Wednesday, May 17, 2006

What should we do tonight?

I got home last night at around 5:30. The boy had gotten up from his nap about 30 minutes before that, but the girl was still upstairs. Because the weather was sooooo nice on Monday, we did Family Bike Ride on Monday, thereby screwing up our normal exercise schedule. So, last night, we were pondering what to do. Little did we know that the girl had already made plans for us by that point.

I was surprised that she wasn't awake when I got home and about 15 minutes after I arrived, I finally said, "I bet she's awake, but just not making enough noise." She naps in our bedroom and the monitor that we keep in there is kind of like a really bad speaker phone. It doesn't pick up the noise and transmit it unless there's a sustained LOUD noise. Small noises like playing and mumbling don't come through.

At about that point, the girl finally made enough noise to come through the monitor. She was kind of crying like she usually does when she wakes up, so I thought my hypothesis about her being awake wasn't true.

My husband and the boy went upstairs to get her, while I lagged behind for a couple minutes. However, my lagging was rudely interrupted by my husband yelling, "SARA, GET UP HERE NOW!!!"

I ran up the stairs to see what could possibly be the problem and found the dreaded sight. My husband was standing away from the girl's crib, trying to keep the boy from getting close to her and trying to figure out how he was going to clean up this mess.

And then the smell hit me: Poop. I thought, wow, that must have been some kind of explosive diaper!

And then I got closer and the realization finally hit me: the diaper was no longer on her bottom. Her onesie/bodysuit thing was unsnapped at the bottom and her diaper was sitting in her crib. And there was poop... seemingly everywhere.

She had been awake for quite some time, it seemed. Enough time to remove her overalls, unsnap her onesie, remove her diaper, and begin playing with the poop.

As I looked in horror, my husband gasped, "Oh my God! What's in her ear?!!" Luckily, upon further inspection, it was only the bandaid that had previously been on her leg. It didn't seem to be covered in poop, so that must have been one of the first things she did - wad it up and put it in her ear. Because, really, doesn't that seem like the right place to put a used up bandaid?

And thus began the cleanup: We wiped as much of the poop off of her as we could with wet wipes and then I headed off to the bathtub with her to scrub her down. Twice.

My husband stayed behind to remove all the bedding and clothing and put them in the washing machine to be washed. Twice.

Then he used disinfecting wipes to wipe down every hard surface on or near the crib. Twice. (well, I'm assuming he did it twice - given his phobia of fecal bacteria, I think it's a good assumption.)

After the cleaning spree and the emergency bath which included washing her hands at least four times (but they still smelled like poop!), we were able to calm down a little bit. We finally answered our question of what to do with the evening - we went for a short walk around the block, came home, cooked and ate supper, gave the boy his Tuesday night bath and got the kids to bed.

When I left this morning, the girl was still sleeping. Or at least I think she was...

2 comments:

Courtney said...

I think stories like this should be collected, placed into a pamphlet, and passed out in high school sex ed along with a pack of condoms :)

Lillie said...

Ewww! Better you than me!! The things we go through for our children!
Mom says I did the same thing. She also says I was toilet trained by 9 months, so there may be hope.