Baby Steps

Today is FatherHood Friday over on dad-blogs. If you haven't yet joined dad-blogs, go do so here. It's a great community forum of Dad Bloggers, and a few Moms too. There are some great articles to educate, entertain and provoke conversation.

I am obviously not a father. I did however, have a father and am married to a man who is a father. So, I too have enough experience to speak about Fatherhood, from a viewpoint of Mom and Daughter.

As with Motherhood, Fatherhood is not not something that you are born knowing how to to do. Some parts of it come naturally, like the love you feel for your offspring. Other aspects, are things that you learn on the fly along the way. Mistakes are bound to be made and it is in learning from those mistakes and rectifying the aftermath of them that you grow into becoming a good father.

Let me give you an example of how Mr. Weasel grew and learned in the early weeks of fatherhood.

Our Eldest was only about 10 weeks old. We both loved her dearly. I was her main caretaker as a nursing SAHM. Mr. Weasel was involved mainly with cuddle duty, and lots of it there was. He would help in all areas that he could, like sterilizing pacifiers, going out to buy diapers, occasionally changing them and helping out at bath time. I took the bulk of hands on baby needs like feeding, diapers and dressing.

One weekend, friends of ours came to stay with us and visit. A great couple who had yet to jump off the cliff of parenthood. Saturday morning I took the opportunity to enjoy a long hot shower while I had 3 other seemingly competent adults to care for my baby girl while I indulged in this special treat. Over the past few weeks, all of my showers had been extremely rushed, as Eldest would cry the second I started running the water.

I had only been enjoying the steamy hot water running over my tired back for about 2 minutes when I heard a blood curdling scream from the living room. Within 10 seconds the bathroom door came flying open and Mr. Weasel jumps into My shower fully clothed and screaming as he pushed his way under the shower head.

As soon as he is able to speak, he yells "she shit on me!!!!!! I was changing her diaper on the couch and she shit on me!!!!! It's all over everywhere!!!!". "Where is she?" is my first question. "She's still on the couch". "You left her on the couch? To roll off and fall??????" was all I could care about.

I grabbed my robe and rushed to the living room, where I find our dear friends had finished diapering her and picked her up to safety. I found 1 tiny tiny smudge of baby poo on the blanket that she had been laying on for her diaper change. Furious, I storm back into the bathroom to rant at Mr. Weasel for taking care of himself before his daughter, leaving her endangered on the couch and taking away my one small luxury of a hot peaceful shower.

Once he had the opportunity to reevaluate his actions, via his wife and the mother of his child spelling out for him everything he had done wrong (I'm helpful like that) in no uncertain terms. Mr. Weasel realized the errors of his ways and how he should handle this situation differently in the future.

This was both a learning and growing experience for him as a father. I can't say that I never had another shower that was abruptly interrupted, but it was never again with this circumstance.
From then on, he brought poop laden child to hand to me in the shower.

Baby steps.