Shit.

You parents already know this, but for everyone else, here is a little fact.

Baby shit stinks. Bad. I mean really really bad.

One of the lies that every baby book perpetuates is that you will get use to the smell of baby feces. The worst offenders make it seem that after a while you will get used to the smell and actually enjoy it.

This is a lie.

There is part of me that is worried that the Apocalypse is nigh and that global warming is the proof. If Jesus is the personification of beauty on Earth and the Anti-Christ is his opposite, then when the infant child of Satan takes his first shit, it will be shit so shitty that the global temperatures will rise as a result.

Now I will admit that fatherhood has brought my tolerance to all things shit related to a level that I never could have imagined. Tonight is a good example.

It all started with giving Sophie a bath. Imagine if you will, Sophie playing wonderfully in her tub, quacking at the rubber ducky and otherwise being the cute bundle of fat that she is. After a while, she is standing up holding onto the faucets and making her little proclamations, when she begins to do "The Grunt".

I don't know if all babies do this, but when our little Sophie decides to answer nature's call, she contorts her face into a M.C. Escher painting and begins grunting in a way that can only be described as metaphysical.

Anyway, she is standing there holding onto the faucet and begins "The Grunt". I immediately grab her from the tub because I have already learned this lesson and really don't feel like sanitizing the tube for all traces of fecal coliform. As I pull her to my chest and head to her changing table, I notice the dooce is already beginning its descent.

I am no dummy. I know that Newton explained the laws of gravity in 1687, so I swiftly flip my precious daughter onto her stomach with her ass stinking in the air and make for the changing table. Luckily Anna is in the other room and her assistance helps makes short work of the situation.

Later in the evening Anna goes out drinking for Stephanie's birthday (Happy Birthday Stephanie!) and Sophie and I have a night together. She is her wonderful self, playing wither her toys and reading her books, but when she crawls over into my lap with a huge "shit eating grin" and a smell that would peel paint, I knew that our adventures for the night were far from over.

Here is a little more information for you non-parents. Diapers are merely the manufacturers' recommendation as to where poop can go, not an actual catch-all as they are advertised to be.

Sophie had given me the present of one of her uber-poops. The kind that I haven't seen in months. I open up the diaper and see a line of solidified shit that runs from her privates to her mid-back. The best description for a dump like this is comparing it to the grout between floor tiles. In this situation there is only one thing you can do, grab a baby-wipe and start mining. The worst part is that you have to make sure that you get it out of EVERY crack and crevice. I don't know how much therapy Sophie is going to need because of all of this, but I hope the doctor offers group rates, because I am going to need it as well. Of course she finds all of this funny as hell, because the moment I undo the diaper she begins giggling and kicking her legs like a synchronized swimmer.

The moral of the story is that you will do things for your children that are disgusting on a Lovecraftian level, but you do it because you love them.

And that baby shit stinks.