I arrived upstairs with Sammy right on my heels. He had been up since 7 am when Mike got up, and he heartily greeted me at 7:30 with a cheerful "Happy Valentine's Day, Mommy!" I convinced him to lay in the bed with me and watch the Disney channel while I snoozed for a few more minutes. We got up at 8:15, made the afore-mentioned coffee, and headed upstairs for Sophia. No sooner had I opened her door to greet her when the smell hit me.
You know . . . the poop smell. If you are not a mom yet, there are no words to describe the poop smell. You may have vaguely been holding someone else's child and thought you smelled something, but once you've encountered it firsthand from your own child, you'll know exactly what I'm referring to. Today, it seemed to resonate, and I wasn't sure why until I turned towards Sophia's crib.
There are no words to describe exactly what I witnessed. All I can say is, Miss Sophia went number 2, and Miss Sophia decided to play with it. She was covered in it. It covered the waistband of her pajama pants, and the bottom of her pajama shirt. It covered both of her hands, and extended to her forearms. It was even encased across the heel of one foot. And in addition to her, it covered the front left hand corner of her crib.
I have to interject here and say it also covered another part of her body. It was smeared across her face, in a tell-tale line around her mouth. I was horrified by this, and immediately said, "Sophia! Did you eat your poop?" Her answer . . . "Yeah." But I'm not going to place much stock in that answer, since she'll pretty much answer "yeah" to any question you ask her. Right . . . I'll just keep telling myself that.
Anyway, I told her not to touch me, picked her up, held her as far from my body as humanly possible, and carried her to the bathroom. Sammy followed, turned on the bathroom light, and opened the shower curtain based on my panicked requests. I placed Sophia in the bathtub, stripped her down, and turned on the water faucet. I didn't bother filling up the tub, but merely let the water run at a comfortable temperature. Go ahead, Environmentalists . . . blast me if you will, but it's not like I had any other options here.
I briefly looked at the Johnson+Johnson baby soap and laughed, and instead grabbed a bar of Zest. I started with the hands. I scrubbed each arm individually, and when I thought it was clean, I rinsed it and then scrubbed it again. I made my way over Sophia's entire arsenal of poop, and then finally rinsed her and the bathtub one final time. Then I filled the tub up with water and let her play for a bit. At this point, Sammy decided it was safe to join in with bathtime, and promptly stripped down and jumped in.
Meanwhile, one room away, I was tackling Sophia's crib. I used wipes to clean each part of her crib, then stripped the bed and all of her stuffed animals (including her infamous Pillow Pet) and placed those items into the washer on extra hot water. Next I went over the crib again with Clorox bleach, and finally finished it off with a serious spray of Lysol. As for the bed linens, those were washed three times before being placed in the dryer . . . I'm not saying they're super clean, but I certainly hope so!
Overall, I think Sophia and her room were pretty darn clean. Not to say that I wasn't imagining a raging case of pinkeye for each of us given all the poo particles that must have been floating around in her room, but overall I think we must have been ok.
After the kids were clean and dry, we finally had breakfast, and I finally got to open my Valentine's Day cards. After washing my hands in extra hot water about five times . . . after that, we headed onto our main event for the day, a Valentine's Day party with close friends. And of course, on the way there, Sophia dumped her sippy cup full of water all over herself . . .
I'm not sure what to make of her recent behavior . . . on the one hand, I know she's curious. And for sure, I know she's headed towards the infamous Terrible Twos. But on the other, if this is what she's got for me in one day at almost 22 months, I'm not sure I even want to see what the next year has in store for me . . . Oh well, she's super cute, right?
