About two weeks ago a friend brought his toddler to our house to meet the baby. Toddlers are terrifying to me. There you can be, having a normal day, feeling high on your own healthy dose of sublime self esteem. When suddenly, out of nowhere, a person who isn't even consistently making it to the toilet in time, will give you the most vicious read imaginable.

She didn't wait but one minute after walking through the front door before sobbing hysterically and saying "it stinks in here. This house stinks. I have to leave."

Now, you might think we, grown confident men with excellent hair and above-average taste in houseplants, would not then begin a two-week spiral based on the opinion of a child who was holding a naked headless barbie when she shared it. But you would be wrong to think that.

Maybe it's the sleep exhaustion. I don't think I've had a REM cycle in six weeks. I've gotten to a point where I'm now answering open-ended questions with a yes or no. Skylar essentially has Alzheimer's at this point. Just an hour ago he asked me what my plan was for the day and after a one-minute monologue in which I laid out an organized itinerary he responded, "sounds good. What's your plan for the day?"

We've been switching off who gets up with the baby at night. We don't know if this is the ideal method. We are too tired to think of any other option. Whenever it's my turn, Skylar will use all four of his limbs to eject me from the bed. Then he sighs, and I know this isn't what he means, but at 2:00 AM everything feels like an attack so I always imagine the sigh is intended to be a slur. Probably a homophobic one.

We've had to make a rule that nothing said between midnight and 6:00 AM counts. This rule came about a couple weeks ago when the baby started fussing around 1:00 and Skylar groaned, causing me to snap, "stop. I don't need two babies right now." (This was followed up by a robust apology tour five hours later.)

And so, when that toddler condemned our home and its apparent stench, all we could do from there was catastrophize.

The moment the guests left, Skylar and I had a panicked conversation about whether our house has always smelled like shit and everyone with a fully formed brain and filtering system has just been too polite to tell us.

We immediately called my mother and asked her to come over to give us a review because everyone knows there's no one more brutal than a boomer mom. Seconds after we asked her to describe the smell of our house, she made an unpleasant face and said "a little sour. And musty. Also, honey, I really wish you wouldn't swear so much on your website."

Skylar essentially looked like a ghostbuster for the rest of the day, turning a blowtorch and fireman's hose on everything we've ever owned. I saw him dipping things in bleach I didn't even know we had. Around 6:00 PM he started wandering the house with a giant cross screaming "the power of Christ compels you!" at the lamps. An hour later he ordered a wrecking ball and rode it wearing nothing but a cowboy hat as it repeatedly crashed into our house. After that he called all of his friends who go to Burning Man and asked them to come over for a sage cleanse.

Now, I know. I KNOW. We have a baby. A baby that pisses himself every twenty minutes and then saves up his poop for a blowout shitfest every other day instead of politely keeping it all inside as we've repeatedly asked him to do. It shouldn't be a shock to us if our house doesn't smell like Martha Stewart's armpit (which I assume carries the scent of lemons and low security prison).

The logical part of my brain can talk me off the ledge on this. We have brought a tiny biological human bomb into our home. Our house probably smelled fine before all of this. It's perfectly reasonable for us to enter our Stinky Era. Surely everyone who isn't a toddler or a boomer mom will understand.

But guys, that's the logical part of my brain. That part of the brain is only authorized to make decisions through robust REM cycles, and as previously noted, we are not doing REM cycles anymore. We don't even shut our eyes now. We are currently experiencing the least fun version of alternative cocaine.

No, at the moment, the irrational and often bitchy parts of us are in charge. And that's why Skylar carried a rug (that was too heavy but this was sort of a mom lifting a car off a baby moment) out to the garage "just in case" that was the cause of the smell. And when I said "why don't you just clean it" he responded "yes" which confused me for a moment but then I remembered that's how we answer open-ended questions now.

I was as upset about the smell crisis as Skylar, but also much lazier about it. As he was dry cleaning the curtains we don't even have with a giant bottle of Chanel No 5 and an industrial blow drier that advanced climate change sixty-five years, I went to Al Gore's internet to order a candle so large it's technically a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The candle arrived on Wednesday and I've had it lit from sun-up to sun-down ever since. We haven't breathed a single oxygen molecule in 72 hours. No one within five miles of us has.

We don't know if the house smells any better. We can't tell. And we're too afraid to invite the toddler back because we might be too fragile at the moment to learn our efforts have fully failed.

On Halloween we had a friend come over to take a picture of our family. We decided to dress up as pumpkins for baby's first holiday because we are extremely clever, original men.

Just as the friend arrived we asked her what our house smells like, adding, "and be honest if it smells bad."

She gave it a sniff or two before telling us, "no. It doesn't smell bad."

"Well," we prodded, "what does it smell like, then."

She gave us an encouraging and kind look.

"Like a family."

~It Just Gets Stranger