The Day Came

I knew it was only a matter of time before I would have to re-live my worst teenage babysitting moment: feces in the tub. Last night while I ate a late dinner after a long day at work, Curt decided to be a multi-tasker by doing the dishes while he was supposed to be giving Jackson a bath. He figured that with Jackson babbling and the door being open, we'd hear him the whole time and he'd be fine. I didn't love the idea, but we made sure to check on him a few times. (Not our smartest parenting move overall, I know, but don't worry, Grandparents and concerned mothers: we don't make this a regular habit at all.) When Curt finished up the dishes, he went to get Jackson out of the tub. I knew it must be bad when I heard Curt utter a phrase he never, ever uses: "Oh, my God." Instantly I thought, Poo. Oh, great. I went into the bathroom to see Jackson sitting amongst his own slightly liquified turds, looking up at us with an expression that seemed to say, "What? It's not so bad."

You can imagine the smell after the few moments had passed during which we didn't realize he had pooped and he had a chance to play in it. I went to the kitchen and made a quick decision about which spoon I could live without - once it touched poo, it was not going anywhere near the eating tools ever again. I brought a tiny wooden spoon and a Ziploc bag back to Curt in the bathroom, which he ridiculed as inadequate for making the task at hand go quickly. True? Yes, but I was not about to waste a perfectly good large wooden spoon! So I got our son out of the tub and held his smelly little body while Daddy scooped poop, bless his heart. We switched, and I cleaned the tub for the second time in two days to try to obliterate the smell, all the while unable to stop myself from wondering whether Jackson had managed to - gulp - get any into his mouth. He was a calm, cuddly onlooker all the while, and then he had so much fun in the poop-free second bath that he didn't want to get out. I'm glad he wasn't frightened by our reactions or the unusual weirdness of having back-to-back baths after seeing me wash the tub.

Maybe this was the best way for the inevitable tub poop incident to go down. Had I been in there to see turds beginning to float in the tub, I probably would have panicked, yanked him out, and ran into his room, leaving a turd trail in our wake. At least this way the mess was contained. However, it would have been a helluva lot easier and less fear-inducing (I worried that at least one of us would be very sick today) to pick up dry turds with toilet paper! Let's just hope this was an isolated incident so I am never forced to make that decision, eh?