Mommy Origami

I feel very blessed about many things in my life.

But one of the things I am so thankful for is that fact that my children were born after the invention of disposal diapers.

In my mothers’ era, the only option was cloth diapers.

Or air dry.

Good for the growing crops but not on the eyes.

The cloth diapers are better for the environment but sucky for Moms.

Now some people still prefer cloth diapers, but they usually have a diaper service that does most of the dirty work.  They pick them up at your home and deliver clean shiny diapers back to their doorstep minus the doodie.

This prevents you from personally handling the remnants of Little Juniors carrots or squash which, take my word for it, is a good thing.

The diaper service also supplies this cylinder type air tight storage unit into which you are supposed to deposit the stinky bottom bombs until they come and pick them up.

Kind of like the strict handling of Plutonium, which I am sure is less smelly.

But back in the day there were no fancy diaper services and they used to dump the worst of the mess into the toilet, rinse them out by hand and finally wash them and hang them on the clothesline so the sunshine could deodorize the pungent cloth squares.

So much for the “Good Ole’ Days”.

Very over-rated.

Plus they had to be attached to your baby with these hard core thick-as-nails safety pins that had little ducks or chickens or some other type of barnyard animal decorating the end. 

All I remember is that they were usually extremely dull and the old theory was that if you ran the pin through your hair it made It easier to glide through the cloth.

This is because your hair was usually very greasy because you never had a single minute to yourself and only got to wash your hair once a month.

Probably cuz you were too busy washing all those frickin’ diapers.

You usually ended up poking yourself with the thick dull pin and getting tetanus…

And all the babies from the 50’s looked like they were covered with random tattoos.

So as a lucky mom who was able to use disposable diapers, I honed a skill that all disposable diaper users must possess to survive.

That is the art of “Mommy Origami”.

This is the ability to remove a diaper from your kid and fashion it into these fantastic bullet shaped bombs which are virtually indestructible and sometimes resemble balloon animals.

The velco closures give you the freedom to compress the diaper so expertly that you can discreetly dispose of it and no one will ever know that your kidlet ate an entire bag of sunflower seeds while you were watching American Idol.

At one point in the whirlwind of my babies toodlerhood , I found one of these “Huggie Bullets” on the top shelf in my refrigerator next to a gallon of milk.

Obviously left there in a sleep deprived moment while getting a bottle from the frig.

In my experience I have found that most men cannot master the “Mommy Origami” concept and usually take the diaper off the baby and wave it about revealing the contents to everyone within a city block radius.

The paper poo-poo platter.

This comes in handy when you are vying for front row seats at the OB Christmas street parade.

Tends to make folks scatter while doing the “cat fur ball” gag move.

Not so handy if your trash can is full of these open poopie presents and has to be fire hosed out before the garbage man will get within 10 feet of it.

So I propose that “The Learning Annex” should offer a class in this art form and finally give it the credit it deserves.

“Mommy Origami” 101, “Diaper transformation in the 21^st Century”

Would look really good on your resume.

Especially if you were applying for a job folding newspapers.

Plus you will be expert at fashioning that perfect paper airplane to pitch at your bosses noggin every time  she strolls by carrying that Starbucks cup every morning.

…………I’m just sayin’