FEBRUARY 26, 2026 – Yesterday was another day that saw the yo-yo crawl upandupandup and up and up and up and up and . . . then . . . back . . . down and down and down and downanddownagain. On the upswing—into the early afternoon—I felt as though my cold symptoms were officially in abatement. The terribly irritating cough was a spent force, and being the optimist that I am, I no longer thought I’d be reading about my demise . . . at least its imminence.
Silly me. As the day closed out at midnight, I experienced a return to the unadulterated Cold War. More on that in due course, but before I get too ahead of myself . . .
Under the impression that I was on the mend, even to the point of having removed my full-roll TP “necklace,” charming though it was, I readily signed up for single toddler childcare duty while Beth and Mylène went thrifting with the infant in tow and Byron was at his office. The prospectus seemed straight forward enough: Diogo would be put down for a nap just before the shoppers left, and I could expect him to sleep soundly for an hour plus, allowing me to read, write, bat any legal balls out of my court and into someone else’s or . . . drum roll, drum roll . . . no “or” . . . I wouldn’t be able to take a nap myself.
Oh, and one more thing. Contrary to custom, the little scalawag hadn’t “pooped” yet today. Moreover, when he did finally poop, it was likely—in Mylène’s puckish words—“to be a very big one, that might require dipping his butt into the toilet.” (Only someone from the culture of the bidet would think of that.) When he woke up—after 2 p.m., no doubt—I was to check for a dirty diaper. I wanted to say, “And then what?” but thought the better of doing so. Nevertheless, the question was anticipated.
“You’re okay changing a dirty diaper, yes?” Beth and Mylène asked simultaneously—and pro forma. I appreciated their courtesy, however: I hadn’t changed a diaper—dirty or otherwise since Scalawag’s pappa himself had been that age.
“I take it that you’re planning to be gone longer than his expected nap time,” was my long way of saying, “N-n-n-o-o-o-t exa-a-ctly, but yes.”
“Good,” said Beth. The nuance of language is a beautiful thing.
Minutes later, as I heard the garage door close, I called a quick huddle with myself.
“You do realize what you signed up for,” I said.
“You mean changing a dirty diaper?”
“Uh huh. And did you hear the part about having to dip his butt in the toilet?”
“Did you hear me say ‘okay’ to that?”
“No, but how she put it was kinda funny, don’t you think?”
“Yeah. I might be able to laugh picturing Mylène doing that—and rather artfully, too, just as she does with everything else, but I CANNOT quite imaging myself trying that without creating quite a lot of chaos. I’d use an entire container of Wet Wipes and a whole plastic garbage bag before I’d try rinsing his dirty butt off in the toilet. Though if you think about it, the idea is kinda clever, absent an actual bidet, especially if you provide for flushing two or three times. But that could require some clumsy maneuvering. I mean, as you lowered Dio’s butt into the water, you’d have to use your left foot to flush the toilet, and you wouldn’t wanna slip and fall, because Dio could get hurt in the process—to say nothing of your precious self—and if that were to happen . . . I mean, if Dio, not you (sorry old fella) were injured there would be absolute hell to pay. You’d never live it down. Beth would immediately link it to the incident on that fateful evening when you were carrying nine-month-old Cory down the upstairs hallway to his bedroom to change him before swimming class at the Y and because in the rush of things you hadn’t turned on the hall light, you stumbled into the pressure gate—maintained for his safety, ironically—and fell on top of him, snapping his femur. Plus, back to the whole clever nonsense—I’m sure Mylène was kidding—of cleaning Dio’s dirty bottom by dipping it into the toilet, you’d likely have to flush it lots of times to get to the point where you had the situation even halfway under control. By the time you finished the toilet-washing part of the operation, you’d realize that you’d probably have to give him a bath, and how do you suppose that would go down? And even if you avoided a total disaster in the course of that operation, you’d be faced with a soaking wet bathroom floor that would take a bunch of towels and half a can of Lysol to restore order up to household standards. Oh, and do you know how to operate their newfangled washer and dryer? . . . I thought so.”
After I’d served up that dose of reality, we both knew—I and myself—that the improvised version of a bidet, as suggested by Mylène was either completely ill-advised or a good piece of “clean” scatological comedy. I then assured myself that just as I’d managed with a million other challenges in life, I’d handle the anticipated dirty diaper just fine.
About an hour later, however, I heard Diogo wake up in what I’d observed to be his usual fashion of late, be it in the morning or after a daytime nap. That is, he doesn’t wake up with a smile and cherubic greeting. He wakes up crying. One parent or the other scoops him up, holds him, pats his back and patiently tries to calm him. The method always succeeds . . . eventually . . . but usually not before various tricks of the trade are introduced. Most consist of attempted distractions involving toys, stuffed animals, food, or simply another hug. In my case, I realized that the crying spell was a potentially complicating dynamic with regard to the (inevitable?) dirty diaper.
“I want mamma!” he said through his long locks washed in tears, when he realized Grandpa had come to the rescue. “I want mama!”
The thing about the human nervous system is, well . . . it’s complicated. At two and half years of age, a toddler waking up from a deep sleep apprehends the world in ways a Grandpa can only imagine. Or more precisely, in ways a Grandpa can’t imagine. Calmness, logic, reason, assurances, no matter how confident, simply don’t carry the currency to which most of us are accustomed. Yet, if I reach back into my own memory, I can, in fact, relate to what Dio must experience while dreaming and waking. I have some vivid memories of what those things were like—a repeating dream, for example, featuring my wooden blocks as having acquired human features but ones that frightened me, and when I tried to escape them, I’d wake myself up, and then the blocks turned into huge shapes as tall as my parents, and they started closing in, and well, the only way I knew how to respond was to . . . cry. My parents took turns bringing me down to a soft landing but the desired effect was never immediate.
Anyway, yesterday I gave Diogo calm reassurance while trying to distract him with his two identical pandas. At first this didn’t work, so I gave each panda a silly voice and turned them loose on silly talk with Diogo. In mid breath, a wail turned to a laugh . . . but then back to a wail, like a noisy snowblower that makes you think it’s ready to engage but needs more time to warm up. Despite the promising break in the wail, it gave way to a whole new slogan: “I wanna see my mamma!” he cried.
After several repeats of this chorus, I decided to make some fun with it. “Wuhl,” I said, “Grandpa wants to see . . . a squirrel stick his head into a snowbank!” This elicited a full-on laugh.
“I wanna see my pappa!” the Scalawag said, still in laughter.
“I wanna see the moon jump over the cow!” I said. This sent Diogo into hysterics; proverbial music to the ears of a Grandpa nervous about calming down a crying two-and-a-half-year-old toddler in post-nap distress.
Soon the little guy was out of his “big boy bed” and lining up his bedroom set of construction vehicles. Just then I remembered—the prospect of a dirty diaper. I applied the smell test but fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your view of things), I had enough integrity to know that in the moment, it was an unreliable test, given the lingering effects of the Cold War. Accordingly, I tugged at the back of his trousers and managed to grab the waist band of his diaper and pull it out just far enough to validate a visual test. As matters ensued, the visual evidence collided instantaneously with an irrefutable smell test. The Big One had occurred, and for all I knew, it was all the fault of the “moon jumping over the cow.” Lesson learned.
Time to face the music, as it is said.
The changing table spoke for itself, of course, and the ample supporting paraphernalia—diapers, sanitary wipes, tubes and dispensers filled with all sorts of creams and ointments—were as well organized as everything else in the house. But before I bought into trouble, I decided to consider the operating principles involved in changing a very dirty diaper.
My first thought on this was Sherm the Germ (see my 2/20 post (yet again)). If ever there were a place for Sherm and his vast legion of germs, this immediate operation venue would be the place. For curious readers, given my compromised immunity due to the medication I’m taking—except, ironically, I’ve had to suspend it until I win the Cold War, which gets back to having compromised immunity, I’ve become far more cautious about “germ warfare” than used to be the case. So, the leading principle had to be: Avoid initiating an e coli outbreak. In this regard I was reassured by the fat package of Wet Wipes on the shelf of the changing table.
The second principle, I figured, was a variation of the Hippocratic Oath: “Don’t make matters worse.” In the context at hand, that meant, try to salvage as many articles of clothing as possible, and try even harder to confine all poop to the dirty diaper and Wet Wipes, and eventually, to the diaper trash bin next to the changing table.
The third principle, as far as I could tell—and as far as I could remember from my days of early parenthood—was speed. This imperative was somewhat in conflict with the first two principles, but just as a NASCAR pit crew must be both quick and proficient, a dirty diaper had to be switched out for a clean—and eminently secure one—as fast as possible. Exposed poop can smell up a room faster than a nose can twitch, and if the subject decides to kick and resist, roll and scream because you’ve messed up, so to speak, in the proper removal of the dirty diaper or you haven’t thought ahead and pulled out the new diaper before opening the old one or you’ve put the new one on backwards . . . look out! In very short order, what should’ve been a manageable task could easily become an 800-pound disaster lickin’ its chops in the on-deck circle.
Working in concert with these principles—and humoring Diogo with totally silly talk, such as “Jack and Hill went up the Bill to fetch a pail of pasta, Hill fell up and broke his toe and Jack had hash for dinner.” Soon we were laughing at ourselves laughing. Together we’d conquered the “dirty diaper.” For extra credit I hauled out the now full bag from the dirty diaper bin at the foot of the changing table and even went so far as to replace the old bag with a (scented, I noticed) new one.
Diogo and I would enjoy another hour and a half of quality time together—reading multiple books multiple times—ditto jigsaw puzzles and driving dump trucks and excavators across the freshly cleaned living room rug.
To celebrate a fine day on all fronts, our hosts treated us to a fancy dinner at The Brushmill by the Waterfall restaurant astride the Pattaconk, which runs through Chester. But as has become the pattern of late, I found myself sliding faster and deeper into the . . . Cold War, until at around midnight, I found myself pinned down in the Korean War, in November 1950. (Cont.)
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
