The following is Jaclyn’s account of an incident that occurred in the middle of the night. I can neither confirm or deny the validity of this account, because I was not actually awake for the incident in question.
Sometime around 3:00 AM, Miles started fussing from his Pack ‘n’ Play. After giving him a moment to see if his cries would pass, Jaclyn said, groggily, “Can you go check on him?”
I (evidently and, I would imagine, with considerable grumbling) rose from bed and staggered over to the Pack ‘n’ Play. There, nestled in his bed, was Miles, his cries subsiding as he looked up at me. We stared at each other for some indeterminate amount of time (time, after all, passes differently in the middle of the night) before I, satisfied that his nocturnal protestations had passed, threw my body back into my own bed.
The second my body came to rest, Miles once again started fussing.
Before Jaclyn could ask anything more of me, I stated, “I don’t know what the hell is wrong with him.”
“UGH,” Jaclyn groaned before angrily getting out of bed. “GO BACK TO SLEEP.” (The joke’s on her; I never actually woke up to begin with.)
The next morning I woke to the all-too-familiar words: “Do you remember what you did last night?” Always a good indicator that I’ve woken up in the middle of a marital spat I didn’t even know existed.
As Jaclyn recounted the tale I have presented above, I argued that clearly Jaclyn had the magic touch, because she was able to soothe Miles back into slumber.
And just what had vexed him in the middle of the night?
…a dirty diaper.
The Perils (& Pride) of Paternity 