Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - I Change All the Diapers | Ep. 327

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

Soren and Daniel try to figure out whether freestyle rap is magic or just practice and since DOB is in his new father era, the guys talk at length about improvised diaper songs, long haul commitments to incorrect lullabies, and the fundamental design flaws of baby gear-from ill-timed structural failures in baby diapers to zippers and snaps that make everything harder than it ought to be.Thanks to Mint Mobile for sponsoring this episode. Make the switch! MINTMOBILE.COM/QQFollow the guys on Bluesky!https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.socialBonus episodes 2x/month at patreon.com/quickquestion OR Apple Podcasts

I've got a quick, quick question for you all right. I want to hear your thoughts. I want to know what's on your mind. I've got a quick, quick question for you all right. The answer's not important. I'm just glad that we could talk tonight. So what's your favorite? Who did you get?

When there's random comedy, right, if there's an answer, they're going to find it. I think you'll have a great time here. the podcast. It's a quick question. We got the things that we need to do to make this show fun for you. We got the things that we need to do. That's one of those. Man, I have those all the time. But we've talked about this before. When you don't know what you're going to say next and the words that come out of your mouth are always fucking amazing. And honestly, I really thought I landed the plane because I heard two... Make this show fun for you. Ooh words. Yeah.

And I thought that was the only thing I needed to do, but you're right. We've got the things we need to do. It was right out the gate that I went wrong. I was too focused on the writing problem. I'm always amazed. So that's actually... I didn't immediately were derailed. But I need to ask this.

I occasionally watch There's like Cypher battles or like rap battles that happen In some studio I don't know where There's a guy that sits in the middle of him He introduces both guys And then they just sort of like eviscerate each other

But they're all sitting And the guy in the middle objectively like loves rap Because every single time no matter who's rapping He's going Ooh Oh oh And like shaking guys and stuff like that

Sure And these guys are so fucking good. And I'm like, and I cannot tell for the life of me, if this is just an innate skill and these guys are, this is all off the top of the dome or if they are, this is all written, and that's fine. We're all just sort of fine with the fact that they write these. I don't think they're written. I do think. Where are you? Do you run away? I don't think they're written. I do think when you do enough improv comedy and scene work, you start to, you don't have crutches necessarily, but like you, it becomes familiar

enough to you that you know a few things that'll work in front of an audience. Again, it's not like you're going to, you're not like doing a recurring character or anything like that, but you get into some kind of flow that you get from experience. And there, like, there are musical theater improvise people improvisers that I'm sure it seems like magic because they will get a suggestion from the audience

and there's a piano player and they make up a musical on the spot and I've done enough improv and musical theater separately and I see this kind of thing enough that like I I know I can see the strings I know how they can make it look like

magic and so I am magic freestyle rappers probably are in that same boat where they've done enough repetition and more than that are so familiar with like the tropes of the genre that they can they can, they have a few things that they know they can lean on to make this easier for themselves, whatever it is.

And then in the meantime, are they just thinking of like the highly specific shit during that time? Yeah, yeah. Because that's where I would get into trouble is that I'm with you. I'm like, all right, I just said, I just tried a thing. Now I got to think of the rhyme for it. And while I'm thinking of the rhyme,

I'm just going to talk. Yeah. Because I got like a limited amount of time to get there. Oh, the things, we did the things we need to do. That's what I'm going to say. And then I'm going to get to where I want to be. Yeah. There's this British standup.

I wish I knew his name, but like so much of the content that I consume, he's just one of the little guys that lives in my phone at this point. I just scroll on Instagram and they send me a bunch of little guys. And sometimes it's the subway takes a little guy. And I'm like, get out of here, a little guy. And sometimes the hot wings guy or the, the handsome doctor that like, the more content of his I've seen, I'm not really sure he's a doctor. He might just be a handsome guy who lives in my phone and has scrubs. Your algorithm is fucked.

Another one of my guys is this British comedian who I imagine does like a normal comedy set and then ends with his magic trick, his mutant power, where he would. will ask the audience for words and make a freestyle rap incorporating all the words. It'll get like five words and he'll play a beat and he'll rap competently. And he's like, he's a very unassuming looking guy. He's really funny. And the audiences at this point know this magic trick. So when he's like, I'd like a word from the audience, they're like verisimilitude. They will throw in like neologism, something that is going to be tough for him to get to.

and not only does he like work all the words in over the course of his freestyle rap and do so sensibly, it's not just like what I would do where I would think like first and foremost let me get a rhyme word so I can clumsily get from A to B

he is going to make like syntactical sense and everything too. In addition to all that when he is gathering the words he is so present and so funny and so unflapped talking to, because

you know, if someone's going to shout out Verisimilitude, he's going to ask that person a couple of questions about themselves. And some of that might even work its way into his fucking rap. And that looks like magic to me. Even though I know it's not. It's just practice. Most magic is practice.

I think if you just had, you rhyme enough. You rhyme enough, you have all the rhymes in your head. Like, you have, like, you heard the word vermisimilitude. I gave it you a few times. For sim, no, vermiss, for vermissimilitude. Yeah, great, that one.

You already know, you already got to it in your head because you've done it so many times. And you're like, I know the six things that are going to be really easy for me to use that rhyme with that. And so you're just like checking the encyclopedia in your brain and being like, I'm going to use that one, that one or that one. We'll see where we get to. And you only have like those choices available to you. I wonder if you already know what should rhyme with what? You know, like you already have six options. I don't know.

I started this episode singing and rhyming because I do so much more of that now in my life. Yeah. As a father, changing diapers. There's a, what do you sing? What do you sing? What do you sing? What do you sing?

And I don't remember it exactly. But I know part of one of the verses, it's always you, we'll go to the moon. You'll get there soon You will be on the moon And one of the verses I know In that middle part They say

You'll make a lot of dough there But first you got to go there Yes, you'll get paid on the moon And so what I sing to my son Cooper When I'm changing his diaper Is just like to keep it fun for me Some kind of improv game Where I'm just throwing out things

You'll eat pork on the moon we will fill your belly with food stuffs from a deli, you'll eat pork on the moon. And I'm just trying to think of other things that are like, you know, eat pork becomes you'll drive cars, you'll eat cats, whatever is coming into my head. And then I know I have to do those, a rhyming couplet in the middle of this thing

and then bring it home with you'll do blank on the moon again. And I feel like if I do this enough, and I do, because I change 10,000 diapers, a day, I'm going to get really good at rhyming in the constraints of this Moxie Fruvis song, famously canceled band Moxie Fruvus. Perfect. I didn't, man, I didn't. I should have done more as a dad.

But I would, the only song I would sing to my, every single time when I would change my son, I would sing closing time, but I would sing it as clothing time every time. That's really good. Yeah. I When trying to calm my son down sometimes at night I started singing this Benfold's five song, Lullaby

And not change the music Oh, you like Benfold's five? Got me Fucking got me And it's a fine song And it says Good night, sweet baby in it And so that's why my brain picked it

And I don't make it fun I just like, it's a song That I just from day one started singing when I'm holding and trying to get them to go to sleep. We have since read the importance of consistent rituals when trying to get a kid to sleep. So now that song is an every night kind of song. And Soren, it's not exactly in my range. It's not a song I should have picked to sing every night for the rest of my life.

Yeah, I got a couple of it. That's how I feel about everything's all right. I'm from Jesus Christ Superstar, where I was like, I was getting into that song and I was like, you know, the Mary stuff's not that hard. And then I got to Judas and I was like, man, he just sounds so cool and I'm not doing it justice. Yeah. This is not. You sing that part and your lullaby to your son?

Every part of it. Jesus Christ. Mary, Judas. I'm getting all of them in because sometimes it took them forever to go to sleep. So I was like, you're getting the whole thing. I, having sung this Ben Folds Five song a million times already, I am still, I am still, I'm not going to Google it because I don't really care, but hearing myself say the lyrics over and over again,

I still find myself going, what the fuck is this song about? I know it's about go to sleep, and I know there's planes, but the line is just the three of us took flight that night, Uncle Richard, me and James Earl Jones. I was like, how many times am I going to sing James Earl Jones to my son? Yeah.

And what am I doing? And what is the song about? Man, I, you don't, you really choose the songs that you sing to your children and they choose you? Because you are, you're in a state you've never been in in your entire life. You're so tired and bewildered. And you're just trying to get this thing to shut its goddamn eyes so it can go to sleep. And anything comes out of you. And you're always surprised. My mom was also very surprised when she would sing to me this song called Mucky Kid. But she continued to sing it to me my entire childhood.

But it was, oh, you are a Mucky Kid, dirty as a Dustpan lived. When he finds the things you did, you'll get a belt from your daddy. Jesus Christ. That was my nursery rhyme. I got another new fatherhood quick question for you. Okay. Cool soren. Oh, yeah.

I'm cool today, by the way. If you're just listening to this, you wouldn't know that. I think you're cool every day. That's very kind of you. Our, even our listeners must know that you're wearing some pretty loud sunglasses. They must hear it. They must hear how loud these are.

You know what I'm doing is I'm calling my shot. I'm saying that this is an episode in the future I'm going to want to come back to because it's so good. And it's going to make it much easier for me to scroll through YouTube and find this episode if in the thumbnail I'm wearing these cool-ass shades. Yeah. That's, so what,

what's going to happen? Do you feel like, do you feel like it's good so far? Has anything come up that you, you can imagine? yourself wanting to revisit my rap in fact in fact in fact this is but this is why we're to climb to new heights this is we're so low now that it's going to be even more impressive when we get up high this is like why chimborazo is more impressive than Everest like it's not higher but it is closer to the sun eventually that's totally like that do you um do you wear those the sunglasses that you're wearing currently do you wear them um in the world

Yes, earnestly. No, I've never put these on my face before. These are my sons. And they were sitting on my desk in my office because he dropped his baseball gear in here. And I put them on. And I was like, what if I was the type who could wear these? They're very cool.

Oh. The sun sunglasses. He looks very cool in them. Yes, yeah. My son's glasses. Yes, correct. I am a little nervous about them, actually. I'm realizing now that the reflection of everything on my desk is in them.

I don't want to give away a lot of a lot of way. I've certainly thought about putting sunglasses on in this show lately because I am self-conscious about how tired I must look. And so I want to hide my eyes a little bit. But I don't know what someone will see in the reflection, but something that an enterprising someone could use to nefarious. ends. Yeah, I know. This was a mistake. What I'm doing

is a mistake. All right. Ask me a fatherhood question. I'm ready. Sure. Was there anything when you were a father that you thought I can without having a specific

idea, this baby product that has been around for hundreds of years, I think I could probably do it better I think it needs improvements. Yeah, let me hear yours. I'm going to jump right in and talk,

I don't have the specific fix yet, but I've been struggling with diapers. We have lots of diapers. I change all the diapers. And the thing about changing a boy for sure, probably both, but a boy for sure is often when you change the diaper, when the wiener is exposed,

to cold air. That will reflexively trigger the boy to pee. Even if you might not necessarily need to pee, it's just like a natural thing that happens. This sounds like a different way we could make boys instead. Maybe we could... And there's the viral Instagram tip is to take your baby wipe, your cold wet baby wipe and like rub that under their belly button or above their

belly button and let that coldness trigger. you're the pee response. So the boy pee's in the diaper while he's still wearing it. Then you open the diaper and change it out. I have not observed that to be 100% effective

because I will still sometimes get peed on. And other people have said, yeah, you just got to put like a paper towel. Like they sell like pee, um, tee peas that you would,

you would place. But I don't, it doesn't seem like something that you would need to buy a specific product for. People suggest putting a, a cloth or a paper towel down to capture the pee. But the thing is, I'm often holding my son's feet with one hand and cleaning him with another hand. And he is finding ways to put that paper towel over his mouth, or he'll grab it and throw it away or, you know, wiggle his way around it.

And so even with these two methods of the cold cloth and the paper towel, I still. still will get peed on. And my son will pee on himself and pee on the walls of our home and on the dresser and on the floor. And I talked to other fathers about this. And I know that we've been doing this for a long time. And we've probably thought of everything. But I talked to fathers about this to see. And I'm like, hey, my son peed in his eye today.

And they're always just like, ha. Nice. Yeah, man. He's going to do that a lot more. happens and I'm just like no we have to dream bigger there's got to be another way I feel like a a CEO disruptor showing up to a new company and noticing redundancies having not done the research but I look at this like the diaper is is supposed to keep the pee and poop in and so far I'm getting peed on often and I think that's a design

line flaw. I think if I was handing in my scripts at work every week and I did the literary equivalent of sometimes peeing on my boss, whatever that means, like a script that just stopped being funny or stop making sense. Every script that I handed

in, I was like, yeah, some of them are going to just not work sometimes. Then that would be grounds for firing. But the people who make diapers are just like, yeah, this thing keeps all the pee, except sometimes you, dad, the most important person in the diaper changing scenario,

sometimes you'll have to cut your hand. Sure. Of course, you're going to catch piss in your hand. But other than that, it's a great product. What are we doing? Surely we could do something else. I'm trying to think of we would just use the cloth. We'd have like these like, because you have so many cloths

for bit drooling everything. And so you're surrounded by cloths when you have a new baby. And so we'd always just use one of those. And first of all, we're putting down, before I even put him on the table, I'm putting one of those down underneath him because I don't want to get anything on the changing table itself because then I've got to change that cover. I know.

We've got a P-pad that we put down everywhere in the house. It lines the walls, P-pads now at this point. I'll pull a P-pad out from my shirt. I don't know how to fix this for you, though. I guess I can only tell you that along with bullying, it gets better. Yeah. They stop peeing so much while you're changing the diaper.

And in fact, they start to become very soothed by the diaper change where they're just like, they really calm down. Sometimes they'll live in a false sleep on the table because it's so calming to them and it's ritualistic. So they know it. And they're like, oh, I'm where I'm supposed to be. And then they will go to sleep. This is when dad sings that song that sometimes rhymes and sometimes doesn't.

I don't really get this guy yet. How he fits into the show. I don't understand. I would say if he wants to sing to me, he can just like pick one song and learn it. I don't know why he needs to make it fresh for him. They're trying a lot of new things with this guy, and none of them are really landing. Yeah, I think I have one as well. I would like to, the problem that I ran into a lot was snaps and zippers, because with all, especially with all the changing, first of all, if you get zipper clothes, the zipper starts on one leg, goes all the way up that leg, then turns.

turns a corner and goes straight up the body. Yeah. On every single piece of clothing that has a big zipper on it. But what that does is like right at that place where it turns, it creates this weird fold. Yeah. And like whenever your baby is hanging out or like curling up or sitting down, like there's this weird like extra fold of fabric that seems very uncomfortable for them where like the ends of each fold, the zipper just digs right into them. Yeah. And I don't like that.

But the other alternative is snaps. And snaps are a lot cleaner in that respect. But snaps take you, I don't know, roughly 45 minutes to undo and do again. Yeah, you have to understand that any piece of clothing with snaps is a piece of clothing. You're going to have to take off quickly at 3 o'clock in the morning. And that's a non-starter for me. And they, yeah, they have, I would say those snap ones, because those ones go up one leg around the grundle and then down the other side.

And so there's probably 15 on a pair of, even like a newborns. There's 15 of those things. And so you can get them off real easy. That feels good. But then the getting them back on is borderline impossible in the dark and like really, really hard. And I'm thinking, I don't know. My first instinct was be like, well, let's just give Velcro a shot. Let's like not even like full strips of Velcro, but you have individual little, just like the snaps,

but you have little Velcro pads along the way. I don't need to hear any more. I love this idea. Let's do it. I don't want to hear a counterpoint at all. I want that. I want, let's just do the Velcro horseshoe in the crotch. Like, I think we can really, it could be a huge success.

And no one's even trying it. No one's trying to advance this portion of children's clothing. They're just like, this is what we live with. This is how it's going to be. The PJs now, the onesie PJ will have two zippers. It's all on the same track, but there's like a zipper at the top of the neck and then one at the bottom of the foot. And so if you want to just check the diaper, you can start from the bottom and go up and see like, oh, the diaper needs to be changed.

Okay, so he's unzipping just half of it. Yeah. The annoying issue is sometimes it's very helpful. I want to just see the diaper, change the diaper, and then put his legs back in and zip it back up. But there are, when we're done with PJs, I'll check the diaper, change the diaper, and now I want him out of this. I have to pull that zipper down to the foot. I have to get his legs back in, pull the zipper down, and then take the top.

zipper and pull that down because for all of our advancements of children's clothing, we're not, we're not really great at getting their fucking heads in clothes just yet. No, no, no, no. There's a lot that needs to happen to get their head out correctly. And there's so many times where I'll be changing anyone like, my wife is in the bathroom and she'll come out and like one of his arms will be out beneath the shirt and one will be out above the shirt sticking out the neck hole.

And I'm just like, I know I did this wrong. I know you trusted me with this. You weren't supposed to see this part. Oh God, it's going so wrong. I know given enough time that I will be able to get this shirt off him and a new one on, but the time was not two minutes. And I hoped it would be, but it was not. I found when I had a newborn that I loved onesies because I didn't like how often I

was picking my child up and their hide his entire shirt was like bunching up into his armpits yeah like that shirt just comes rising up as soon as you pick him up and i wanted it and like it was much easier when it was just like the clothes would just stay in place and so we put him in a lot of those jumpers essentially they have no legs in them but just has a crotch to the shirt and uh i loved those because they also at the neck for the head there's just like this extra fold of fabric right at the traps so that obviously the traps have somewhere to go when your kid is like really lifting hard but then also they the traps like it opens up right there the shirt like opens up more so you can it's much easier to like force a whole head and maybe something else through there like my whole

forearm when I'm pushing the head through it can also fit through there yeah we had we took uh because we had my in-laws in town so we took my son out into the world yesterday it was it was a lot of fun we went to restaurants and everything and we put him in a in like a shirt and then this knit jumper thing, sort of like a knit overalls, which is, I have, two of the reasons that I've wanted a child was to put them in sunglasses and to put them in overalls. It's very exciting to me to put them in these,

these cute knit overalls that have like the straps that come around the front and then they get secured on the front with a button each. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you looked adorable. We're so thrilled. In the bathroom of a restaurant on a changing table, undoing those buttons so I can get him completely out of the jumper. Nightmare.

This is fucked. This is nothing. How have we not made, how are we selling any clothes for babies that aren't immediately diaper change friendly? Why are we, why is any of this getting out of the fucking factory doors if it's not like, this is really cute? and there's a hole in the butt so you can rip the diaper out conveniently. That should be the main thing that we think about when designing baby clothes. You should always be able to peel away from that area. You don't want to have to return to that area with the clothes.

So you get those straps off. Then you've got to come back down past the butt again, which is like that's the area I'm trying to get all this away from. But you don't have this probably yet or you don't have the worst version of it yet because you've still got a child that's breastfeeding and that's it. or bottle. I don't know your situation. But they...

Steak. Steak. As soon as they start eating solid foods, that shit gets so much worse. And they start having huge shits. And huge shits that people talk about blowouts, but like, I don't think even calling it a blowout does it justice. Because it's not just like squirting up the top of the diaper or like out near the legs. Occasionally, they'll have a blowout so big that their shit gets in their hair. Like it's firing.

like those fountains in Vegas up into the back of their hair. We went to a Broncos Super Bowl party when my son was born. And we had him in all super in all Broncos gear. And how to change him before we even got to the party because he had shit all the way up the back of it and into his own hair. And we were like, well, I don't even, I don't have a plan for this. We don't have shampoo here. It's so seeing the ghost of Christmas future with diaper changes is very, very scary to me

because we've had like gnarly diaper things that have all been mostly contained within the diaper or if something comes out, it's because I put it on wrong in the beginning. But we will see like an Instagram story of someone who is like, we took our baby to the airport and then they'll show a whole lot of shit

that has gone through diaper, through layers of clothing, and now is into like the car seat or the carrier. I'm just like, oh, this is... Yeah. So now that's... Nothing is safe. There's nothing we can't. Yeah, it gets everywhere, man.

There also, when you're, you're going to find that as soon as he has some manner of dexterity, where he can use his hands as he wants to, as opposed to, he doesn't even know these limbs exist. They're just sort of on autopilot. Yeah. Everything. Everything is too expensive these days. I don't know about you, but I like keeping my money where I can see it. And the rest of the world does not want that to happen. and they want my money where they can see it.

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which is equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See MintMobile for details. As soon as you take a diaper off, boy or girl, the first thing they do is just like, they just like, I'm going to touch these genitals.

They're brand new to me. They've been in a diaper all. my life. And now there's something brand new that's available. I got this little limited window and wish to touch this new thing. And so like both hands. And when there's shit all over them, congratulations. Now they're shit all over their hands. And they're into it. Like they're like, oh, now it's wet. Interesting. Knowing what I know about my son already is there's another place those hands want to go. And it's the mouth. Yeah. Yes. Yes, sir. Yeah. I remember when we first I just had our son.

We had new parents that were our friends because those were the only people you can hang out with anymore because no one else understands you. It's like going through rehab. It's like all your old friends are like, well, you don't fucking get it. Can't be around you. They, we had some friends who said that. We had just a quick point on that. We had my childless brother and sister-in-law over this weekend too. And my sister-in-law was like, are you growing your hair out?

And it's like, I don't know. No. Me? Are you asking me questions? You think I'm making decisions about me? I haven't seen myself in weeks. There's a point where we were talking and he's looking very tired and I was like, it's everything okay. More tired than even he should be looking. And he was like, we had a really bad night last night where my son yelled for me. And I went into his room and turned on the light. and the crib, his hands, his face had shit all over it. And he had then what he had surmised it happened was that his son had pooped in his diaper and was like, I felt that and was finally aware of it, put his hand down the back of his diaper, and was like, what's that? And then took his hand out.

And now the hand has stuff all over it and he doesn't know what to do. And he's at first maybe like in a I Love Lucy situation trying to solve this problem on his own and then realize, realizing he's in over his head and then calling for the supervisor. I mean, like, dad or like, ah, ah, and just calling. And it was, he said it was just a nightmare because they cleaned everything up, got it all set. And they're like, it's the middle of the night. And then he goes to put his son back down and realizes there's like all these sections he missed where it's just like, there was hidden shit. And he was like, well, starting over.

We're going to go through all this again. Lights all have to go on. There's no other way to do this. We're not going to do it by smell. And it's, it's rough, man. It's like they, once they become autonomous, in some ways it's a blessing. And in some ways it's like, it's way, way worse because now they're going to make some really bad mistakes. I know.

I'm really, it's, it's such a conflict within me because I'm, I'm, I want him to understand his own limbs. I'm, I'm taking his hand and touching his toe and like, here, look, this is how wide your arms can go. This is how high they can go. This is how low they can go. I want him to know these things because I think he's going to be super into it. I think once he realizes that the things, these wobbly things that he sees sometimes are his and they're under his control and he can grab things on purpose with him.

I think it's going to open up his world in a life that with a world that continues to open up for him. I think this is one of the first things. And he's just going to be so fucking pumped when he learns that he can do stuff. another part of me is like he's this is this is straight diaper hell this is as soon as he gets some control I know he's going to use it to do

he's going to take that fucking diaper off yeah yeah have you started are you guys reading any of the Wonder Weeks no oh you maybe maybe check it out it's great what is it no no no no no the Wonder Weeks is like a great book and I think they turn it into an app

honestly but it's a great book that gives you an expectations for like when your kid is going to have a how weak like all of a sudden like they're as their brain is discovering new things emotionally they're very dysregulated and like all of a sudden you're like what is wrong with my child and it's all really important early on it's like up through the first year I think or like the first 11 months and it really helps you prepare for like here's what they're going to be discovering both their hands at this time it's going to be emotionally pretty rough for them like they're they're going to And so it's super, super nice to be able to see that on the horizon and know what's coming.

And then when it does come, you're like, this book is a psychic. Luckily, I have a couple of resources. I have my book that I love, the name of which escapes you now. But it was like the expected father and now it's the new father. And soon it'll be the toddler father. The old father. Yeah, the dead father. I have that, which is very helpful.

And I have the magical Instagram algorithm that even though I don't even think I've told it my last name, Instagram knows like, hey, congratulations on four weeks. It's like, thank you. I don't know how you know that, but like they knew where we, the algorithm was feeding me wedding stuff until it started feeding me pregnancy stuff until it started feeding me newborn stuff. Like it is absolutely in line with my life because the phones are listening to us even though they're not. and Instagram is telling me to look out for week six

because that is that's a time that that's the one yeah they everything they've been doing up until that point has been like reflex and instinct and then by week six they're started to get more it's very funny the way they explain it because like by week six they're starting to get more

conscious and aware and they hate it they don't like being here stand it Sorry, Dan, pause for a second. Oh, no. Let's not wake him. Let's not wake Daniel. Daniel fell asleep.

I'll finish this out. That's, yeah, it's really, it's really hard when they discover the things. And it's like, each one of them is a new achievement that you unlock. And so the dad part of you is like, yeah. Like we got this new thing. Oh, no. This has made my life harder. This made things way worse.

Yeah. It's nice right now that he is only ever hungry, tired, or gassy. I mean, gassy is the one that is... They're easy to figure out. It's the toughest thing that in my text chain with another brand new dad, I meant to text him yesterday, it's literally always gas because that was a thought I had. and the last message that he sent me a couple weeks ago was it's always gas and it's just the two of us at this point it's just gas it's going through hell and me like it's heavy try gas again because yeah the baby is gassy

and it's very uncomfortable and the baby doesn't know what to do about it and it just feels like the world is ending and you are burping it which is an imperfect system because you can't immediately like press a button and baby burps you're just like patting the back while the kid is screaming in your ear because the world is ending and it's just like this is we need to we should this should have been addressed after the first iteration of babies we should have come up with something and it's it's also like you can't communicate at at this point like if it's uncomfortable when he's uncomfortable with his his diaper and I move him to the changing table he generally knows this is going to get better and eight times out of 10 after a change you're going to go and you're going to you're going to have

food and he understands that transition. He seems to and seems to enjoy it. There's no relationship between gas and the relief of gas that I can communicate to him. Because he's just like, I'm not hungry, but I'm dying. I'm dying. And no one's doing anything. And it was like,

if you just burp or fart, you will, you'll be happy. And then you'll go to sleep. Your world will stop ending. You'll stop screaming. and you'll be the sweetest, happiest thing, you just need to burp. You just need to do this thing.

I promise you. Can't communicate that. No, and also the worst thing is this. Another design flaw. As they're screaming and crying, it's prohibiting them from doing the thing that they need to do. They have to kind of relax before it's like, oh, and then there's the release. Do you guys know how to get the gas, how to get the air out of the top part?

Do you know how to get the air out of the bottom part of the baby? I've seen poisonous Instagram things about like moving their legs and like crossing the legs over here and twisting them over there and I certainly try it with my children my children are like my insides are all wrong I'm like it's just the gas everything's okay we've been through this and I'm still like I've got them on the ground and I'm like pushing those legs up into their chest pulling them back down pushing them up into their chest, pulling them back down.

And they're like, it's not that, it's not that. And then they will fart and they'll be like, I feel better. Like, yeah, man. Just, it's always the same. I help my son poop. And I wish he knew that I was helping him, that I am the unseen hand. Because like he will, you'll see him start to like contort and contort and try to push. And I will give his feet something to, like, ground, to push against.

To push against. And I know that's helping because if he is just like stretching his legs, that won't do anything. But I'm like, bear down and like hold my hand and like push against me. And this is going to, you know, these are the guardrails in a handicap stall that you're holding on to to help shove everything out. And it's successful. And part of me wants to just be like, do you understand that I'm the other set of footprints?

Do you get that I am the reason this worked? I think that what's going to end up happening with that is that you're going to end up in like a Mitch Moranovic situation where like his legs are going to get ultra strong from this. You're going to have a kid who's going to excel in the combine because you've been helping him shit so good his whole life. And just like that pushing is like his calves, oh man, all those muscles. He's just helping those out. Speaking of muscle soren, the next time you see me, things might be different because one of the other toxic Instagram things that I have been fed, that I've found to be true is that when your baby is fussy

and you want them to calm down and go to sleep, it helps to hold them. You're doing dips? And do squats. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I am doing 200 squats a day sometimes. And squats have always been an exercise that I don't really think I needed.

I do them a lot, but I don't entirely know what they're for. I think I've seen you enough to know that your tree trunk legs don't need a little extra help. Absolutely not. And I do so much running. And I've never exactly noticed a difference with squats integrated into a workout. And now it's the only exercise I do. Slightly weighted squats at intermittent times.

Eight pound squats. Well, have you explored lunges with him? Do you have enough of a runway, someone there in the house? to do lunges. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what they really go for because it's like that forward progression. There has like a sway to it and they will, it's like a drug to them.

When you start doing lunges with your baby forward where it's like a dip up forward, dip up forward. They just melt. It's amazing. The squats are nice. You can't. It's just been a process. And this baby is different every single day, every single.

a week, so I'm sure squats will stop working at some point. But I have found that, like, I will do 50 squats. Because if I do 20 and he stops screaming and he calms down and then I stop at 20, I have to start over again. So I have to do 50 squats. And then I walk around with him for like five to 10 minutes and then I'll stand still and I'll rock him side to side for five to 10 minutes. And then I will sit and rock side aside for five to ten minutes and then he will be asleep if any part of that process is interrupted you have to start at the beginning yeah i can't just be like you remember the 50 squats we logged the 50 squats so let's just do the walking around part no no we're doing it again i only start from the beginning i i remember that i remember how awful that was and i remember that that was the first

time that it even occurred to me that there are different layers of sleep when I had a newborn or a baby was that because you do all that stuff, you watch those eyes shut, that's not the finish line. No. Like seeing the eye shut and seeing like the mouth go limp, like that's not the finish line. You have about another five to seven minutes where you have to get them into a deeper sleep before you can even consider moving them or putting them down in a crib or anything like that.

Right. That's the thing. It's not like you or I where deeper sleep means. lay me down and put a blanket on me. Deeper sleep is also a physical activity. Yeah. Yeah. So you got to like you got to get them into,

they have to really get into that zone before you can even consider moving them. And I had a real good strategy, which was if your baby's in your left arm, that's where you keep them right? Because your right arm needs to still be doing stuff. If you can get them in that left arm and then when they're, when they finally are asleep, you take the other hand and you put it up underneath and you get it underneath the head

like that. Okay? So you get it, yeah, wrap it up underneath the head. So you're like holding their whole head, right? Then there's a moment where you can take that head and their body's now resting on top of this arm underneath. You can take them, slide this hand down and just put them in a crib. Because now that's the head, once the head's supported, like, they're like, that's the only part that we'll really wake them off if you're jostling that around. So you can get them and then put them down and then you just slowly slide that hand out from underneath them.

and it was literally the only way I could ever transfer a baby from my arms to something that wasn't me. And anything else. Yeah. And that was like, that was the way. And I was like, why did nobody, why does nobody teach this? Because you see other parents doing it and they're like, they're kind of like trying to like juggle the baby. And then the head does any time it does like this or like rocks around a little, that baby's up. Yeah.

It was like, oh, we're getting up. We're getting up. We are constantly reinventing ways to hand the baby off to each other when he's asleep. And like, we'll be on the couch. And she's like, you need to just, you need to wedge yourself between me and the armrest. And I will roll on top of you and then roll away. And at some point, I will have transferred the baby. Yep.

Yep. This is going to be a game changer for you. I think try it with like a stuffed animal first, but like hold it there in that notch your arm and then just slide a hand up underneath it. And then you've got the baby in just like one arm. Then you've got, it's moved over to the right one. Yeah. And now you can do whatever you want with that baby's head and put it down, lower it. Oh, it's, it's the word's at.

I would say, a game changer. I got to say, man, this wasn't going to be a fatherhood podcast. No. It wasn't going to immediately turn into every week we talk about fatherhood. We got a pop culture one brewing for the future. We'll get to it eventually. It's evergreen. Guys, eventually my kid's going to grow up.

Yeah. And then we'll talk about a lot less. Disney again. We'll talk about which Star Wars. I'm excited for you to get back into Where's Waldo, Dan, because there are some through lines through Where's Waldo that are really fucking weird. Like, there's a lot of horny women in Where's Waldo. Women that are just like devastated by guys that are muscular. And there's like, whoever's drawing that had some real issue.

with what they perceived women liked or didn't like. But I'm excited. I'm excited for you to get there. I'm excited for you to start reading Winnie the Pooh and get really fucked up by Winnie the Pooh not because it's like sentimental or anything, but because you're trying to do the voices, you're doing your best job at the voices,

and you realize that they're rarely telling you who's talking in the ensemble until after the line has already been said. Really, then you've got to go back. You've got to be like, I did that as Tigger. I should not have done that as Tigger. That was actually Rabbit speaking. And then you'll go again and do it as,

rabbit. Finding your Winnie the Pooh? All the other voices? Very easy. But Winnie the Pooh himself? Wow. You got to, it's, it is not intuitive to do a Winnie the Pooh voice. Doesn't he just, have we talked about this? Does, doesn't, don't you think, doesn't he just sound like sweet David Christopher Bell? Have we ever discussed? Yeah. He does sound like David Christopher Bell. I met Dave and he started talking. I was like, this is, this is warm. This is nice. It's, like, your instinct is just like you want to do gravelly.

He's got kind of like that, like, something whiskey in his voice. But that's not the right, that's not the right choice. You have to do it more like, it's almost like high pitched. Like he's got like a higher voice. Like, oh, Robert. Oh, Robert. Is he Welsh? What are you doing?

No, he's not. But he's like, uh, what does he say a lot? He's like, oh, bottom. Oh, bother. Oh, bother. Oh, piglet. It's real. It's so hard.

I haven't done it in a while. Obviously, I'm rusty. The other ones, though, banger. Like, whoever, when, everything that they do in the cartoon, I don't even know what they did before this, because the cartoon is them. Every single one of their voices is perfect in the cartoon. I think Winnie and Tigger are both Jim Cummings, legendary voice actor Jim Cummings. Okay. he might do more, but those are like uniquely and distinctly voices that he contributes to things.

I don't, uh, I don't think I know what rabbit sounds like. He's just sort of annoying all the time. He's just always so sad about everything. Well, not really sad. He's really annoyed, but you know what? You'll find it. Um, I'll say the other ones. You'll find other ones that are, that are really fun.

Like Grover, when I discovered that I could do Grover really well, because there's this book called The There's a Monster at the end of this book. I was like, oh shit, I should have been Grover. I'm really good at this. That's funny that we started this with, is there anything that as a new father, you feel like you could have reinvented and you thought you had nothing, but it turns out you would reinvent popular, beloved Sesame Street character. You would be Grover.

That's cool. Everyone would be so excited. They'd find out that I was Grover and they'd. find out that I had a secret gonzow hidden away. Oh, no. It would be wonderful. We're all trying to forget. But, you know, I'm excited for you.

That's also where you end up doing a lot of your rhyming is in those books. And boy, you're just going to remember. Goodnight, Goodnight, Gunn' Night, Construction Site. That will be in your head for the rest of your life. Did it? Help you. I feel like if I'm reading, we're not, at the stage yet where a bedtime story is meaningful. But when it is, will, do you think it's

helpful for your writing? Like, I feel like if I am reading a concise story with a beginning, middle, and end every single night and saying it out loud, I feel like that will find its way into my writing bones even more than it already is. I don't, No. I mean, I'm sure it does. I'm sure that it has an effect on my writing. But I'll, so much of the children's books is, so much of the children's books is, a lot of them are really bad. Like they're just, and the stuff that your kid responds to, you are the bad ones. And so you're trying to like get to these good ones that would actually help you and that you do think are interesting and good. And they're just not into it. And they're, that middle ground is so slim in terms of like where they books that they actually respond to. that you enjoy reading. The ones that are bad are not helpful, I don't think. In fact, I think your brain is like allergic to them. Like, it will only hurt your writing.

It's the few that I've experienced so far, it's crazy how, how absent of lessons they are. I think I went into this assuming every book was going to be a little bit about be nice to your parents and don't piss into the sky or something like that. But the books are nothing. There's this, we talked about the one about the bear who's missing a hat.

And I read another one also with bears. And every chapter is just like, put your food away or the bear's going to eat it. Like when you're camping, put your food in the canister. Otherwise, the bear's going to eat it. And when you're going for a walk outside, keep your food in a secure location or else the bear is going to get it. And then at night,

put your food in the trash can and lock the trash can or else guess what the bear is going to get it and we're like this is this is just pretty bad my kid's not going solo to Yosemite this is bare forward a lot of lessons here that I don't think my child needs all right

thank you everybody for listening to the show as you know it's a quick question with Sorin and Daniel this has been a lot of fun for us if you like this podcast you can watch it on YouTube you can see my cool sunglasses If you want to hear our theme song, that's by Me Rex. They've got other great songs you can check out anywhere you stream. If you want more of this podcast, we've got a Patreon that you can subscribe to.

And last but not least, a big thank you to Gabe Harder, our usual sound editor, engineer, producer, and our current sound editor, engineer, and producer who's filling in today for him, McKenzie. Thanks for being here. That's it. quick question for you all right what's on your mind I've got a quick quick question for you all right the answer's not important I'm just glad that we could talk tonight so what's your favorite

how did you get when will I be two best friends and comedy writers if there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here