I can no longer smell.

Anything … 

I used to be able to tell what my Mother was cooking from the other side of our home in Woodland Hills, a small Southern California suburb. Mom was an excellent cook of Italian cuisine and her sauce, it would be slow cooking away for two days before a big Sunday dinner with the entire Ruffolo clan.

Nothing ever came from a can, she make everything from scratch and, oh my, it was good.

I can still remember how the entire house reeked like an Italian delicatessen.

Sigh …

But today … my sense of smell has been irrevocably damaged and possibly destroyed with months of endless poopy diapers, especially now when the twins are past two years old.

They can both drop a pound of poop a day.

It’s that much food they are consuming – limitless amounts of boneless chicken, pancakes, strawberries and more. Today our Nicholas just finished off an entire box of fresh berries for lunch and he walked away from the table with a distended belly as if he single-handedly swallowed a beaver.

An hour later, it all came out the other end.

This is just one of hundreds of examples I could brighten your day with – but I think you get the message.

So here is one suggestion I could offer to all of the Dads out there: Forget about cleaning your “dirty” baby with cleaning wipes that cost you a fortune.

Instead do what I do.

The twins are awake now at 8 a.m. sharp and I am immediately there with a plate of cut bananas for them to scarf down – otherwise they will immediately scream out for food.

With their bellies temporarily sustained with fruit, I grab one – generally Antoinette – and carry her to the bathroom. Standing her on the toilet seat, I take off her nightclothes and then the diaper which I make a ceremony of dropping into the waste basket.

More so if she has YUCK (the Ruffolo term for poop)!

I then pick up Toni and drop her into the shower – wet her body and soap up her hair.

Then I clean those “difficult” places with a constant flow of warm water from the shower hose.

In that way I don’t have to get my hands … messy.

And so neither child are suffering with diaper rash as clean water washes away all of the really nasty stuff.

I am hoping against hope that this liquid solution to the world of poop will eventually return my mortal senses to normal.

One can only dream.