Daddy Days: The Adventures of Sir Baby Diapers
There’s a consistency in a child’s personality that’s traceable from toddlerhood to teen. Especially tracing backward, it’s easy to see how a 12-year-old who doesn’t like loud noises, for example, is still the 2-year-old covering his ears when a fire engine goes by.
And while there certainly are traits and characteristics that can be traced, it doesn’t mean all traits of your 2-or 3-year-old will make it to older childhood or adulthood (thank goodness). We’ve seen a 2-year-old go from earning the nickname the Incredible Hulk due to his over-the-top reactions, to growing into the most self-controlled of his brothers.
We’ve seen a 4-year-old bruiser of a boy change into a sensitive 7-year-old who is incredibly gentle with babies and animals. I guess what I’m saying (to myself) is there is still hope for the 3-year-old.
That boy is in a world of his own. It’s partly where he falls in the birth order, partly personality, and partly a mystery, but he’s following his own path in a way that’s unique in our family's history. The best way I can explain this is by characterizing his life as (clears throat) the Adventures of Sir Baby Diapers.
He doesn’t wear diapers anymore, but the way he would run around in just a diaper and crash into things or people, like Don Quixote charging windmill “giants,” is the perfect demonstration of the sort of internal quest he appears to be on.
The problem is, Sir Baby Diaper’s quests are often problematic. Sir Baby Diapers wants yogurt-covered raisins so he raids the pantry. When caught, Sir Baby Diapers seems to think his self-declared knighthood should more than adequately explain and excuse his actions.
Sir Baby Diapers is in search of his shoes, so he throws anything and everything out of his path to find them. This quest involves pulling items out of the freezer. Why? I can’t venture to say. I haven't the slightest idea. But to Sir Baby Diapers there is no other way to find his shoes. And perhaps he has stored them in there before.
Sir Baby Diapers loves to take bubble baths. Afterward, he wraps up in his hooded bath towel and says he’s “so cold” as he walks down the hall to his room. However, as soon as he gets in his room he drops the towel, jumps up on his bed, and stands on the foot of the bed hidden behind his dresser. When the next person enters the room, Sir Baby Diapers jumps out, butt naked, shouting, “I scare you!” Such are the vicissitudes of Sir Baby Diapers.
In his quests, and also just whenever, Sir Baby Diapers spouts off the most ridiculous things with a level of conviction 3-year-olds don’t typically have. He was watching the World Series with me when an unusual situation occurred. An inside fastball almost hit the batter, but due to the way the batter tried to avoid getting hit, it glanced off the knob of the bat just beneath the batter’s hands.
As the player stumbled backward and sort of shook out his stinging hands, Sir Baby Diapers grandly announced, “Welcome to America!”
I was so baffled by this strange outburst I called in an older brother to try and find out what he was talking about. After some explaining, I think the older brother figured out what happened. There had been a commercial for Applebees that was playing pretty much every commercial break and at one point the voiceover guy, somewhat ostentatiously said, “You’re welcome, America.”
It appears Sir Baby Diapers was trying to mimic this when the player on the team we weren’t rooting for had the ball bounce off the knob of the bat. Which gives some insight into how perceptive he is about tone and why you want to be on his good side.
All this is to say, this combination of windmill chasing and precocity is unprecedented in our family. And it’s allowed Sir Baby Diapers to create a world that’s all his own. One thing about all this I do understand is, in his world, the rest of us are the inexplicable ones.
Harris and his wife live in Pflugerville with their seven children. Please email comments or suggestions for future columns to thoughtsforcaleb@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Daddy Days: The Adventures of Sir Baby Diapers
