How the Miracle Blanket Saved Our Marriage (Twice)

Babies are clinically proven to cause stress. Sure, they're cute and usually smell good, but they also have tar-like poo and stay awake 23 hours & 55 minutes a day. When our two kids were babies, my wife and I were at each other's throats like Bart and Homer Simpson.

Then we discovered the unifying force of a colic baby crying through the night. My wife and I would walk to the bathroom at night like monsters from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, with hairdos to match.

Then a woman suggested a simple product made of about two feet of fabric that would change our lives forever: The Miracle Blanket. Basically, it wraps up your kid like a burrito. Or Hannibal Lector.

Our baby suddenly started sleeping. We were like Dr. Frankenstein: "It's asleeeeeeep! It's asleeeeep!" It saved us a good two weeks in the Mendota Mental Health Institute. If I could find the genius engineer who invented that blanket, why, I'd give him or her a rousing rendition of the "Thriller" dance--a gift that Genius Engineer would surely never forget!

Speaking of looney, the other night our two-year-old daughter was about to jump off a chair and my wife said, "Belle, stop! Are you crazy?"

Belle replied with glee: "YES!" You see, my daughter is going through that phase when she says yes to everything. Is a ball round? "YES!" Is Tom Cruise stable? "YES!" Is Larry King really a gigantic robotic bobble head? "YES!"

She's also a parrot. For example, the other day I held up a toy polar bear. "What kind of bear is this?" I asked her. Belle replied with complete confidence: "It's a whatkinda bear!," as if whatkinda was the latin form of polar. Silly Daddy, don't you know anything?

The other day, friends came over to our house and Belle immediately reported, "Daddy poops!" My lovely wife is to blame for this embarrassment. Belle had started to cry whenever she had a stinky diaper, so my wife thought it'd be a brilliant idea to tell Belle, 'It's OK, everybody poops."

My wife has a master's in elementary education. Ha, I thought, some use of higher learning; that will never work. Well, it worked famously. My wife rattled off names of serial poopers, beginning with Belle's best buddies. "Andrew poops," my wife explained. "Allison poops. Leah poops. Holly poops." Belle stopped crying, started giggling, and basically ate up the whole concept like a frat boy watching "Girls Gone Wild." My wife's grand finale was when she asked Belle, "Does Daddy poop?"

Belle replied, "YES!" of course, because that's her answer to everything. "Daddy poops!" she exclaimed, as if it were an epiphany. "Daddy poooooops! Woo-hoooooooo!"

Yes Belle, what a relief. I guess the moral is, kids can be difficult sometimes. But are all the pooey-tar diapers worth it when you help them through a tough phase? "YES!"