The Name of this Blog

Hello there-


I thought my first post should fill readers in on the odd title I chose for this little writing endeavor. 


It came to me a while back as I was trying to change my then 18 month old son Miller. Overnight the ritual of changing his diaper, putting his clothes back on and keeping the dog from charging out the front door as I threw the diaper onto the porch became infinitely harder. The diaper on the porch was just a quick fix until I took the dog on a walk. At least thats what I told the neighbors.


So, just when I thought I had a system in place, someone who still crapped in their pants decided to make executive changes. Immediately. This escalated into a thrice daily rugby scrum, David vs. Goliath, a cage fight in the Octagon, or as i liked to call it 'Wits vs. Shits'.


The mention of cage fighting is not a careless reference. This 'mindless violence' I wasted my time viewing (Sarah's paraphrase) actually became a relevant life experience application. Miller's signature move was a common wrestling technique aimed to evade getting pinned by the opponent (me in this case). It involved a tremendous amount of torque on the head and neck, and using those body parts as an anchor to buck the opponent off to avoid losing the match. While the anchor is by definition designed to be still, there were a hell of a lot of moving parts at the other end of Miller's body. An amateur would quickly focus on the wildly flailing right leg- the ruse in the attempted roll over. However the Versus channel and G4 had taught me wisely. I focused on the left leg. this was point 2 of the dreaded triangle that would signal the ship of parental supremacy to doom if i did not take immediate action.


My move was the ankle grab. I would sweep Miller's leg towards my abdomen (fight location is on a 30" X 14" changing table, terry cloth and about waist high for an adult grappler). I HAD to keep a strong grip on the ankle. This typically escalated to holding on for dear life with my hand and Miller's ankle 2 feet off the table, his head and neck writhing to complete the turnover, sweaty, purple from exertion and pissed off. I would finally wear him down and strap a diaper on him, get him changed and get out of there.


10 minutes later upstairs, Miller would be happily eating a waffle and drinking milk out of a sippy cup, not a care in the world. I was exhausted and thought..why was that so hard?


Then it dawned on me. It had to be like trying to put pants on a raccoon...