Poop.

Nathan successfully freed himself from the shackles of his diaper the other morning. What summoned us to his room were his desperate screams for attention, then for help.

Heather got to him first and calmly called to me, "Doug, you should come see this." Then in a funny tone she said, "Nathan has learned how to take off his diaper."

My heart skipped a beat at that announcement. Somewhat hesitantly I climbed the stairs, crossed the landing and pushed open Nathan's bedroom door to assess the damage. As the door disturbed the air in the room, a great blast of humid sour odor escaped past me into the hallway. All my senses told me, “Run!”

I confess I would have run, leaving the whole mess to Heather if not for my curiosity. I didn't want to "experience" this milestone, but I did want to see what my son had done with his newfound freedom from loinal bondage.

The first thing I noticed after the smell was that Nathan had stopped crying and had begun laughing. He was standing up grasping the bars of the crib, a little T-shirt, not quite long enough to cover his little penis and bottom, was all he was wearing. He had a strange look in his eye and I swear he was reveling in the glory of the moment. “I’ll show you not to come get me when I call,” he seemed to say with his drunken laugh. What most supported that impression was the smear of poop on his face dangerously close to his devilish little grin and his evil eye.

If this experience is any indication of Nathan's nature, never in his life will he be heard to say, "I wish I had..." or "I should have..." Oh no, Nate is definitely going to be a Carpe Diem kind of guy. In the approximately 3 minutes of uncharacteristic silence, which we knew better than to ignore, between the end of his "come get me" cries and the beginning of his intense "HELP ME!!” cries, Nathan had created a masterpiece. Using his still warm earthtone fingerpaints he had gone to work.

There was poop smeared all over the bars of the crib as well as on Nate’s face body and fingers (Interestingly, there really wasn’t any on his bottom or his diaper). The dark Picasso-like strokes were expertly applied to everything: the light wood bars, his red and white checkered sheets, the cute bumper pads with the little animals on them, and his soft fluffy pillow. What was most impressive (or disgusting), though, was the canvas-mattress under his feet.

The art medium he was using was the perfect consistency for finger painting and just as fingerpaints would be slippery under your feet, so was Nathan’s “paint.”
As we stood in shock--Nathan laughing nervously now--we couldn’t help but join him as we watched his chubby little feet slowly sliding out from under him across the canvas; moving towards the lower center of the worn mattress. In a strange vacuum of time, we watched as Nathan, in frustration, repeated several times the act of spreading his paint with his foot, slowly losing his center of balance then struggling to get his foot back under himself. Then we noticed Nathan’s subtle signature: There was a line of wet carpet perfectly perpendicular to the crib, nearly three feet from the bars—Brilliant!

What is so ironic about the whole experience is that just before putting Nathan in bed the previous night he had actually tried to take his diaper off. We couldn’t find any clean pajamas or onesies, so we just put him in a T-shirt and tossed him in bed anyway. Who could have imagined what he would create when given the opportunity to shine!