bed for two weeks straight because she simply could not calm herself down in her crib. And that’s not easy because you are so scared to move since any motion could crush her.

No one, and I do mean no one, warned us about the hazard that is teething. Everyone was giving us advice on how to start on solid foods, how to change a diaper, how to bathe her. But not one friendly soul told us, “Hey, just a heads up. When she starts teething, it’s going to suck major eggs.” That would have been nice to know. So, to those of you out there; be on your guard, for when teething starts, it’s going to suck major eggs.

Toys With Songs Are Now My Mortal Enemy

            Along with a small infant comes a vast amount of plastic figures and shapes with crazy smiley faces that play music, songs, and annoyingly catchy rhymes. We now have an unstoppable army of stuffed animals, picnic baskets, trains, furniture straight out of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, walkers, activity tables, and countless other creatures that create “mentally stimulating audio.” What they really mean by that is you, as a parent, will be sleeping and suddenly the alphabet song will begin to play in your head on a constant, unstoppable loop sung in the voice of an overly happy yellow chair. And it wakes you up because you think your little one has escaped from her crib and has somehow found her way downstairs to play with her toys. I have actually gone into her room in the middle of the night because of this exact scenario.

            We are not talking about cool music either. We are talking if-I-ever-hear-this-song-again-please-kill-me kind of music. Ariana Grande type music. Every song is high-pitched and excessively happy to the point of me contemplating melting the face of those damn plastic toys with a lighter.

My favorite one is a purple/pink picnic basket that sings about rainbows and sharing. That damn picnic basket plays every time a butterfly button is pushed or its lid is opened. My daughter has learned to operate that lovely toy like a pro. And I can’t get mad about it because getting mad about it is bad for my minion. I have to keep a smile on my face and happiness in my voice. When I go to bed, however, all I hear is a squeaky voice that progressively gets higher singing “Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, it’s a rainbow.” I now officially hate picnic baskets. And to a lesser extent, the spectrum of visible light.

Diapers Cannot Contain Everything

            Anyone that is a parent, or has siblings still in diapers knows this one far too well. Diapers do not work all the time. That is a fact. My minion will be sitting playing, then all of a sudden, grunts. I don’t mean a cute grunt. I mean a full on, just had a Chipotle burrito eight-hours ago and now it needs to come out of me type of grunt. She knows what she’s doing to because she laughs afterwards. As a new Dad, I thought it was funny at first. My bouncing baby girl is grunting when she poops! It is hilarious! Until you realize what is coming out of her little body is roughly a quarter of her body weight and is now seeping into her clothing and getting into the carpet.

            This is a team effort at this point. The load in my minions pants cannot stay put and is shimmying its way up her back. Now what we have is a massively full diaper that has its contents coming out of the three openings (which I call design flaws) due to lack of proper sealing. I can see the brown stains getting larger as I rush my minion up the stairs held straight out from my body like she was some kind of time bomb that I’m trying to get out of my house in time.

            Then the problem arises. If I put her on her changing table, there will be a toxic spill over the changing cover and more of her clothing. But, I am willing to take that chance. So I plop her, gently yet quickly, on her changing table knowing that the changing cover is going to need to be washed immediately afterwards. The button up jumper she was wearing is now a total loss and has a triangle of brown stretching from the top of her butt to about her neck, and the insides of the legs are one continuous line of poop. Unbuttoned, I can easily remove the jumper with minimal effort, but it’s the onsie underneath that is now the problem. There is poop everywhere, and the only way the onesie is coming off is over her head.

            Now the trick is figuring out how to remove the onsie over her head with as little poop coming in contact with her face and hair. So I remove her arms first and roll her shirt over her face so the poop triangle on her back stays there and only there. Now the damaged can be assessed. As a parent, you are hoping that it isn’t as bad as what you know it is going to be, and when that diaper is opened you can only stare at amazement. It is beyond me how a person that small can be responsible for so much ejected mass. And it is everywhere! Where the hell does it come from? It makes me think that small humans have a special organ that only stores poop, and then when they get out of diapers is magically disappears.

You need to be on your toes too, because I found that my eight-month old will grab and pull her diaper up to their face. That was a fun lesson to learn, as my minion was able to drag a completely full diaper up her entire right side, covering her from but to arm pit in a thick brown paste. We now double-team these massive deuces in a two-on-one handicapped match. One parent takes the arms and is on distraction duty, while the other is on clean up. I seem to be getting the short end of the stick on this and find myself on clean up duty far more than I would like.

            I don’t know why it happens, but there have been several of these episodes in my house recently. My wife and I can only laugh at this because it is so ridiculous to us that it takes two people to control a small 17 pound baby so she doesn’t get her poop all over herself. I am now waiting for poop to be thrown in the middle of the night. The reason why I am waiting for that is because my brother and I had a massive poop fight when we were 2½ and 1½ years old. That should be a fun experience before heading to work.

            There are so many small moments as a parent that you look back just laugh. The teething will be with us for a while longer. The songs will be with me forever. Hopefully, the pooping incidents will decrease with age. I’m just enjoying the ride at the moment, and the sleep. Mostly the sleep.