Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Dear Lord, give me the strength

Just moments ago, Elizabeth came into the living room where I am working and her hands were black.
I thought, great, she's gotten into the fireplace ashes again...
Oh, I only WISH that's what it was! Dare to dream!

I follow her back into the family room and she stops short and points to the floor -- where there's a tiny poo.

Apparently, what's gone down is that she went digging in her diaper for poops and came up a winner (or a loser depending on how you see it).
That blackness on her hands is poo. My brain is short circuited. I think, dear Lord NO!

But seeing as how we are alone, and she's got poo all over her, I have to deal with it.

Of course, she's a toddler, and as such is extremely adverse to manicures. I'm very pregnant and as such, adverse to fighting a toddler. She's waaaay overdue for a trim. Well, now she's got POO jammed up under her fingernails. So it's happening today.
She let me wash her hands in the sink and even let me cut the nails down, with only a minimum of tears and struggle. I got all the poo off her hands, her belly, her back - ah the joys of motherhood. I even got her into a new diaper with little trouble. All in all it was much less painful then I anticipated, though I did have to throw away her T-shirt.

I don't know WHERE mothers get the temperment that allows for such horrible things to happen and yet they are taken care of, swept away, washed clean and noone is bludgeoned, but thank God we can do that.
Her daddy would have melted into a puddle of goo, a gagging puddle of goo.
He may have even cried. He definitely would have called in reinforcements, aka Mom.

7 comments:

Freebird said...

What? No pictures? That's totally disgusting and yet I ask for a picture. What can I say, I'm a visual person. Motherhood, it's not for wimps.

Jessica said...

Oh, no. You didn't want pictures of this.
It's been much much MUCH worse, but the poo under the fingernails, I mean, that's just heinous.
Ugh.

cube said...

My daughter Jennifer did the same only at a younger age. She was happily playing with it until she saw my reaction & started to cry. I even had to use a Q-tip to get some out of her nose! Oh, the horror. Didn't you wretch?

BTW a great time to not use the digital camera. Thanks.

Freebird said...

Can't they smell it?? My kids never did this, but I used to place their diapers in plastic grocery bag and double tie it.

Jessica said...

You truly are a blessed woman Amy, at least in the area of not being able to smell, and thus gag on, poo.

I think it may have been the stink of the poo she "liberated" from the diaper that led her to come find me and alert me that something had gone horribly awry.

She gave me the same alert signal she does when she accidentally switches the TV off of the cartoon channel and can't get it back to The Wiggles or whatever.
Total panic time.

Jessica said...

Oh, I don't know if I was super clear on this point, but this poo was poo from a diaper she was actually WEARING at the time.
So, she really had to work for the payoff that she got.

Jessica said...

Also, did I mention that I told her dad this story and he confirmed his own wimpishness when it comes to bodily fluids and solids.

Bob: Thank God it was you here and not me. I love you. I love you.

Me: Mmmm hmm.