My baby's hands- a personal aside

I thought of another reason to change my diet today: my baby's hands.  You see, my baby's hands stink.  They smell like a mixture of palm sweat and buttermilk.  I imagine if there really was a such thing as "fromunder cheese", it would smell similar to my 2 month old's hands.  I would think most little babies' hands smell slightly, what with having their fist tightly clenched all day and the unbelievable amount of spitting up they do (I have no idea how my baby produces wet diapers as a lot of what he eats seems to come out of his mouth).  But I don't remember other babies' hands smelling quite this bad (and I wipe his hands off with a wipey at almost every changing, and bath him almost every night)

So how is this my fault?  Let me take you back to the summer of 2007, my first year on Flagstaff Hotshots.  Hotshotting, for those who don't know, is being a member of a relatively elite wildland firefighting crew of 20 men.  I say men, not people, cause there really aren't a lot of women hotshots.  Part of the reason for this discrepancy (in my experiences there are many reasons) is because of the nature of the job.  You are stuck in the woods with 20 guys doing an (at times) incredibly hard job, both physically and mentally.  Because of the physical part of this job, and you know, the dirt and sweat and smoke (and wood chips from chainsaws.  There is nothing more irritating than wood chips in your cleavage--both ass cleavage and titty cleavage) you are in a constant state of filthy.  Not dirty. Filthy.  You are lucky if you get to wash your hands every night before dinner and your hands are completely blacked in with dirt, smoke, grease, gasoline, etc.  You haven't changed your underwear or socks in a few days, and haven't showered in two weeks (there are some nasty motherfuckers who don't change their skivvies THE ENTIRE 14 day assignment).  So you can imagine, everyone smells and looks like a caveman.  Its part of the job.  The inside of the buggies (the 10 person crew carriers that also house all our gear) smells like a wrestling room.  And if you got rained on during the shift, or a night when you are just outside in a sleeping bag?  Wet dog smell for days. In a tight space.  Observe: (the guy giving me the bird? his shirt was originally bright yellow. FILTHY)

The reason I am telling you all this is because even with all this stench, with everyone accepting that we, and all our stuff, are going to stink, I still got called out on my own personal body odor.  Part of it may have been because guys don't want to give up the assumption that girls poop out roses, but mostly, its because my particular brand of BO (even with deodorant everyday I could) smells like cat piss.  No joke, my first year on the crew, two of the guys approached me with a bottle of Febreeze and said "We can do this the easy way, or the hard way"  Being an asshole, I said "Fine, the hard way!"  So they held me down in my seat and Febreezed me.  From that year on, I worked really hard a keeping a few "clean" t-shirts to wear around the buggy and stowed my sweaty dirty work shirts away.  In my hard hat.  That I also sweat in.  Yes, I'm a dirtbag.  All this is a way of explaining that I think I passed the powerful BO problem onto my poor son.

So what does this have to do with my diet?  The only time I have noticed a marked decrease in smell production was when I was being super religious on the Paleo Diet.  I am not going to be that dedicated now, you only have to do the diet about 80% of your week to see results.  But maybe, with my change of diet, my sweet boy will get the change through my breastmilk and so maybe his hands won't stink as much.  Maybe.

I know I promised pictures, I'm working on it.