PARTSCH: Daughter eases frustration with a simple smile

I was all ready to walk out my front door but my daughter had apparently made other plans that particular morning.
Earlier this week, I had woken up in plenty of time to get myself ready for work, to get my soon-to-be one-year-old daughter Hattie packed up for day care and even found time to make my wife Tina a pot of coffee before she left for her morning shift.
I started out the morning by putting on the coffee pot while my wife took a shower and then I made my daughter’s bottle. I went and woke up our baby girl, changed her diaper, let her laugh at the stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling in her room and brought her downstairs so she could take said bottle. As my wife headed off to work, I went ahead and changed my daughter into her outfit for the day (picked out by my wife the night before of course).
With my daughter fed, cleaned and dressed, I put her in her bouncy lion in the living room (which has become more of a play area for my daughter than anything resembling a living room) and proceeded to get ready myself. I changed my clothes, ate a quick breakfast, let our basset hound Tucker (or as my daughter calls him Ucka) outside and fed him, and then proceeded to pack up my daughter’s bag for day care.
Enough formula and rice cereal for three bottles. Check.
Two pair of shoes, several snacks, backup outfit and diapers. Check.
A pacifier and noise-making toy for my wife to give our daughter when she picks her up from day care. Check.
I was feeling so confident in that moment that I even decided to start a large load of my daughter’s clothes, that way my wife and I would have most of her outfits ready to go for our holiday vacation to Arkansas this weekend.
All in all, I was feeling pretty good about myself and then it happened.
As I grabbed her car seat and began to walk over to my daughter bouncing joyfully in her bouncy lion, the smell hit me like a sledgehammer. Not only had my daughter promptly filled her diaper in the 15 minutes or so that she was in the lion, it had gone everywhere. Down her legs, in the bouncy lion and somehow up her back, which puzzled me greatly.
So I had to take her out of her outfit, give her practically another bath, use Shout on the outfit and on the cover of the bouncy lion, then put all of that in the washer and rewash the entire load of clothes.
In the process, I had gotten poop on my own shirt which meant I had to change it as well. I mean I could have come to work with a poop-covered shirt but I am pretty sure my fellow Gazette coworkers would not have appreciated that.
I then find a different dress to put her in but yours truly can’t figure out how to put it on. Side note: There is a reason why my wife picks our daughter’s outfits. If it was up to me, she would wear a onesie all day, every day.
I finally found another outfit and then put my once again clean soon-to-be one-year-old in her car seat. Before leaving our home, I quickly Lysol-sprayed the living room.
A once fairly easy-going morning had quickly turned into one of frustration. All that good time I had made was now gone, ensuring I would be about 15 minutes late arriving at my own job.
But yet none of that mattered.
Because when I pulled up moments later at day care and opened the door to get my daughter out of the truck, she smiled at me and then let out the most adorable laugh. It was as if my daughter instinctively knew that her daddy needed that.
And just like that, all that frustration from a morning being derailed was washed away.
That is the thing that people forget to tell you about when you are about to become a parent for the first time. As a new parent you will receive a plethora of advice ranging from how to feed the child, what clothes to buy, what bottles you should use, what day care to enroll her in, how to deal with colic in the middle of the night, how to cure teething pain, and so forth and so forth.
That loving advice is all good and well and appreciated, even when most of it is unsolicited.
But what everyone forgets to tell you is how your child is the most absolute and wonderful blessing that you will ever receive in this life. How your child’s laughter or smile will melt away frustration or sadness, how when she cries in the middle of the night and you try desperately to figure out how to fix it your heart breaks a little bit until you do and how you never will feel stronger as a man, when you sit in your recliner holding your daughter as she falls asleep safe and sound in your arms.
So yeah my morning earlier this week, like dozens upon dozens in the past year, didn’t go exactly how I planned it. But it ended up going exactly how I needed it to and I wouldn’t change that for anything.