Mall Walker Texas Ranger vs. The Baby Time Machine

How does it work that you wake up at 7am or earlier with the baby and then time vaporizes and it's noon? I'm undressed, unshowered and eating cereal at 11am, then lunch at 3:30, dinner at 5:30 and sleeping at 9pm. With a baby it seems you are in some sort of time machine that scrambles the day. I end up doing everything in the day, but in absolutely no logical order. Some meals are 12 hours apart, others are two hours apart. I'm walking around the house simultaneously cleaning the toilet while eating a bagel and putting on socks. Then, before completing all the tasks you end up getting crapped on or taking a nap. Last weekend I reallized at one point that I was teaching a class at the university in a t-shirt I slept in the night before. It seems to be a cruel joke as our times and schedules are erratic and unaccounted for, and baby forges ahead on here military schedule of eat, crap, eat, sleep, cry, repeat. The baby doesn't care about sunrise, sunset, clocks, solid food or any form of personal hygeine. In hindsight, I probably wouldn't care about any of these things either if someone else was wiping my ass and I was feeding from a boob.

As I tried to get the baby dressed for our big outing to the mall today I was thinking about all the tiny socks strewn about our house. It seems babies have some sort of magical sock ninja escape skill. The socks are big, small, tight or loose and they are out of them like lightning. It's amazing. No adult could get from two socks to zero, without using their hands, as fast as an infant. They are all swaddled up and whamo, socks are off. It's really quite amazing and has nothing to do with anything in the rest of this post, but it's the random thought of the day.

While I am on a tangent, I narrowly missed being projectile crapped on yesterday. After undiapering the beatuful innocent baby I was smiling at her as she seems to enjoy airing out her buttocks when the opportunity presents. Then, unexpectedly, their is a blast of the yellow seedy infant poo that narrowly misses me. Initially, I ran from the changing table and hit the deck as if I was on a ship at war. Upon gathering myself I realized that I was now changing a diaper, cleaning the changing table cover, and changing table cover, cover (again) as well as wiping down the door, the changing table and the wall. My wife was laughing so hard she was crying, or maybe she was just crying, and I was left googling "diaper changing face blast shield." The search did not turn up much, but I have seen dentists wear a similar device. Best advice woud be to not look down the barrel of the gun.

Back to the sotry at hand: We all dream. If you don't, your missing out. Until about 11 days ago I dreamed of climbing and skiing and a variety of other hobbies I have gone over the top in committing my life to. I never dreamed about spending 4 and a half hours pushing a stroller around the Mall of America on a random Wednesday. Today, I lived that dream. Like any good climber gearhead, I left no stone unturned on this venture. I would not be outdone by the other stroller toting wannabes. I would be the best mall baby stroller pusher dude out there. (Please note in the photo above how much I am dominating the lamos behind me at mall walking/stroller pushing.)

I had the new stroller, freshly stripped of its tags, and nubbins still on the inflatable, high performance tires ready to roll. The previous evening I affixed all the necessary add ons to the stroller like a cyclist tuning his machine for the following days race. I picked out a nice outfit for Ella to wear to the mall and dressed myself in the best clothes I had seen in a week or more of being mainly confined to the house. I had the Starbucks cup in hand, the diaper bag buckled to the handlebar, and all other necessities safely stowed in the carrying compartment of the suspension enhanced stroller. And that is how we rolled; and rolled and rolled. The baby was quite pleased and the wife needed to get out of the house badly. It was a great little day out. Tommorrow I will probably lift weights, drink beer and not shave, just to balance everything out. After all, I am a new father and there are a lot of hormones raging in me.