Random Acts of Mind by Dones

It all began when I over-scheduled my day off. Those kinds of days never turn out well. I had a delivery from the furniture store (new range and grill=awesome) and later I had an appointment at the gym. There were full hours away from each other, which would be fine for most people. Not me. I prefer to have one big ‘thing’ I have to do each day. That’s the only way to avoid what happened.

(Warning to those with an aversion to reading about bodily functions: you’re way too sensitive. Regardless, this post may shock your delicate sensibilities. For those who have a sense of humor, keep reading.)

What I didn’t realize until this morning is that I had to do some work to install the stove due to the fact that the old one was hard-wired in. On my trip to take Baby Josh to the hardware store to get the necessary parts, on the way back I decided to get some Taco Bell for the two of us. (I ordered a chicken soft taco for the little one and they gave me a beef hard taco, but we made do.) After lunch, Josh was messy enough from the taco that I stripped him to his diaper, did a once-over with some wipes and stood him in his playpen within sight of my pending electrician’s duties in the kitchen.

In retrospect, I can see that this is the point where all was lost.

At previous opportunities Josh has demonstrated the ability to undo a velcro strap on his diaper when that’s all he’s wearing. But his mommy or I have always been there to catch him before he gets the second strap undone. On this particular afternoon, Josh had a good ten minutes of listening to his father mess with the wiring (and get it fully completed and tested, mind you) in order to complete a project of his own. I had no reason to suspect anything since Josh was making the usual play noises in the playpen. Every parent knows that it’s only when they’re quiet that you have to worry, right?

Wrong.

I was all done with my project and walked up to the playpen to grab Josh so that I could get him dressed and ready for the kids area at the gym, as I had an appointment with a trainer for my complimentary new member session–and there was to be no more appointments today. For the next hour and a half I would be tasked with unwreaking what my infant son had wrought.

My son was looking up and smiling at me, because he was offering me a present. It was his diaper, completely off and dangling from his little hand. I took it for the least terrible thing that could have happened: Josh obviously had to much time to himself and had undone his diaper, and I was very fortunate that he hadn’t whizzed all over everything. All was right with the world. I took the diaper from him and felt it was heavy, so I checked it as a force of habit, and notice there was a slight brown streak visible.

Just a streak. There’s never just a streak. A diaper is either poop-free or it isn’t.

I look up from the soaked and streaked diaper into my son’s delighted, smiling face. Then I glance behind him to another, more substantial brown streak that is suspended in the webbing at the side of the playpen. Then down to the two-foot-long brown streak across the padded floor of the playpen, and back up to my son’s beaming, angelic smile with a grin two miles wide.

Now I can look back and tell you: Man, I love this kid! Although, truth be told, at the moment I wasn’t so sure how I felt about anything.

Uncertain as to the next course of action, I studied Josh for a moment and noticed a fleck of poop on his hand. In a flash, I knew what had to be done. I ran to the bathroom and started a bubble bath, and went and grabbed Josh. His backside was completely covered. After his impromptu bath (with a little shower-head work to get the more stubborn bits) I dressed him (fully, this time!) and put him in his crib to fuss (couldn’t be helped at this point) whilst I returned to the scene of the crime to formulate the next step of my plan. I called the gym to reschedule my appointment and turned to the best, purest source of de-pooping I could think of: baby wipes. I grabbed the end of the old package and a full new one and started going to town. After using about ten of these to get the bigger chunks up, I remembered that we had antimicrobial wipes under the kitchen sink. I set about sanitizing the webbing and padding and making sure that the whole playpen was good enough to eat off of.

So the moral of the story is: don’t overschedule your day off.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 10:49 pm and is filed under Kids. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.