We’re an early morning pack around here. Elisa is up at 4AM. I’ll make it downstairs between 4:30 and 5:30, depending on how fat and afraid of the cold I’m feeling. Jacko, snoring away till 7, is our one lazy link.  And Elsie… well, because God hates us all, Elsie still gets up around 5:30. 

   It’s not always awful. Sometimes she shows up looking for mom to move her laptop to the den for a little snuggle and Wow, Wow, Wubbzy on the tube. A pre-dawn angel come to herald the sunrise. Half the time, on the other hand, she can be the howling harbinger of doom and headaches in the dark. How the hell a 3 year old can be so freaking argumentative straight out of bed baffles the crap out of me.  But it’s so common now that her kicking up issues doesn’t really call for a response until we’ve had some coffee.

   That was the situation earlier this week. With puffed eyes, slack neck and a fresh mug of jamoke burning my tongue it barely registered that Elsie was throwing some shit at mommy again. That’s what one gets some mornings just for picking up and hugging the girl… 

   Mommy! You are stinky!

  No I’m not, Elsie.  I just showered and brushed my teeth.  I think maybe…sniff… eewww! Your fingers are stinky. They smell like vagina. You have got to stop putting your fingers in your vagina, Elsie. 

   Ohhhh.  That’s what dagina smells like?  

   I squeezed my eyes tight, wincing the wince of the damned, a let coffee gush into my esophagus to boil the tonsils on the way down.  It was in my ears again…the subject. The one that’s been the bane of fatherhood ever since that first alarming moment when my second child popped into the world without a penis.  There’s just so much about my daughter’s junk that I’m still not comfortable with yet.                  

   Having a baby girl didn’t freak me out for the regular male reasons – needing a boy to throw rocks with, fart with and scream at for failing in sports. I already had a son and Elsie turns out to rip them pretty well. I didn’t get my boxers all bunchy over the thought of boys being interested in her either. One, boxers are for jackasses who want their testicles to be banging against their knees by middle age. Two, the dating crap was at least a decade away – too far off a bridge to cross or not. I know a good handful of dads whose head veins start bulging at mere mention of their toddler daughter dating. Seriously, some dudes get quite angry about it. That’s kinda fucked, especially as there are more pressing issues with girl babies. Like changing their Pampers without incurring any serious damage.

   That was the first serious trial I had with a daughter – the poop.  Not the feces itself – which I’d been cleaning off Jack for a couple years already – but where it went when it came out of Elsie. It went INTO other places. I was good at cleaning anything off my son because all the crap was generally on the outside. And infant weenies are durable little things, you can push and bat them out of the way as necessary for the clean-up and there’s never any harm done.  But when a new dad pulls off his daughter’s diaper to find lots of poop in her vajayjay…Jesus, nothing prepares you for that horror.

   I’d already been deeply troubled over the minor wipe-ups.  Everything being so small and delicate I was convinced that any slight increase in wiping pressure would break some part and Elsie’s life would be ruined. But when I came across that first massive dump that seemed to have gone everywhere I just crumbled.  Falling to my knees and bawling, Why!!! Oh sweet God in Heaven, why?! There’s no way to clean that up without killing her!!!

   She did survive however. Because I didn’t get too close in the actual wipe up, only swabbing the surface fecal plaster off before sticking her under the tub’s charging faucet.

      Since Elsie ditched the diapers last year I haven’t had to deal with vaginal nightmares much.  But conversations like the one above remind me that I’ve got a ways to go to overcome my paternal cooterphobia. I try to be a more open minded, 21^st Century dad but I don’t ever see myself having “Summer’s Eve” beachside chats with a teenage Elsie down the road. Matter of fact, I’m far better equipped to handle “Dad, I’m pregnant and I don’t know what to do” than “Hey Pop, I’ve got a yeast infection.  Feel like picking me up some Vagisil?”