ON THIS BEGINNING of Thanksgiving Week I want you to read this column with visions of gooey yellow butternut squash and delicious turkey stuffing lathered with brown gravy and giblets. I want you to think of every tasty and wonderful and colorful foodstuff that defines our feast of Thanksgiving, in which we give thanks for the bounty surrounding our lives.
I want you to imagine all these dancing sugarplum and candycane images as I the describe the joy my family has experienced since the birth of our granddaughter, the most beautiful baby girl in the world, a princess-in-waiting to be known henceforth as Pooperella.
Pooperella is indeed the fairest of them all. Her porcelain snow white skin blushed pink in all the right places makes her look like a spokesinfant for a brand name product like Huggies, Pampers, or if measured by quantity, Depends. Because our little Pooperella can fill a diaper in ways that would gag a Gerber Baby.
Which is not to say that Pooperella is stinky in the traditional sense. And by that I mean noticeable from across the room. In fact, I have had Pooperella on my lap and subtley detected the piquant odor of "unfreshness" and then happily begun to act of changing her only to utter, "Oh, my GAWD!" upon unveiling the mother load in her diapy. And this from a baby yet to eat solid food.
The colors are kalidoscopic. The impact of the odor just short of smelling salts. The actual poop distance traveled is roughly in the range of from the ankles to the ears. And the whole time, while in the background people shout, "Don't step in that!" she looks like the most beautiful baby in the world as her mother or grandmother (I always bail when it comes to cleaning the yellow creases of her Michelin Tire Man legs.) wipe those creases clean while cooing what a wonderful baby she is.
These are the sorts of intimate joys that usually remain the private province of close family members, but ever since Pooperella's mother returned to work this remarkable baby has been the talk of the infant daycare workers, where she is not only the staff's odd-on favorite to be crawling and walking before any of the other eight-month olds, but she is the only one whose diaper needs to be changed five times a day.
And not just for number one.
I fear the daycare worker's nickname for our little princess may be different than ours.
Poopinstein, perhaps.
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