{"id":304,"date":"2022-06-17T03:12:40","date_gmt":"2022-06-17T10:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/infotel.go-vip.net\/blog\/2022\/06\/17\/yo-mama-a-fathers-day-surprise\/"},"modified":"2022-06-18T10:30:00","modified_gmt":"2022-06-18T17:30:00","slug":"yo-mama-a-fathers-day-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/infonews.ca\/inhome\/news\/304\/yo-mama-a-fathers-day-surprise\/","title":{"rendered":"YO MAMA: A Father\u2019s Day surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"

We were already in a rush, as was our default in those early parenting days. It was my husband’s first Father’s Day and we were taking our two-month-old son to dinner at my in-laws house. I still had to shower, get dressed, pack the diaper bag and — most importantly — stamp my son’s feet in black paint to make the obligatory Happy Father’s Day card.<\/p>\n

I had gone through various stages throughout the past week of deciding to make the stupid card, not make it, and make it again. I had an overwhelming fear of missing out; there was only one first father’s day to commemorate.<\/p>\n

My prototype was something I found during a late night foray through Google images while my son nursed himself back to sleep. It was a print of each baby foot, heels together, with the resulting shape resembling a heart. Cringey-cute. The accompanying, sappy text read: “From the top of my head to the tips of my toes, I love you daddy.” I would probably leave that part out.<\/p>\n

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I had the child-safe paint, the card stock and the wet wipes. I had the baby (that was the hard part). I was ready to create a masterpiece that would be treasured for years to come, and would, in all likelihood, reduce my husband to tears of nostalgia whenever he gazed upon it.<\/p>\n

Away I went applying black paint to my son’s feet with a small paintbrush. I had him on a towel in the bathroom. So far so good. It must have tickled a bit, because every once in a while he would pull away a bit and smile. Bob Marley’s One Love<\/em> was playing in the background. I felt like we were really bonding, really working collaboratively on this memento for dad.<\/p>\n

I grabbed the card stock and, with cautious optimism, brought it up to my son’s foot. I felt that somehow, miraculously, this DIY project was going to be a massive success.<\/p>\n

But the print was just a big messy blob. It looked horrible, like a hobbit-child had sloppily wiped his muddy foot on it. There were no delightfully delicate wrinkle lines, no perfectly formed, pebble-sized toes. It was worse than a four-year-old’s finger painting. My husband would look at it in ten years and have zero clue what it was.<\/p>\n

This was fine though; I had a couple back-up pieces of card stock at the ready. I collected little prints on all of them, but none of them were recognizable as baby feet. In a panic, I made little prints on the backsides of my papers too, trying desperately to get even one salvageable image. The kid had started kicking and whining. Pretty soon I was surrounded by what looked like dozens of cast-off Rorschach ink-blots.<\/p>\n

“Umm, is everything OK in here?” I heard my husband ask from the doorway.<\/p>\n

“Just another Pinterest fail,” I said dismally, handing him an alien-looking print that had nine toe prints on one foot.<\/p>\n

“I love it,” he said. It was an unspoken truth that he was now dutifully bound to keep this ugly thing in a box somewhere for all of eternity or risk hurting my feelings, which he would never do.<\/p>\n

“Why don’t you boys have a nice Father’s Day soak in the tub together while I get this all cleaned up,” I said.<\/p>\n

My heart melted as I watched them in the bath, my tiny son held afloat on the raft made by my husband’s hands and forearms. Our son was all smiles and big, wet eyelashes. I took a mental picture of that moment and threw my hideous prints in the trash.<\/p>\n

All of a sudden, the water started bubbling all around my son like he was in a jacuzzi tub. He’d let out a huge fart. We broke out laughing. Then I noticed that the water had turned mustard yellow. It was seeping out in a big, nuclear waste-looking cloud. The kid had pooped in the tub. Not just a small poop, either, but a fecal emission of epic proportions for such a small human being. My husband looked like he was going to barf.<\/p>\n

“Happy Father’s Day!” I said.<\/p>\n

As it turned out, both of his Father’s Day surprises were a great big mess. But they did make for an awfully memorable day. In all my fear of missing out on the perfect Father’s Day keepsake, I had missed what was right in front of me: this beautiful, hilarious, unpredictable mess of raising a son together, poop in the tub and all.<\/p>\n

— Charlotte Helston gave birth to her first child, a rambunctious little boy, in the spring of 2021. Yo Mama is her weekly reflection on the wild, exhilarating, beautiful, messy, awe-inspiring journey of parenthood.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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We were already in a rush, as was our default in those early parenting days. It was my husband’s first Father’s Day and we were taking our two-month-old son to dinner at my in-laws house. I still had to shower, get dressed, pack the diaper bag and — most importantly — stamp my son’s feet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":310,"featured_media":1644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"guid":"","source":"iNFOnews","byline":"Charlotte Helston","published":"2022-06-17T03:12:40","updated":"2022-06-18T10:30:00","_infotelid":"IT92331","_prepressid":"92331","_multisite_post_sync":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[542,2,819],"tags":[568,821,820,706,33],"region":[322,323,324,325],"class_list":["post-304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured4","category-inhome","category-op-general","tag-bc","tag-opinion-editorial","tag-social","tag-vernon","tag-yo-mama","region-kamloops","region-kelowna","region-penticton","region-vernon"],"blocksy_meta":[],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","canonical_url":"https:\/\/infonews.ca\/inhome\/news\/304\/yo-mama-a-fathers-day-surprise\/","smart_links":{"inbound":0,"outbound":0},"traffic_boost_suggestions_count":0,"meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"YO MAMA: A Father\u2019s Day surprise","url":"http:\/\/infonews.ca\/inhome\/news\/304\/yo-mama-a-fathers-day-surprise\/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/infonews.ca\/inhome\/news\/304\/yo-mama-a-fathers-day-surprise\/"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/MediaItemID92331-5836.jpg?w=150&h=150&crop=1","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/MediaItemID92331-5836.jpg"},"articleSection":"featured4","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Charlotte Helston"}],"creator":["Charlotte Helston"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"iNhome","logo":""},"keywords":["bc","opinion-editorial","social","vernon","yo mama"],"dateCreated":"2022-06-17T10:12:40Z","datePublished":"2022-06-17T10:12:40Z","dateModified":"2022-06-18T17:30:00Z"},"rendered":"