Before my firstborn, The Boy, became my prime antagonist, he was a wee little babe. All coos and tongue waggles and sweet bubbly smiles thrown up at me as if my face hovering over his is precisely what he's been waiting for all day. Of course, look a little south and, yep, there it is, he’s got a dirty diaper. A perfectly good moment spoiled.
So, now I’m standing there with a smelly, dirty baby, face to face with that fold-down changing table, the same changing table in every public restroom, the same changing table whose years-long accumulation of grime has managed to grout the rough textured plastic. And all I have is the hokey, plasticky, little changing mat that came with our diaper bag. It doesn't take much baby-growing to get us to the point that changing his diaper on these tables means we have to make the hard choice of whether to position the pad so it protects his head or his nethers.
I don't know why the purveyors of these things, even the high-end ones, insist on making them out of plastic or vinyl or "moisture-resistant surface." I'm not looking for my baby's, ahem, waste to flow off the pad. I want something I can throw in the wash, set to the highest possible temperature and positively exterminate any trace of ickiness.
The changing pad I whipped up for The Boy was a quick-and-dirty affair. Basically, a large mat with pockets built in for diapers and wipes and all the other the junk one carries around to tend to a baby's bottom. Damask on one side, plushy velour on the business side. It got the job done.
When I got pregnant again, my first thoughts went to how I would re-engineer the thing. This one was going to be luxe. This child, my GIRLIE, was going to ride dirty in style, dammit. In went nice cotton batting between the layers. Damask and velour were jettisoned for modern cotton prints. A simple velcro keeps it all together. Trimmed out with bias tape, the result should be very luxe, indeed.
But then I saw this online, and while it pretty much just looks like your basic messenger bag, now with more pockets, I obsessed over the built in wipes dispenser. So I stole the idea, positioned a hole in one of my pockets, and dammit if it didn't make the whole thing perfect. I tell you, when the new changing pad was all assembled, I was absolutely smitten with myself. Mr. New Media just gave me a blank, just-don't-call-her-fat look. But, months later, when he finally used it on The Girlie in the wild, even he was moved to gush over it.
And now I can't stop making them. One for the diaper bag… check. One for the car… check. I'm thinking the shop needs one or two...
