As such, the process has de-evolved into a sort of baby wrestling match; a game in which she tries to see how many times she can flip from her back to her belly and crawl away, and we try furiously to remove the old diaper and strap on a new one before poop and pee gets everywhere.

Powergirl is far better at this game than I am. My downfall: As soon as the baby starts squirming, I start sweating. Profusely. Like Patrick Ewing used to.

We’ve tried different methods of distraction over the last few weeks. The television remote worked for a while, but when she nearly chewed off one of the buttons, we gave up. Our nanny suggested giving her a bottle before changing her, but after a while she was on to us with that one, as well.

Then, yesterday, my brilliant wife (she does have a Ph.D.) found the Holy Grail: Her cell phone.

The lights! The sounds! The fact that it flips open and closed! The first time we gave her the phone during a change, L was so enraptured by this little device that she lie there motionless for minutes. I could have drawn on her belly with a Sharpie and she wouldn’t have batted an eye.

Since then, we’ve incorporated the phone into every changing session. So far, it’s still as fascinating (to L) as it was that first time.

Sure, the baby has totally screwed up the settings on Powergirl’s phone (sorry, AT&T). And yes, this afternoon, the baby accidentally purchased some weird Tetris-style game (how the girl manages to unlock the keypad, I have no idea). In the scheme of things, these are minor inconveniences; resetting my wife’s phone is a lot easier than grappling with a pint-sized human who squirms like a slippery seal. We’ll take whatever distractions we can get.

Most of our night together was awesome as always; after a leisurely dinner of puffs, tangerines, bananas and chicken with yam/apple/zucchini compote, the baby joined me for a stroll around the block.

After our walk was when things went south. L has developed a nasty habit of staging her biggest diaper-changing squirm-a-thons when Powergirl is MIA, and tonight was no exception. Her episode left her and part of our couch covered in poop and pee. It left me feeling soiled as well, though in a completely different way.

I’ll spare you the details because they’re sort of gross. Suffice it to say the diaper came off, and within seconds, poop was everywhere. Just as I managed to clean up the poop, the pee arrived.

Oh, and to make matters worse, there was blood, too—L had cut herself with her own nail (and my dry knuckles split open as I tried to grab her, flip her and wipe the poop).

Instead of losing my marbles as I’ve done in the past, I (somehow) managed to keep it together and deal with the situation at hand. Still, I yelled quite a bit—at least enough to force my daughter to shift her crying into overdrive.

The yelling was just the beginning. After the storm, once everyone/everything was cleaned up, I proceeded to spend the better part of the night beating myself up for my overreaction. Did I have to yell? Was it really that bad? Is L going to grow up and think I’m a hotheaded father with no regard for her feelings? Am I a terrible father for losing my patience…again?

After these rhetorical questions, guilt consumed me. I couldn’t sit still. So I did what any other moping stay-at-home dad would do: I went on a dad-related binge of chores.

I folded laundry. I did the dishes. I made three batches of L’s food. Then I reorganized her toys.

Eventually, I managed to calm down and come to terms with the way the night played out. Was it one of my proudest evenings? Not exactly. But it’s also was an evening that will make me a better father down the road.

The lesson: As parents, it’s perfectly acceptable for us to lose our patience every once in a while. How we deal with these situations, how we learn from them, is another thing entirely.

Generally, this comes in handy. Before every trip out of the house, for instance, I pack an extra change of clothes for the baby (in case she has an accident), an extra bottle set-up (in case we hit traffic) and extra toys (in case she becomes insatiably bored).

Today, however, little L found a chink in my armor.

To make a short story long, I ventured into the big city (San Francisco) this afternoon for lunch with a friend. Thankfully, my parents offered to watch/play with the baby while I lunched. I got to my folks’ place without incident, and arrived with enough time to change the baby’s diaper before heading to my appointment. This is when all hell broke loose.

Because she had been cooped up in the car seat for an hour, because she was excited to see her grandparents, because they were excited to see her, the baby squirmed like a little seal as I disrobed her. Then, the minute I got her diaper off, she peed. All over the place.

I’ve seen this girl pee before, and let me tell you—this time she was like Old Faithful.

Pee everywhere. On her clothes. On my parents’ brand new rug. On the towel beneath the changing apparatus. Oh, and fittingly, her pee also somehow managed to get all over me.

Naturally, I had backups for her outfit, the changing apparatus and (of course) the diaper itself. I did not, however, have a backup outfit for myself, which meant that after I actually changed my daughter, I rushed off to my lunch covered in pee.

Thankfully, I was lunching with an old friend (and not, say, a potential client). Also, L is still young enough that her urine doesn’t really smell. Still, the experience taught me that while I’m pretty much covered with Plan Bs for stuff related to my daughter, I need to spend some serious time restructuring those backup plans that relate to me.

Let me explain. Every morning after L wakes up, I stagger into her room, take her out of her sleep sack and change her diaper (we call this the “pre-bottle routine”). This morning, however, when I plopped her on the changing table for a pit stop, the half-naked little wiggle-worm tried to launch herself off the pad and practice flying.

Three times.

The first time I managed to keep it together and playfully said, “No.” The second time, I was a bit more stern, raising my voice slightly but adding a gentle, “Silly girl,” to make clear I was still her friend.

Upon the child’s final attempt—the violent thrust that managed to get poop all over my hands and arms, not to mention the changing pad, the baby’s pajamas and parts of the changing table, too—I basically lost my marbles, raising my voice and uttering two words a new daddy never, ever wants to say and mean: “BAD GIRL!”

The baby snapped into compliance and stopped her behavior immediately (of course it helped that I gave her my watch to play with while I managed to clean up and get her diaper on). For the rest of the morning, though, I was a wreck; convincing myself that by yelling that loudly over something so silly, I had committed some form of emotional child abuse.

Questions ran rampant through my mind. Did I overreact? Do other parents yell at their 9-month-old kids? Will she remember that I yelled at her and hate me forever? Will her hatred for me kick off a lifelong hatred for men in general, prompting her to become a social misfit?

Thankfully, this torture ended relatively fast; after three hours with her nanny (I had to lead a Webinar), the baby was giggling at me and actually managed to give me a kiss (her new favorite thing to do, by the way).

Still, if my reaction to my reaction is any indication, this whole discipline thing is only going to get harder as L grows up, and I’m in for a world of pain.

I had one such moment today. The inspiration: L’s first grown-up turd.

Not to be gross or anything, but up until this point, all of the baby’s poops were more liquid than solid; the kind of stuff you could hear gushing out. Then, this afternoon, after nearly a week of sweet potatoes, the baby introduced us to something most definitely solid, a miniature version of the same thing we adults produce.

To be frank, this “development” caught me by surprise. My nose told me she had a present in the diaper. But when I lifted down the front of her Huggies, the last thing I expected to see was a little Almond Roca.

The first questions that ran through my mind were: How long had it been there? Why didn’t she cry as it came out? And why the hell does it smell so awful?

Then, of course, the practical (read: neurotic) part of my brain kicked in with follow-ups: How do I clean this up? Are there city ordinances that govern how I should dispose of it? How does it compare in size to turds from other children her age?

(Damn those percentile charts that L’s doctor is always giving us.)

As I deposited L’s deposit into a deodorizing baggie, I couldn’t help but think of the song “Sunrise, Sunset” from “Fiddler on the Roof.” In the song, parents Tevye and Golde croon wistfully about the bittersweet realities of their daughters growing up. Sure, the ballad is about kids becoming adults and getting married. But the sentiment—my sentiment—was exactly the same.

As the name suggests, the pants are critical.

Every time I change the baby, I take her pants off, turn them inside out and put them on my head like a ski cap. Once they’re up there, I make sure the elastic band is hugging the very tip of my skull. This way, when I tilt my head downward, the legs are like soft and fluffy horns.

Next is where the clown voice comes in. Looming over the baby with the “horns” dangling above her, I shake my head around crazily, causing the “horns” to flop around. As they’re flopping, I dig deep for my best Grover-meets-Bozo voice and yell something along the lines of “Panthorns! Panthorns! Oh no!”

The one-two punch of panthorns and crazy voice gets the baby every time. She smiles. She laughs. She often guffaws.

Sure, her reaction is adorable. But more important, my absurdist Pee Wee Herman impression takes L’s mind off the fact that I’m actually changing her diaper—a chore about which she isn’t always very happy.

It’s gotten to the point where she gets giggly during changing time because she knows the “horns” are coming.

If only our respective bosses used similar techniques to make the workday more palatable.

Earlier this month, I blogged about the baby’s newfound ability to hold her head up. Just last week, she perfected what I like to call the “vice,” a clampdown grasp she prefers to administer on my t-shirts.

Her latest discovery is the quad thrust: while lying on her back, she extends her legs, plants her feet, bends her knees and pushes her rump skyward.

The newest technique usually results in baby booty flailing six or so inches from the position in which it started. On the ground or the bed, this party trick is cute, even funny. But on the changing table, it has been cause for major freak-outs—episodes we’ve been having with a little too much regularity.

From the day we set up that changing table (ours is in “rustic sun valley honey”), I had wondered why the pad came with straps. Now I get it: when baby is big enough, you need some sort of assistance keeping her secure while you change her poopy pants.

L reportedly has engaged in other noteworthy physical feats over the last few weeks, too.

For instance, Powergirl tells me the baby has rolled over on her own on three separate occasions. Because I haven’t witnessed any of these, however, I’m pretending they never happened.

Rumor has it the baby also miraculously stuck a pacifier back into her mouth after it popped out one morning last week. While I find this performance almost impossible to believe, I wouldn’t put it past L.

The bottom line is that as the baby continues to mature, her strength will grow as well, making these kind of accomplishments more and more likely. I’m sure at some point, it’ll be old hat to see her doing stuff like sitting up on her own, throwing a rattle or operating a zipper. For now, for this proud papa, these little victories are huge news.