Monday, March 06, 2006
The Very First Diaper Files
Holy diapers Batman! It’s a comment heard quite frequently in my household. Diapers have been a part of our family’s life for almost six years now. Why you ask? I am the proud father of a six year old little girl and two little guys, aged four and two. My wife and I have been changing diapers every day since 1998. Not a bad streak if I do say so myself.
I laugh now about our first born. We went through no less than 30 diapers a day in the early days. The smallest of a whimper, the slightest waft of “bad” air, and we would change her.
Onto child number three, and a change is determined by our weight approximation of his diaper. “Yup, that looks to be about an eight pounder, time for a change.” No, it’s not quite that bad, but you get the picture.
My quick math tells me that in the past six years, my wife and I have changed roughly 13,140 diapers. That’s six a day (average over two years), times 2 years, times 3 kids. If we averaged three minutes per change, that would equate to over 650 hours of changing diapers. That’s over 27 days! Could you imagine almost four weeks solid of un-Velcro, un-Velcro, legs up, wipe, cream, new diaper, legs down, Velcro, Velcro….NEXT! Un-Velcro, un-Velcro, legs up and so on….for four weeks.
Thinking about all of those diapers, I am pretty proud of myself. As a very involved dad, I am quite confident I changed no less than 500 of those 13,140 diapers. Now, now, I know what you’re saying. My poor wife had to change 12,640 of them. Well let me tell you that those were 500 of the nastiest diapers our house saw during those six years.
“Daddy, your baby has something to show youuuuuuu!”, is how I was usually beckoned. It was times like those that having a year long cold weighed heavily in my favor.
But, I now see light at the end of the tunnel. We are creeping ever so close to having that diaper free home. I will love it, my wife will love it and the garbage man will love it (especially in the winter, not having to hoist bags full of rock frozen diapers).
The way I look at it, it could have been worse. The average time to change my kids could have been five minutes each. That would have meant over 45 days of changing diapers during the past six years. Whew!
I laugh now about our first born. We went through no less than 30 diapers a day in the early days. The smallest of a whimper, the slightest waft of “bad” air, and we would change her.
Onto child number three, and a change is determined by our weight approximation of his diaper. “Yup, that looks to be about an eight pounder, time for a change.” No, it’s not quite that bad, but you get the picture.
My quick math tells me that in the past six years, my wife and I have changed roughly 13,140 diapers. That’s six a day (average over two years), times 2 years, times 3 kids. If we averaged three minutes per change, that would equate to over 650 hours of changing diapers. That’s over 27 days! Could you imagine almost four weeks solid of un-Velcro, un-Velcro, legs up, wipe, cream, new diaper, legs down, Velcro, Velcro….NEXT! Un-Velcro, un-Velcro, legs up and so on….for four weeks.
Thinking about all of those diapers, I am pretty proud of myself. As a very involved dad, I am quite confident I changed no less than 500 of those 13,140 diapers. Now, now, I know what you’re saying. My poor wife had to change 12,640 of them. Well let me tell you that those were 500 of the nastiest diapers our house saw during those six years.
“Daddy, your baby has something to show youuuuuuu!”, is how I was usually beckoned. It was times like those that having a year long cold weighed heavily in my favor.
But, I now see light at the end of the tunnel. We are creeping ever so close to having that diaper free home. I will love it, my wife will love it and the garbage man will love it (especially in the winter, not having to hoist bags full of rock frozen diapers).
The way I look at it, it could have been worse. The average time to change my kids could have been five minutes each. That would have meant over 45 days of changing diapers during the past six years. Whew!
