Poop Happens

This past weekend I went to the best baby shower ever - everyone got neck massages and enjoyed a chocolate fountain while swapping parenting battle stories. The topic of discussion when I arrived was "your worst mommy moment" and I quickly discovered that these stories fell into one of four categories: 1) children falling off highchairs or down stairs 2)irrationally yelling at your child to be quiet/go to sleep 3) children eating things they shouldn't have been eating and 4) children pooping in places they shouldn't have been pooping.

My story fell into the last category and was gruesome enough to win me a door prize. I haven't shared it here because of its gag factor, but the multitude of poop stories that night inspired me to put it in writing. (If nothing else, my mom will print it and put it in my memory book so I can use it against my children later in life.)

Still, to be fair, if you are faint of heart or weak of stomach, do not press on.

My tale begins on an average day...Fionn was upstairs taking his daily micro nap and Emerson was downstairs eating a snack. I heard Fionn start to wake up and move around, so I went up to get him - leaving Emerson plaintively wailing for more food. By the time I got upstairs, Fionn was already happily playing on the floor, so I assessed the situation: baby-proof room, happy baby, crying toddler. I figured he would be fine for five more minutes while I finished up with Emerson. What could happen?

Famous last words of parents everywhere.

Literally five minutes later, I went upstairs to retrieve the baby. I got about half way up the stairs when the unmistakable stench of poop nearly knocked me over.

Dear lord...he pooped in his diaper and stuck his hands in it! I thought and made a terror-stricken dash for the bedroom.

Ha - if only it had been that bad.

The first thing I saw was a clean diaper laying in the middle of the floor. Insanely, I breathed a sigh of relief.

The next thing I saw was Fionn playing on the floor near the door. From my perspective, he didn't look dirty, so I breathed another sigh of relief. Then I bent down to pick him up and saw it - poop on his cheeks, in his hair, in his ears, up his nose. I didn't dare smell his breath.

I was like a crime scene investigator....everything was blocked out except the details right in front of me. Slowly, I retraced the evidence. There was a light streak of brown on the floor that got increasingly darker until, all the way across the room, was the jackpot. It was then that the story of what had unfolded became clear.

In the five minutes he was alone, he had taken off his diaper, then pooped, then fingerpainted in it, then proceeded to crawl across the entire room, touching every bucket of toys that lined the wall along the way. He even stopped and opened a few bins up, touching several toys inside. Somewhere halfway through this adventure he stopped to pee, then he finally came to a rest near the door where he spit up. And that's where I found him.

The situation was so awful I had no idea where to even begin. The smell was outrageous and of course we have rustic pine floors full of cracks...cracks now filled with poop.

When I finally regained my composure, I threw Fionn into the tub and gave him a solid scrubbing. Then I called Robbie at work.

"I need you to come home....now."

When I explained what had happened, I heard cackling on the other end of the line. I, however, was far from laughing. Robbie thankfully was able to come home and help watch the boys while I scraped, scrubbed and disinfected everything for nearly two hours. He thought it was hysterical - until he came into the room to check on me and nearly passed out from the sight and smell of it!

Needless to say, I learned a very important lesson that day. Fionn is NOT the kind of kid you can leave alone...not even for five minutes. He is the kind of child that grabs everything within arms length and throws it to the floor within 30 seconds of sitting down at a table. He wriggles out of seat belts and safety belts of all varieties. He eats everything he can fit into his mouth. Yesterday, I could not keep him in the grocery cart, so I had to carry him upside down through the rest of the shopping trip while he giggled maniacally and tried to grab everything off the shelves. In short, we are in serious trouble with this kid. Serious.

Speaking of which, I now hear him making his way back to the dog's water bowl. Wish me luck....