At Least I’m Not Buzz

I bought pull-ups.

It’s too soon for Henry to even be faking the wearing of the underwear, but I bought a small bag of them to avoid carrying a huge box of diapers over the skinny ice path that leads from the grocery store to my home.

The response has been astounding.

The pull-ups looked to me like regular diapers, for the most part.

The diapers we’ve most recently had in stock have Clifford the Big Red Dog on them — a character who usage was licensed to the diaper company by an employer of mine. I found that having an employer’s name peek out at me from my child’s bum was rather like an uncomfortable melding of church and state.

The new pull-ups have pictures of Buzz Lightyear and Woody on them.

I know Buzz and Woody because my nephew loved them forever and ever, though now he is 10.

Henry was not familiar with Woody and Buzz. This doesn’t keep him from being immediately and completely obsessed.

These pull-ups might as well be covered with crack cocaine, or chocolate sauce, or heaven forbid — we wouldn’t want to overindulge our child — both.

Henry looks at strong-jawed Buzz, the manly astronaut, and points. Yells, “Daddy! Daddy!” He kisses the pull-up Buzz on the mouth.

Then he looks at Woody, weedy in comparison, hicklike, in a big cowboy hat.

“Mom-mom,” he says, adoringly. He looks at me and smiles, then looks back to Woody, and nods.

Mom-mom is what Henry calls me every time he sees me. It is also what he calls Woody, my apparent facsimile, every time he sees him.

There are lots of little cartoon thumbnails on the pull-ups.

Every single Woody: Mom-mom! Mom-mom!

Buzz: Daddy!

Henry is surprisingly good at determining gender, for the most part. It might be that Woody might have a pointy nose à la Mom-mom. Or maybe it’s that he goes along with Buzz, who is clearly modeled on Daddy.

I don’t think it’s just because the characters look like his parents (?) that his love for the pull-ups is so deep. When I’m putting one on him, he wants to hold one too, to examine it.

He won’t put it down when we get off of the table. I’m in a mode of trying not to fight things at the moment, and I let him walk around the apartment with it. He’ll shove it into the back part of the choo-choo he pushes around. Or he’ll carry it under his arm, the same arm he carries his favorite dolphin under.

In anticipation of a meal, he will place the pull-up carefully on the dining table next to his own place at the table.

He hugs a pull-up to his face as he gets into bed. Tucked under the blanket, dolphin under his arm, Rawr the lion tucked into the corner, the musical giraffe giving off a quiet syncopated beat in the other corner, the book about becoming a firefighter down near his toes. Everything is perfect.

“Yay,” Henry whispers.

Good night, Mom-mom.