No, That Drool Didn't Come From My Mouth!

When the little one turned 6 weeks old, I remember a co-worker telling me that there would come a day when the baby would drool in my mouth. At the time, I remember thinking that it didn't make any sense. He's on his fourth kid as opposed to my one, but surely his experience was a fluke. There are times when the young and inexperienced should simply heed the words of the more weathered and wise. I tend to have a hard time recognizing those times, often to my own peril.

For several days, the little one's drool machine has been working overtime because she just popped her first tooth (as described in the last post). On top of this liquid phenomenon, she has really come to despise lying down or doing anything that doesn't involve interaction and lots of movement. There we were sitting on the couch playing a normal game of airplane, and now you can see how the conditions come together. Much like weather fronts right before a tornado.

As I lifted her up above my head, near the apex of her ascent, I noticed a glimmer. Not the glimmer of admiration and love of father from her eye, but the glimmer of a drool pellet meeting gravity and light for the first and last time. Out it came. What had appeared at first to be only a drop turned out to be a generous stream, and down it went. Due to my cat like reflexes, I was able to deflect some, but not all of it. Something about the drool in my mouth - perhaps because it was not my own - make me squirm like a cat going into the bath. I purged my mouth of this foreign substance as if it were radioactive dog poop with a combination of spitting and wiping my tongue on her bib. Yeah, I know the bib is saturated with drool.

So, like I said before, there are just times when a young parent should listen to the old. The things that seem least likely to happen surely will, and I just need to accept that it's all going to happen to me too.