With the imminent arrival of his first baby, T. Lindeman of Philadelphia prepared the way any new parent would: reading every baby book ever written.
But for Lindeman, it wasn’t What to Expect When You’re Expecting or Expecting Better gracing his bedside table.
“Oh, this one is great!” exclaimed Lindeman, holding up a tactile copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “Feel that weird crunchy stuff under the pages? What is that stuff? It’s amazing, I can’t stop touching it!” Lindeman also perused Moo, Baa, La La La!, Goodnight Moon, and Brown Bear, Brown Bear in his spare waking moments.
“But I don’t have a ton of time to read anymore, what with all the naps!”
Lindeman has been approaching this upcoming life-changing moment in a way doctors are calling “troubling” and his wife describes as “really pretty annoying.”
“I guess the biggest thing to talk about is the diapers,” said Lindeman’s wife, L. Burton. “He’s not just stocking up. He’s wearing them. Constantly.”
Not only that, but he also insists on cleaning and changing himself. “Which actually sounds helpful,” Burton added, “until you see the mess. It wouldn’t be so bad if the infant diapers actually fit him. And the diet certainly doesn’t help!”
Lindeman’s cabinets are lined with jars of mushy bananas and mushy peas. The fridge? Just milk. So much milk.
“If I don’t have my bottle every two hours,” said Lindeman, “I’m going to get fussy.”
“Usually he can burp himself, but sometimes he asks me,” Burton said. “I don’t mind getting to smack him on the back a few times, except when he spits up and says ‘That’s the wet burp we are looking for. Just like Uncle Stephen [Lindeman, Lindeman’s brother]!’”
Despite working her own job up to the point of delivery, Burton found herself taking on another full-time role: caring for the adult-sized infant living in her home.
“Bath time is tough,” she said. “He just gets so splashy. And if the soap gets in his eyes he won’t stop crying for hours.”
We caught up with Lindeman during tummy time, moments after he had finished a new bout of crying.
“Everything is getting so hard! There are these new gates at the top of the stairs, so I can’t throw myself down them. And the cabinets all have these locks on them so I can’t get to the knives. I can’t even open a jar of aspirin!”
Rolling over and over on the small mat before crawling over to his impending child’s toy chest, Lindeman’s behavior did little to dispel rumors that he had forgotten how to walk. Crawling from room to room, he let out occasional groans and grunts when he wanted something, a wordless language that Burton “unfortunately” picked up quite quickly. Even over the course of this interview, it seemed to be replacing his capacity for speech entirely.
As the day wore on, at one point Lindeman caught sight of his wife and immediately cued up his tears again until she put him to bed and sang him a few lullabies.
“It’s the same every time,” Burton clarified. “If he sees me, even if he’s fine, he’ll cry until I pick him up. It’s terrible for my back, and probably bad for the baby too, but it’s the only way to get him to settle down.”
Beneath his mobile of spinning animals, scratch-offs, and beers, Lindeman finally drifted off to sleep. But it was a peace short-lived. Moments later his cries rang out again—accompanied by the telltale smell of a freshly soiled diaper.