I must be missing something when it comes to the scent of a baby. Even before Ted was born, people seemed incredibly excited about what he would smell like.

Comments ranged from the bizarre…  “Oh my god! I LOVE the way babies smell!”

to the creepy…  “I can’t wait to smell your baby!”

Keep your nose to yourself, lady.

In my experience, Ted often smells like crap. Literally (and figuratively). It’s usually the aromatic combo of spoiled milk and poop. It’s perfectly understandable too. Whether we’ve just topped off the tank a little too much or if he’s been churning the milk in his gut, there will be some on him somewhere at basically every point during the day. On his bib (if we’re lucky), on his clothes, in his clenched little fists, or buried deep within the skin folds of his neck, there’s dairy everywhere.

As for the poop, we don’t let him sit in a soiled diaper, but the kid does poop a lot. (And farts quite a bit too as he is his father’s son after all.)  So the smell does seem to linger in the air.

Is this what people have been waiting to smell? I have my doubts.

The sniffers seem to go right for the top of the head to get a good nose-ful of baby and now it all makes sense. They don’t like the smell of babies; they like the smell of baby shampoo. The top of the head is probably the one spot immune from the past-due dairy and fecal odors. As talented as Ted is, he has not yet spit-up or squeezed poop up to the very top of his head. Back of the neck? No problem.