You are now free to wake up the baby

On Friday Penny took her first airplane ride, transcontinental to boot. With much anticipation we planned this journey. We chose an outfit that made changing easy; she wore socks that don’t fall off. We arrived at the terminal well in advance. And Penny did just fine…she slept during boarding and takeoff and didn’t seem bothered by the bumpy acceleration.

[Sidebar: training your child for a bumpy flight. Step 1, purchase a Mini Cooper S shortly before you discover you are about to have a child. Step 2, transport the child solely in the Mini from in utero through birth. Step 3, be sure to choose routes through the District of Columbia that haven’t seen resurfacing in lo these many years.]

So there we were, ensconced in seats 26B and C, with Penny blissfully unaware that she was hurtling at somewhere just under mach 1 to visit her grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousin, and various other relatives and associates in California. We started to think, “maybe this won’t be so bad, maybe she’ll even sleep through the whole thing!” Until the cabin speakers leapt into action, following a loud “Bing!” with, “Thank you for choosing American Airlines, soon we will reach our cruising altitude of 36,000 feet. We will begin our inflight beverage service as soon as the captain removes the seat belt sign...” and so on, and so on.

They had Penny at the Bing.

The rest of the flight continued in a similar vein – Penny would fall asleep, they would make an announcement and wake her up. This is not to say that she didn’t do a great job. In fact, she acquitted herself perfectly, with only one grumpy period during which mom and dad were interminably boring.

If Samuel Jackson had been sitting in 26A, he probably would have surmised, "I’m sick and tired of these [BING!] announcements on this [BING!] plane!”

Little Drummer Girl

The year is drawing nigh; the season of goodwill is upon us. The new year brings the promise of new beginnings, hope, and daycare.

On January 3, Penny will begin daycare as mom and dad return to their regular work schedules. Anticipating a new morning routine, we have started to ease Penny into a different sleep schedule, and learning from past mistakes we have begun early.

This week Penny started sleeping in her crib full time. Previously she slept in a “sidecar” position: in a bassinet on mom’s side of the bed. This served the dual purposes of making midnight feedings a little easier and giving mom the opportunity to peek on Penny while she slept. We became accustomed to her stirrings and baby coos, but they were admittedly difficult to sleep through.

Now that Penny is in her crib, her nighttime stirrings are less noticeable, save one. Penny enjoys lifting her legs up and letting them fall. She’s also partial to flapping her arms. And on a crib mattress, which is nothing more than a few coils in a tightly strung cloth, her stirrings emit a noise similar to a poorly constructed bass drum. So now during the hours of approximately one, three and five o’clock, we hear our amateur percussionist banging away, as if to say,

Wake, she told them, pah rum pa pa pum
I have good news to bring, pah rum pa pa pum
My diaper’s leaking, pah rum pa pa pum
The sheet’ll be stinking, pah rum pa pa pum, rum pa pa pum, rum pa pa pum

Where Have All the Diapers Gone?

If you haven’t had a kid in the last decade or so, you may not know about the amazing advances in diaper containment and disposal technology. Some of the best research and development minds at leading child-care product providers have come up with systems that not only remove soiled diapers from sight, but also magically expunge the odor from the air.

Gone are the days of a nursery that smells like a bakery. No more converted trashcans with their non-airtight seals, receptacles that allow excess diapers to spill forth and clutter a child’s play area with the residue of last night’s dinner.

For the new parent, such advances don’t come without controversy or consternation, however. There are several competing systems, each with their own merits. The leading two are the Diaper Genie and the Diaper Champ. The Diaper Genie relies on special internal bags that individually seal each offering. The Diaper Champ uses a unique turn and drop system that disposes of the diaper through a device similar to a bank’s night deposit box.

Our decision to go with the Diaper Champ resulted from the recommendation of one good friend, coupled with the comment from a sibling that the string of individually wrapped diapers taken from the Genie looks like a diaper sausage. Plus, it’s really fun to use the Champ’s deposit mechanism, which emits a satisfying thump with each use.

It also comes with a convenient way to tell when it is time to change the liner—when the drop mechanism needs to be punched down in order to make a fresh deposit, the time has probably come. None of this is meant to be a ringing endorsement either way: each have their advantages and issues. Diaper disposal just happens to be something we think about a lot.

What we’d like to suggest is that someone develop something even cooler for the next child. Perhaps Diaper Champ could build on the concept of the bank depository and construct a system for the new parent that mimics a bank’s drive through teller system, the one with the pneumatic tubes. What could be better than inserting the diaper into a tube installed conveniently by the changing table and watching it fly away—accompanied by a satisfying “thuuuuup”—straight to its demise in the trash can outside. No more smell, no more changing the liner, no more Austrian-American sausage links. Imagine the possibilities…

Help us name the pneumatic diaper disposal system:
	Crap Chute
	Diaper Suck
	Diaper-B-Gone
	Super Psychadelic Magic Diaper Vac
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