Life is funny

A few hours ago I had one of the worst experiences of my life, hands down. It's a nice day out today, so the kids were playing outside, and H. was taking his pull-up off as often as he could. Having gone through this before, I knew that eventually I would come outside to find him without pants and with feces all over his butt because he had defecated in his pull-up and then taken it off. And soon enough that's exactly what happened.

Usually, after I find the poop-filled discarded diaper, I lay H. down and clean off his butt with wipes, or attempt to clean him off while he is standing. And even when he's feeling silly and giggly, he allows me to clean him up.

Not today.

Today we had a knock-down drag-out wrestling match to get him to lay down in the grass so that I could clean his butt. I tried to sit on his torso to keep him still, a tactic I have used before, but today he wrenched himself loose several times. Eventually--and I don't know how else to put it--I had to attack him, throw him to the ground, and straddle him so that I could do something I do every day. Wipe shit off his ass.

Of course, he was terrified and screaming by the time we were finished. I told him, "I'm sorry that I scared you. And I'm sorry that I pushed you down and sat on you." After a pause, I said. "But I'm not sorry that I cleaned your bottom." He was OK after a few minutes and let me help him into a clean pull-up.

I went inside and changed my pants, because I was pretty sure I had gotten crap on them. I washed up, took some deep breaths, and decided we would run some errands that involved a lot of driving and not a lot of getting in and out of the car.

Once we got home, all of us were feeling a lot more calm. As I sat on the deck watching the kids, I thought to myself, "I would say I feel exhausted, but I feel like I have exhausted exhausted." Then I remembered the conversation Mike and I had last night after another insane dinner. "We handle this incredibly well," he said, and I agreed.

Just then I looked down at my foot, and I noticed this:

Yes, that's a big smear of shit on my ankle. I'd been walking around with it for hours. And that proves my point. It's also proves that life is funny.