#055 In which our hero doesn't drop the baby.

I took my daughter to daycare this morning. This is notable only in that The Scientist usually handles this task, but couldn't today because she had to be all scientific extra early this morning. So I had to do it.

You have to understand that my morning job is usually to sleep in later than my wife, and wave bye-bye to the little girl as her mother hustles her out the door. Sometimes, she is tossed into bed with me with a "Can you watch her a minute while I get ready?" and I groggily try to keep her from crawling head-first off the bed and smashing her nugget. And, there have even been rare occasions when I got up and changed her diaper before handing her off again.

But not today. Oh no.

Today, it was all on me. But, I have to say, the little girl went easy on me and slept in to 7am. Lily, your daddy loves you for not getting up at 5am on his watch. I'm especially proud that I got her up, changed, and not only dressed, but dressed in a cute outfit! An outfit that I put together myself -- thank you very much! -- not one that was laid out the night before. You see, my luck in assembling cute outfits in the past has been extremely limited. I've matched green and purple, which I really thought looked okay at the time, but was pointed out to me later -- not so much.

Anyway.

I got her dressed, and she played quietly while I took my shower. While I toweled off she was making the most adorable faces at me, so for a good five minutes we looked at each other; her face scrunched up and me doing the same, saying things like "Who are you looking at?! Huh?! Yeah, you!"

Then I realized that she was filling her pants.

So I took her upstairs and cleaned up that mess. Speaking of which: Lily, honey, you don't need to evacuate the entire contents of your bowels at every opportunity. Pace yourself. More importantly, save the worst of it for when you're at daycare. That's what we pay the nice lady for.

Fortunately, the little girl eats breakfast at daycare, so I didn't have to fiddle around with finding food and trying to get it down her piehole. Incidentally, we're trying like hell to teach her that word. Piehole. Hopefully before Christmas, so we can unleash it on the in-laws. This results in a lot of "Lily? Lily, where's your piehole? Where's your piehole?" And me and The Scientist frantically pointing to our own mouths. "That's right! That's your piehole!"

I finally bundled her up and strapped her into the car and dropped her off at daycare. And I got there before 8am, which I think is fantastic. Granted, it was 7:58am or so, but that's still before eight.

But, the important thing is that I accomplished all of the above without incident. It still freaks me out sometimes that there's this little human living with us, and we're completely responsible for her upbringing. I mean, I was left completely alone with her and tasked with getting her -- clean, dressed, and in one piece -- to daycare. And it wasn't a big deal. It's nothing I've never done before, and I didn't think twice about getting it done.

Somehow, in-between all the diaper changes, trips up and down the stairs, wiping of the mouth and picking up toys, something strange happened.

I became a dad.