Getting J-Man to in any way cooperate with getting his nighttime pull-up on has been a complete mess lately. We used to just say, “time for your diaper!” and he’d stand up, step in, and off to bed we went. Then for no explicable reason - which is how things normally happen around here - he refused to cooperate anymore. Some nights we practically have to sit on him, and it definitely takes both of us every night now. Interestingly enough, once we get his legs through and get the diaper about halfway on, he calms down and things are generally OK.
We’d tried everything else, so I had - at least I had convinced myself that it was - a brilliant idea. I’d try to make the whole thing more humorous and fun rather than stressful. I’ll recreate the scene below and talk about us in the third person, just for effect.
Daddy finds that waist of pull-up diaper will stretch out enough so said diaper will fit on his head. Daddy puts diaper on his head like a hat.
“Does the diaper go on Daddy’s head?” Child looks up from crying fit, then busts out laughing maniacally.
“Nooooooo, it doesn’t go on Daddy’s head! That would be silly!” [Blinding flash of the obvious!] “Where does it go?” Child still laughing like a drunken Batman character.
“It goes on J-Man’s butt! That’s where it goes!” Daddy foolishly thinks that bringing the diaper to Child’s buttocks will result in the triumphant achievement of getting clothes on said Child.
Child then takes hold of said diaper and raises it back toward Daddy’s head.
“Hah-hah!” Child says. Daddy is temporarily bowled over that Child said something like ‘hat’ - and actually meant to say ‘hat’ - but he rallies and refocuses on the true goal of achieving the posterior coverage of his offspring.
“No, a diaper isn’t a hat! It goes on J-Man’s behind!” Child is unmoved by this analysis.
“Hah-hah!” says the Child, still pushing the diaper toward Daddy’s head and drawing it out for a few dozen more ‘hah’ sounds that merge into a string of words that are to some extent about a hat and the rest of the extent about riotous laughter.
Daddy realizes the flaw in his belief in his plan’s brilliance. A diaper is much funnier to a child when it’s on his daddy’s head than when it’s on his own butt.
Daddy realizes that this is likely how the term ‘butthead’ came to be.
And we’ll end this story with the immortal words of the old man driving the pickup truck in Raising Arizona, “Son, you got a panty on your head.”
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