Michael Roebuck's Blog

I had baby duty last night. My oldest son and daughter had a band concert and I really wanted to get a jump on reading Rob Snell's new book, "Starting a Yahoo! Business for Dummies." Rather than attend the concert, I volunteered to stay home with the baby and read my book. How hard could that be?

My wife runs a daycare out of the house and she is an absolute goddess when it comes to children. She's definately the nurturing one of the family. The two older kids are also great with the younger ones and are quick to babysit and watch over them (for a price of course). Because of this, I get to avoid many (all) of the duties that other fathers might have to contend with. Case in point, I had never been left completely alone with the baby before.

Anyway, my wife takes all the kids to the concert except Zoe, our 1 yr. old. I give Zoe a snack and she crawls around at my feet while I start reading. All is good. Then I smell it.

No sooner have I gotten comfortable when Zoe stands up, giggles and smells awful. As if on cue from my wife, who just left, she determines it's time for me finally change one of her diapers. As I said before, I've been extremely lucky so far with the kids and maybe changed a dozen or so diapers in my life. Now, Zoe doesn't just stand there and wait for me to change it, she has to stand up and fall down on her butt a few times as if to make sure she makes a nice mess for me.

No fear though. A box of baby wipes later, she's as good as new. I'm not afraid to change diapers, I just don't have to.

But that's not the problem I was left with. Since she was so messy, I couldn't put her sleeper back on. And since I couldn't find where mommy puts her sleepers, I had to make an executive decision. I found a pair of pants and a onesie. This would do until mommy comes home and finds another sleeper. Zoe and I have a little game we play when I dress her. It's called, "Wiggle around as much as you can and make Daddy really frustrated while he tries to dress you." Basically, the more she wiggles and moves around, the happier she is. I manage to get her clothes on and eventually realize she has a onesie on backwards and snapped over her pants. You think that worried me? Heck No! as far as I was concerened, she was dressed!

We played for a few minutes and then she put me to bed. Rob's book will have to wait a little while longer. A 10 minute job took about an hour.

No regrets though. Kids are pretty cool.