Since Diapers Quotes

She takes a step toward me and slides her hands between my folded arms, pushing against them until they unlock. “Daniel Wesley you owe me a do-over since you made me kiss you in a crowded restaurant right next to a dirty diaper.” “It wasn’t crowded,” I interject. She glares at me. “Put your hands on my face and push me against this wall and slip me some tongue! Now!” Before she can laugh at herself, my hands are casing her face and her back is pressed against the wall of her house and my mouth is on hers.

He turned her in his arms and gazed into the eyes of the woman he’d met over diapers and baby food and fallen in love with one second at a time ever since.

Eva seemed to be on some sort of mission to work her evil/cute baby magic on me. Ever since she'd started toddling around on those chubby little legs, she'd been targeting me, the least enthusiastic baby person in the room. I think she enjoyed the challenge, which proved that we were related. Eva would tug on my pants leg until I picked her up. And then she'd basically stare me down with those big blue-grey eyes of hers, daring me not to snuggle her. It was like facing down a tiny, diapered mastermind. And of course, I caved. I snuggled her. I babbled. I read her Where the Wild Things Are until I was hoarse. I actually found myself watching my language. Shudder.

I come from a long line of body snatchers, probably the top-notch body snatchers in America. No make that the world. Some people might think it's gross digging up bones or corpses, but who asked them? It's no big deal, but then I've been doing it since I got out of diapers.

These are lines from my asteroid-impact novel, Regolith: Just because there are no laws against stupidity doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be punished. I haven’t faced rejection this brutal since I was single. He smelled trouble like a fart in the shower. If this was a kiss of gratitude, then she must have been very grateful. Not since Bush and Cheney have so few spent so much so fast for so long for so little. As a nympho for mind-fucks, Lisa took to politics like a pig to mud. She began paying men compliments as if she expected a receipt. Like the Aerosmith song, his get-up-and-go just got-up-and-went. “You couldn’t beat the crap out of a dirty diaper!” He embraced his only daughter as if she was deploying to Iraq. She was hotter than a Class 4 solar flare! If sex was a weapon, then Monique possessed WMD I haven’t felt this alive since I lost my virginity. He once read that 95% of women fake organism, and the rest are gay. Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder, but ugly is universal. Why do wives fart, but not girlfriends? Adultery is sex that is wrong, but not necessarily bad. The dinosaurs stayed drugged out, drooling like Jonas Brothers fans. Silence filled the room like tear gas. The told him a fraction of the truth and hoped it would take just a fraction of the time. Happiness is the best cosmetic, He was a whale of a catch, and there were a lot of fish in the sea eager to nibble on his bait. Cheap hookers are less buck for the bang, Men cannot fall in love with women they don’t find attractive, and women cannot fall in love with men they do not respect. During sex, men want feedback while women expect mind-reading. Cooper looked like a cow about to be tipped over. His father warned him to never do anything he couldn’t justify on Oprah. The poor are not free -- they’re just not enslaved. Only those with money are free. Sperm wasn’t something he would choose on a menu, but it still tasted better than asparagus. The crater looked alive, like Godzilla was about to leap out and mess up Tokyo. Bush follows the Bible until it gets to Jesus. When Bush talks to God, it’s prayer; when God talks to Bush, it’s policy. Cheney called the new Miss America a traitor – apparently she wished for world peace. Cheney was so unpopular that Bush almost replaced him when running for re-election, changing his campaign slogan to, ‘Ain’t Got Dick.’ Bush fought a war on poverty – and the poor lost. Bush thinks we should strengthen the dollar by making it two-ply. Hurricane Katrina got rid of so many Democratic voters that Republicans have started calling her Kathleen Harris. America and Iraq fought a war and Iran won. Bush hasn’t choked this much since his last pretzel. Some wars are unpopular; the rest are victorious. So many conservatives hate the GOP that they are thinking of changing their name to the Dixie Chicks. If Saddam had any WMD, he would have used them when we invaded. If Bush had any brains, he would have used them when we invaded. It’s hard for Bush to win hearts and minds since he has neither. In Iraq, you are a coward if you leave and a fool if you stay. Bush believes it’s not a sin to kill Muslims since they are going to Hell anyway. And, with Bush’s help, soon. In Iraq, those who make their constitution subservient to their religion are called Muslims. In America they’re called Republicans. With great power comes great responsibility – unless you’re Republican.

I stood back up and looked down at my feces. A lovely snail-shell architecture, still steaming. Borromini. My bowels must be in good shape, because everyone knows you have nothing to worry about unless your feces are to soft or downright liquid. I was seeing my shit for the first time (in the city you sit on the bowl, then flush right away, without looking). I was now calling it shit, which I think is what people call it. Shit is the most personal and private thing we have. Anyone can get to know the rest - your facial expression, your gaze, your gestures. Even your naked body: at the beach, at the doctor's, making love. Even your thoughts, since usually you express them, or else others guess them from the way you look at them or appear embarrassed. Of course, there are such things as secret thoughts... but in general thoughts too are revealed. Shit, however, is not. Except for an extremely brief period of your life, when your mother is still changing your diapers, it is all yours. And since my shit at that moment must not have been all that different from what I had produced over the course of my past life, I was in that instant reuniting with my old, forgotten self, undergoing the first experience capable of merging with countless previous experiences, even those from when I did my business in the vineyards as a boy. Perhaps if I took a god look around, I would find the remains of those shits past, and then, triangulating properly, Clarabelle's treasure. But I stopped there. Shit was not my linden-blossom tea, of course not, how could I have expected to conduct my recherche with my sphincter? In order to rediscover lost time, one should have not diarrhea but asthma. Asthma is pneumatic, it is the breath (however labored) of the spirit: it is for the rich, who can afford cork-lined rooms. The poor, in the fields, attend less to spiritual than to bodily functions. And yet I felt not disinherited but content, and I mean truly content, in a way I had not felt since reawakening. The ways of the Lord are infinite, I said to myself, they go even through the butthole.

Fairies have been running these routes since George Washington was in diapers.

You’re sure you want to do this? What if she eats him?” I smiled, lifting the baby into my arms and grabbing his sippy cup. “Evelyn’s trying. She deserves a chance.” I closed the door and turned to her. My wife eyed me. “She called you a rapscallion.” I laughed. “Yes—yes she did.” Kristen and I had good fun with that one. It was Kristen’s favorite nickname for me. I gave Oliver his sippy cup. “But in all fairness, you told her you were married and pregnant via Potatogram. She had a right to be upset. Give me this.” I took the diaper bag from her. “You shouldn’t be lifting more than you need to.” She scowled at me. “It’s been four months since my surgery. I can carry a five-pound diaper bag.” I kissed the side of her stubborn head.

Being a man is the weeding and the watering and the fertilizing. Doing it not just once but ten thousand times. Not just when the mood strikes but precisely when it doesn't. When there's nothing you'd rather less than change another diaper, warm another bottle. Nothing you'd rather than sleep cause you ain't since the baby arrived shrieking like a banshee—

Corn is what feeds the steer that becomes the steak. Corn feeds the chicken and the pig, the turkey, and the lamb, the catfish and the tilapia and, increasingly, even the salmon, a carnivore by nature that the fish farmers are reengineering to tolerate corn. The eggs are made of corn. The milk and cheese and yogurt, which once came from dairy cows that grazed on grass, now typically comes from Holsteins that spend their working lives indoors tethered to machines, eating corn. Head over to the processed foods and you find ever more intricate manifestations of corn. A chicken nugget, for example, piles up corn upon corn: what chicken it contains consists of corn, of course, but so do most of a nugget's other constituents, including the modified corn starch that glues the things together, the corn flour in the batter that coats it, and the corn oil in which it gets fried. Much less obviously, the leavenings and lecithin, the mono-, di-, and triglycerides, the attractive gold coloring, and even the citric acid that keeps the nugget "fresh" can all be derived from corn. To wash down your chicken nuggets with virtually any soft drink in the supermarket is to have some corn with your corn. Since the 1980s virtually all the sodas and most of the fruit drinks sold in the supermarket have been sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) -- after water, corn sweetener is their principal ingredient. Grab a beer for you beverage instead and you'd still be drinking corn, in the form of alcohol fermented from glucose refined from corn. Read the ingredients on the label of any processed food and, provided you know the chemical names it travels under, corn is what you will find. For modified or unmodified starch, for glucose syrup and maltodextrin, for crystalline fructose and ascorbic acid, for lecithin and dextrose, lactic acid and lysine, for maltose and HFCS, for MSG and polyols, for the caramel color and xanthan gum, read: corn. Corn is in the coffee whitener and Cheez Whiz, the frozen yogurt and TV dinner, the canned fruit and ketchup and candies, the soups and snacks and cake mixes, the frosting and candies, the soups and snacks and cake mixes, the frosting and gravy and frozen waffles, the syrups and hot sauces, the mayonnaise and mustard, the hot dogs and the bologna, the margarine and shortening, the salad dressings and the relishes and even the vitamins. (Yes, it's in the Twinkie, too.) There are some forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn. This goes for the nonfood items as well: Everything from the toothpaste and cosmetics to the disposable diapers, trash bags, cleansers, charcoal briquettes, matches, and batteries, right down to the shine on the cover of the magazine that catches your eye by the checkout: corn. Even in Produce on a day when there's ostensibly no corn for sale, you'll nevertheless find plenty of corn: in the vegetable wax that gives the cucumbers their sheen, in the pesticide responsible for the produce's perfection, even in the coating on the cardboard it was shipped in. Indeed, the supermarket itself -- the wallboard and joint compound, the linoleum and fiberglass and adhesives out of which the building itself has been built -- is in no small measure a manifestation of corn.

Here’s another thing—I can’t get any cell phone reception here. I should let my family know I’m here safely. More or less.” “The pines are too tall, the mountains too steep. Use the land line—and don’t worry about the long distance cost. You have to be in touch with your family. Who is your family?” “Just an older married sister in Colorado Springs. She and her husband put up a collective and huge fuss about this—as if I was going into the Peace Corps or something. I should’ve listened.” “There will be a lot of people around here glad you didn’t,” he said. “I’m stubborn that way.” He smiled appreciatively. It made her instantly think, Don’t get any ideas, buster. I’m married to someone. Just because he isn’t here, doesn’t mean it’s over. However, there was something about a guy—at least six foot two and two hundred pounds of rock-hard muscle—holding a newborn with gentle deftness and skill. Then she saw him lower his lips to the baby’s head and inhale her scent, and some of the ice around Mel’s broken heart started to melt. “I’m going into Eureka today for supplies,” he said. “Need anything?” “Disposable diapers. Newborn. And since you know everyone, could you ask around if anyone can help out with the baby? Either full-time, part-time, whatever. It would be better for her to be in a family home than here at Doc’s with me.” “Besides,” he said, “you want to get out of here.” “I’ll help out with the baby for a couple of days, but I don’t want to stretch it out. I can’t stay here, Jack.” “I’ll ask around,” he said. And decided he might just forget to do that. Because, yes, she could. *

I've got the kids in my room," she explained, while Jubal strove to keep up with her, "so that Honey Bun can watch them." Jubal was mildly startled to see, a moment later, what Patricia meant by that. The boa was arranged on one of twin double beds in squared-off loops that formed a nest - a twin nest, as one bight of the snake had been pulled across to bisect the square, making two crib-sized pockets, each padded with a baby blanket and each containing a baby. The ophidian nursemaid raised her head inquiringly as they came in. Patty stroked it and said, "It's all right, dear. Father Jubal wants to see them. Pet her a little, and let her grok you, so that she will know you next time." First Jubal coochey-cooed at his favorite girl friend when she gurgled at him and kicked, then petted the snake. He decided that it was the handsomest specimen of Bojdae he had ever seen, as well as the biggest - longer, he estimated, than any other boa constrictor in captivity. Its cross bars were sharply marked and the brighter colors of the tail quite showy. He envied Patty her blue-ribbon pet and regretted that he would not have more time in which to get friendly with it. The snake rubbed her head against his hand like a cat. Patty picked up Abby and said, "Just as I thought. Honey Bun, why didn't you tell me?"- then explained, as she started to change diapers, "She tells me at once if one of them gets tangled up, or needs help, or anything, since she can't do much for them herself - no hands - except nudge them back if they try to crawl out and might fall. But she just can't seem to grok that a wet baby ought to be changed - Honey Bun doesn't see anything wrong about that. And neither does Abby." "I know. We call her 'Old Faithful.' Who's the other cutie pie?" "Huh? That's Fatima Michele, I thought you knew." "Are they here? I thought they were in Beirut!" "Why, I believe they did come from some one of those foreign parts. I don't know just where. Maybe Maryam told me but it wouldn't mean anything to me; I've never been anywhere. Not that it matters; I grok all places are alike - just people. There, do you want to hold Abigail Zenobia while I check Fatima?" Jubal did so and assured her that she was the most beautiful girl in the world, then shortly thereafter assured Fatima of the same thing. He was completely sincere each time and the girls believed him - Jubal had said the same thing on countless occasions starting in the Harding administration, had always meant it and had always been believed. It was a Higher Truth, not bound by mundane logic. Regretfully he left them, after again petting Honey Bun and telling her the same thing, and just as sincerely.

To wash down your chicken nuggets with virtually any soft drink in the supermarket is to have some corn with your corn. Since the 1980s virtually all the sodas and most of the fruit drinks sold in the supermarket have been sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) -- after water, corn sweetener is their principal ingredient. Grab a beer for you beverage instead and you'd still be drinking corn, in the form of alcohol fermented from glucose refined from corn. Read the ingredients on the label of any processed food and, provided you know the chemical names it travels under, corn is what you will find. For modified or unmodified starch, for glucose syrup and maltodextrin, for crystalline fructose and ascorbic acid, for lecithin and dextrose, lactic acid and lysine, for maltose and HFCS, for MSG and polyols, for the caramel color and xanthan gum, read: corn. Corn is in the coffee whitener and Cheez Whiz, the frozen yogurt and TV dinner, the canned fruit and ketchup and candies, the soups and snacks and cake mixes, the frosting and candies, the soups and snacks and cake mixes, the frosting and gravy and frozen waffles, the syrups and hot sauces, the mayonnaise and mustard, the hot dogs and the bologna, the margarine and shortening, the salad dressings and the relishes and even the vitamins. (Yes, it's in the Twinkie, too.) There are some forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn. This goes for the nonfood items as well: Everything from the toothpaste and cosmetics to the disposable diapers, trash bags, cleansers, charcoal briquettes, matches, and batteries, right down to the shine on the cover of the magazine that catches your eye by the checkout: corn. Even in Produce on a day when there's ostensibly no corn for sale, you'll nevertheless find plenty of corn: in the vegetable wax that gives the cucumbers their sheen, in the pesticide responsible for the produce's perfection, even in the coating on the cardboard it was shipped in. Indeed, the supermarket itself -- the wallboard and joint compound, the linoleum and fiberglass and adhesives out of which the building itself has been built -- is in no small measure a manifestation of corn.

Kristen had dreamed of having children since she was herself a child and had always thought that she would love motherhood as much as she would love her babies. “I know that being a mom will be demanding,” she told me once. “But I don’t think it will change me much. I’ll still have my life, and our baby will be part of it.” She envisioned long walks through the neighborhood with Emily. She envisioned herself mastering the endlessly repeating three-hour cycle of playing, feeding, sleeping, and diaper changing. Most of all, she envisioned a full parenting partnership, in which I’d help whenever I was home—morning, nighttime, and weekends. Of course, I didn’t know any of this until she told me, which she did after Emily was born. At first, the newness of parenthood made it seem as though everything was going according to our expectations. We’ll be up all day and all night for a few weeks, but then we’ll hit our stride and our lives will go back to normal, plus one baby. Kristen took a few months off from work to focus all of her attention on Emily, knowing that it would be hard to juggle the contradicting demands of an infant and a career. She was determined to own motherhood. “We’re still in that tough transition,” Kristen would tell me, trying to console Emily at four A.M. “Pretty soon, we’ll find our routine. I hope.” But things didn’t go as we had planned. There were complications with breast-feeding. Emily wasn’t gaining weight; she wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t play. She was born in December, when it was far too cold to go for walks outdoors. While I was at work, Kristen would sit on the floor with Emily in the dark—all the lights off, all the shades closed—and cry. She’d think about her friends, all of whom had made motherhood look so easy with their own babies. “Mary had no problem breast-feeding,” she’d tell me. “Jenny said that these first few months had been her favorite. Why can’t I get the hang of this?” I didn’t have any answers, but still I offered solutions, none of which she wanted to hear: “Talk to a lactation consultant about the feeding issues.” “Establish a routine and stick to it.” Eventually, she stopped talking altogether. While Kristen struggled, I watched from the sidelines, unaware that she needed help. I excused myself from the nighttime and morning responsibilities, as the interruptions to my daily schedule became too much for me to handle. We didn’t know this was because of a developmental disorder; I just looked incredibly selfish. I contributed, but not fully. I’d return from work, and Kristen would go upstairs to sleep for a few hours while I’d carry Emily from room to room, gently bouncing her as I walked, trying to keep her from crying. But eventually eleven o’clock would roll around and I’d go to bed, and Kristen would be awake the rest of the night with her. The next morning, I would wake up and leave for work, while Kristen stared down the barrel of another day alone. To my surprise, I grew increasingly disappointed in her: She wanted to have children. Why is she miserable all the time? What’s her problem? I also resented what I had come to recognize as our failing marriage. I’d expected our marriage to be happy, fulfilling, overflowing with constant affection. My wife was supposed to be able to handle things like motherhood with aplomb. Kristen loved me, and she loved Emily, but that wasn’t enough for me. In my version of a happy marriage, my wife would also love the difficulties of being my wife and being a mom. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d have to earn the happiness, the fulfillment, the affection. Nor had it occurred to me that she might have her own perspective on marriage and motherhood.

valley? That should be interesting for you.” “I haven’t decided what I’m doing yet.” “I’d be happy to help,” Mr. Bally said. “I’m an expert on the subject you’re studying.” He picked up one of the microfilm boxes. “Judges in these contests like primary sources.” I knew that. Judges in these contests always liked primary sources. I was already using one. “Tell me about Andover,” I’d said to Cissy Langer, sitting in her back room with a wall full of piggy dolls staring at me. “Oh, my goodness, Mimi, what a question,” she’d said. I took the glass of iced tea, and I took the plate of chocolate chip cookies, and I set my tape recorder between them. I’d borrowed it from the school librarian. “I’ve already got some primary sources,” I said to Winston Bally in the conference room. We all pick and choose the things we talk about, I guess. I’d listened to my mother and Cissy talk about growing up together for maybe hundreds of hours, about sharing a seat and red licorice ropes on the bus, about getting licked for wearing their Sunday dresses into the woods one day, about the years when they both moved back in with their parents while their husbands went to war. And somehow I’d never really noticed that all the stories started when they were ten, that there were no stories about the four-year-old Miriam, the six-year-old Cissy, about the day when they were both seven when Ruth came home from the hospital, a bundle of yellow crochet yarn and dirty diaper. It made sense, I guess, since it turned out Cissy had grown up in a place whose name I’d never even heard because it had been wiped off the map before I’d ever even been born. “My whole family lived in Andover,” Cissy said. “My mother and

As my mother regained a bit of composure after hearing the news that she would have a granddaughter, I explained to her that, although I’d always known I would be a parent someday, I’d never for one second imagined having a girl. By no means am I a cigar-chomping, NASCAR-watching, Sunday-afternoon-armchair-quarterback kind of guy, but what could I ever offer a daughter? How to tune a kick drum and catalog her Slayer bootlegs? I was at a loss. And then, as she had always done, my mother imparted a little bit of her well-earned wisdom that has since proven to be one of my life’s most indisputable truths: “The relationship between a father and daughter can be one of the most special relationships in any girl’s life.” She knew this because of the relationship she had with her father, a military man of charm and wit who everyone loved dearly before his early passing when she was in her twenties. I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but from all that I’ve heard, he was a good man and indeed had that special connection to my mother. Though still terrified, I was slightly reassured. Maybe cataloging Slayer bootlegs together could be fun. Courtesy of Danny Clinch As the months flew by, Jordyn and I began to prepare for the new baby, readying her room, shopping for all the necessary gear, and eventually settling on the name Violet (after my mother’s mother, Violet Hanlon). I was given a library of books to study with subjects ranging from sleep training (which is a farce because ultimately they sleep-train you, making it impossible to sleep past six A.M. for the rest of your life) to swaddling (I’m bad enough at rolling joints; how could I successfully roll a child?) to how to change a diaper (something I may hold a land speed record in by this point). I was taking a crash course in fatherhood, or at least the logistical side of it.

From an early age, I learned life was strange. Not a lot of things made sense. One day, you could be happy because you made a few shots in a basketball game, and later that night, the police could be at your door with an aunt you hadn’t seen since you were in diapers, telling you there’s been an accident and that she’s going to be staying with you while everything’s sorted out. Things just happened. We have no control over it. And I find that terrifying.

Babies should not receive their first full bath until the umbilical cord has fallen off (10-14 days after birth on average). Never immerse your baby in water while the cord is still attached. A sponge bath is all a newborn really needs. Never try to remove the umbilical cord by cutting or twisting it off. It will fall off by itself any time after the second week of age. Keep the cord-area clean by using a cotton swab and some rubbing alcohol or by using alcohol wipes. This should be done after each diaper change. After the cord falls off, and your baby is ready for a bath in the kitchen sink (easier on your back) or bathtub, be sure the water is warm to the touch but never hot. Go easy on the soap since it is drying to the skin, leaving it itching and flaky. Never leave a baby in water unattended, even after he is capable of sitting up by himself. The potential danger is too great a risk, even for a minute.

And you thought you’d honk Shay off real good by asking the man at the top of her Most Hated list.” “She doesn’t hate you.” “Could’ve fooled me.” “Well, you haven’t fooled anybody, least of all me.” Miss Lucy’s eyes, magnified by the bottle glasses, narrowed knowingly. Travis looked toward the darkening sky and clamped his jaw. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Don’t be contrary with me, Travis McCoy. I’ve known you since you were running around this place in nothing but a diaper. You’re still in love with Shay.

I sob louder and harder than I’ve done since I last needed a diaper change.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (NIV) What does Scripture mean when it tells us to fix our eyes on what we can’t even see? How do we begin to do that? Even though as Christians we affirm the reality of the spiritual realm, sometimes we succumb to naturalistic assumptions that what we see is real and what we don’t see isn’t. Many people conclude that God can’t be real, because we can’t see Him. And Heaven can’t be real, because we can’t see it. But we must recognize our blindness. The blind must take by faith that there are stars in the sky. If they depend on their ability to see, they will conclude there are no stars. Sitting here in what C. S. Lewis called the Shadowlands, we must remind ourselves what Scripture tells us about Heaven. We will one day be delivered from the blindness that obscures the light of God’s world. For many people—including many believers—Heaven is a mysterious word describing a place that we can’t understand and therefore don’t look forward to. But Scripture tells us differently. What we otherwise could not have known about Heaven, God says He has revealed to us through His Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:10). God tells us about our eternal home in His Word, not so we can shrug our shoulders and remain ignorant, but because He wants us to anticipate what awaits us and those we love, and because it has the power to transform the way we live today. Life on earth matters not because it’s the only life we have, but precisely because it isn’t—it’s the beginning of a life that will continue without end. It’s the precursor of life on the New Earth. Eternal life doesn’t begin when we die; it has already begun. With eternity in view, nearly any honest activity—whether building a shed, driving a bus, pruning trees, changing diapers or caring for a patient—can be an investment in God’s kingdom. God is eternal. His Place is eternal. His Word is eternal. His people are eternal. Center your life around God, His Place, His Word, and His people, and reach out to those eternal souls who desperately long for His person and His place. Then no matter what you do for a living, your days here will make a profound difference for eternity—and you will be fulfilling the biblical admonition to fix your eyes on what is unseen.     This book includes 60 daily devotionals on a variety of topics related to living each day purposefully with an eternal perspective. (My thanks to Stephanie Anderson for compiling things I’ve written and quotations I’ve collected.) I hope they will encourage you to live with eternity in mind as you follow Jesus with all your heart.   —Randy Alcorn

Jack’s. He’d only been there a minute, waiting for someone to come from the back to serve him, when Mel struggled into the bar, baby against her chest, toddler in hand, diaper bag slung over her shoulder. Right inside the door, the toddler took a tumble down onto his knees and sent up a wail. “Oh, punkin,” she said. She spied Luke and said, “Oh, Luke, here.” She thrust the baby into his hands so she could stoop to lift up the boy. “Oh, you’re okay,” she said, brushing off his knees. “Don’t cry now, you didn’t even break the floor. It’s okay.” She was just about to stand, when she heard her husband’s voice. “Mel,” he said. She looked up from the floor. Jack was behind the bar. He inclined his head toward Luke with a smile on his face. Luke was holding the baby out in front of him at arm’s length, a startled expression on his face while Emma kicked her little legs and squirmed. Mel burst out laughing, then covered her mouth. She rose and went to him, taking the baby. “I’m sorry, Luke,” she said. “It’s been such a long time since I’ve been around a man who didn’t know exactly what to do with a baby.” “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t have much experience with this.” “It’s okay—my mistake.” She couldn’t help but laugh again. “The first day I met Jack, there was a newborn at the clinic and he scooped her up like an old pro.” “Because I was an old pro, Mel,” Jack said, coming around to the front of the bar. “Four sisters, eight nieces and one on the way,” he told Luke. “Prolific family,” Luke observed. “I don’t know much about babies.” “If you’re looking to learn babies, this is the place,” Mel said. “I don’t think there are any virgins left in Virgin River. The birth rate around here is on the rise.” “Me and babies—incompatible. And I like it that way.” Jack

That’s the first time you picked me over food since you’ve been pregnant.” She raised her brows. “Who said I was picking you over food. I’m picking you and the food. There’s a difference.

Living’s hard,” Doris said. “I got three kids with different daddies. I’m fat, can’t stop smoking, and I’ve worked in this cave since God was in diapers. My momma scrubbed toilets most her life, worked sunup to sundown until she got the cancer. When I tried to sell the TV and get her some chemo, she said, ‘Don’t you dare, Doris. Don’t you dare drag this thing out.

She’d seen his mother. Buddy set Dil on his mother’s bed, which she hadn’t used since he’d slipped a plastic bag over her head while she was watching an old Sean Connery movie twenty months before. She had only been living with him for six weeks then, but it had been six weeks too long. When he’d agreed to care for her, he’d had no idea what he was taking on. He’d figured a bit more cooking, cleaning, ironing, that kind of stuff. The reality was she pissed her bed every night, which meant he had to wash her linens and shower her each morning. Then he’d get home from work only to find she’d pissed herself again, often shitting herself too. Another shower, more laundry. Come dinner he didn’t get a break because the stroke, which had paralyzed much of her body, prevented her from feeding herself. So he’d have to pound her dinner into mush and spoon it into her mouth. In the evening she might signal she needed to use the bathroom instead of letting loose in her diaper. Nevertheless, getting her undressed, on the toilet, cleaning her up—fuck, it was easier to let her soil herself and hose her down in the shower. Needless to say, caring for her simply became too much. But killing her wasn’t the answer. Buddy knew that right after she took her last, agonized breath. Flooded with guilt at what he’d done, he began talking to her, apologizing to her, changing her, bathing her, all the old routines. When her stench became overpowering, he removed her lungs, stomach, liver, intestines, heart, and brain, and treated her body with salt for forty days until no moisture remained. Then he filled the cavities with sawdust from a local

Julia looked at her watch. "Lunchtime," she announced, opening the picnic basket she had packed at the bed and breakfast. "Anybody besides me hungry?" "I'm always hungry," Giordino called out from the back of the boat. "Amazing." Pitt shook his head incredulously. "At twelve feet away, outside in a breeze with the roar of the outboard motor, he can still hear the mere mention of food." "What delicacies have you prepared?" Giordino asked Julia, having dragged himself to the cabin doorway. "Apples, granola bars, carrots, and herbal ice tea. You have your choice between hummus and avocado sandwiches. It's what I call a healthy lunch." Every man on the boat looked at each of the others with utter horror. She couldn't have received a more unpalatable reaction if she had said she was volunteering their services as diaper changers at a day care center. Out of deference to Julia none of the men said anything negative, since she went to the bother of fixing lunch. The fact that she was a woman and their mothers had raised them all as gentlemen added to the dilemma. Giordino, however, did not come from the old school. He complained vociferously. "Hummus and avocado sandwiches," he said disgustedly. "I'm going to throw myself off the boat and swim to the nearest Burger King...

Ryder would be more my type if we hadn’t known each other since we were in diapers. Six-foot-three, ripped, thighs like tree trunks, and an ass to die for. His ass actually makes me a little jealous. Dark hair and dark brown eyes. Thin hoops in each nostril, tattoos everywhere. The perfect definition of a broody alpha hole.

Gunner! Get in the fucking car! We have to go! Now! Right fucking now!” I yell, as I run around to the front of the vehicle and then back to where Gunner is since he is not moving fast enough for me. Gunner bolts upward and takes off running for the house. I have no idea why. For some stupid reason, I think he’s bailing on Ava so I rush forward and tackle him to the ground. “We have to go, Gunner! Get a fucking grip, brother!” I shout in his face while we’re rolling around on the ground. “Get off of me, fuckface!” “You’re going to the hospital and becoming a dad whether you like it or not!” I bellow in his face as he shoves me off of him and breaks for the house again. “I dive and snag a leg, at least enough to send him headfirst back into the ground. I stand and start trying to drag him to the vehicle while he’s kicking at me trying to get loose. He lands a hefty kick, just as I bend over to grab his other leg and I take a shot to the eyebrow. Blood starts pouring down my face from the wound. “Fuck! That shit hurt, Gunner! You ass!” I can hear Loki going wild in the house, barking, and Mac is in the window running his beak. He gets to his feet, again, and bolts to the house while I’m wiping the blood out of my eye. When he re-emerges a moment later, I punch him in the jaw. It rocks him back a step and I get a happy feeling in my stomach when I see a trickle of blood. “What the fuck, Axel? What is wrong with you?” “Girlie punch, Assman!” shouts Mac. “Both of you, stop right now! What the fuck is wrong with you two?” Dad’s voice booms in my ear. “He kicked me in the face!” “He punched me!” we say at the same time. That’s when I notice the diaper bag and suitcase that Gunner is holding. Huh. Well, shit. That’s probably what he was running to the house to get. “Where is Ava?” shouts Gunner, dropping the bags and running to the spot the SUV is no longer parked in. “Bailey is driving her and Trudy to the hospital while you two jackholes decided to slug it out in the front yard!

The one universality of every ER patient Alexis saw was this: they hadn’t planned on coming. The people she saw never woke up and noted a scheduled visit to the ER on their calendar or phone. And so it could be profoundly destabilizing for them, especially given how vulnerable—sick or mutilated, wounded or dying—these patients were. They didn’t feel good, that was almost an absolute. They were, sometimes literally, in shock. Frequently they were in their pajamas. Often they were stripped fast, their clothes cut away, because of the injury. Usually their breath was bad, sleepy or boozy or sickly, or it had just been too damn long since they’d had a chance to brush their teeth. The elderly on occasion were in diapers and hadn’t changed that diaper in hours. Alexis never lost sight of their need for connection when she worked, even when it was the eleventh hour of a night shift and all she wanted was to sit at the bench before her locker and peel off her scrubs and go home. Always (at least when the person was conscious and neither drug addled nor drunk) she tried to bond in some small, distinct way with whoever was on the gurney or the bed before her: remind the patients that they were, first and foremost, people. “So,

We both laugh, but when she gets closer and his eyes drift over her long, tanned legs, the laugh clogs in my throat. “For real, Matty, I’m gonna fuck you up you keep looking at her like that.” Our eyes connect again and I can’t even hold on to my ire, not with him. Second to Amir, he’s been my ace boom since diaper days. I’d trust him with my life. Growing up in these streets, I’ve had to more than once. Bristol reaches us at the table and stands beside me. I capture her hand and bring it to my lips. “You wanna sit?” I ask her. She looks at the full card table, smiling at the other three guys playing Spades with me. “There’s nowhere to sit.” “As long as I got a lap,” I say, patting my leg, “you got a place to sit.

learning healthy self-regulation actually begins in infancy. When babies cry, they’re either hungry or thirsty or tired, or their diaper needs changing or they need to be touched. And since they can’t feed themselves or change their own diaper, crying is their way to get themselves back into balance—to get their caregiver to do what has to be done in order for them to get back into balance. The problem is when their caregiver doesn’t respond. Rather than being put back in balance—regulated—the baby will get more upset.

Jack had been my best friend since we’d been in diapers,

Jack had been my best friend since we’d been in diapers, and