The horror.....the horror...

Yesterday, I experienced something that I really didn't believe would ever happen to me. I've heard of such things happening, but I thought I was immune. For one thing, I am an excellent parent. For another, I have been told time and again that my children are filled purely with sugar and spice and everything nice. This sort of thing, I though, was for those "other people."

Well, yesterday was God's turn to have a laugh.

Lucy's diaper was wet. She wasn't at mission-critical yet, but I announced to my mom (who was playing with Abbie and Claire) that I was going to get her a diaper, and then I went upstairs to do just that. However, I ended up talking to my sister in the kitchen for a good half an hour. It was risky, I know, but Lucy's diaper really wasn't that wet.

Claire eventually came up to the kitchen as well, and as Rachel began to give her a haircut I took the diaper I had been holding for 30 minutes and began my descent down the stairs.

At the top of the stairway I heard Abbie announce to my mother, "Lucy is poopie!"

"Oh, okay," said my mom calmly, without looking up. There was.....something about Abbie's tone of voice, though, and I hurried my pace down the steps. I rounded the bend and encountered Abbie, who immediately said to me, "Lucy is poopie!" Her eyes were wide with horror. There was a split second where I noticed that a wet diaper had been wrapped up and set on the steps, but I didn't really have time to process it. I went around the couch, and called to Lucy. She ran up to me immediately, smiling in that adorably sweet way that babies have, and she lifted her hand to give me something.

I remember this moment as though it happened in slow-mo. It was like an exact reverse of that famous scene in Caddyshack. "She's holding a protein bar," I thought, as my hand sloooooowly reached down to receive her gift. In my memory, the voice in my head is even deep and half-speed, the way they do it in the movies. Imagine, if you will, my slow-mo voice saying, "Ooooh, proooteeein baarrrr," as my arm moves down towards my smiling baby.

But it was not a protein bar. Oh, no, it wasn't. There is no delicate way to put this, no way to sanitize this written account, just as there will never be a way to sanitize my hands to my satisfaction. It was not a protein bar. It was a gigantic chunk of poop. Once this realization hit my brain, I went directly from slo-mo to hyper-speed, shouting instructions to everyone around me like an emergency room doctor. "Wet wipes!" I yelled, "Plastic bag! Diaper! Somebody run the tub!"

Thank goodness Lucy has been eating so many bananas. Seriously. This whole scenario could have been a lot worse if she had been on a kick of, say, grapes or prunes. Still, I will never be the same. None of us will ever be the same.

What happened was this: my mom noticed a wet diaper lying in the middle of the floor at some point. We'll just ignore what this says about me: that she thought it was perfectly plausible for me to come down the steps, change the diaper, and then leave it lying there, open, while I gadded about the house. I'm not sure how long Lucy was enjoying the luxury of a fresh breeze blowing under her nightgown, but I'm fairly confident that we caught her at just the right moment. (Well, to be precise, we caught her right after what could have been the right moment, but before what could have been the very, very bad moment.) I scoured the area she was in, and found no......suspicious fingerprints or, ahem, schmears of any kind, so that was a relief.

Still, though, I don't want to ever have to go through that again. Ever. And I'd prefer not to talk about this - the scars are so deep, so deep. It is going to take a long time to mend. I'm thinking I'll finally be healed in eighteen or so years........about the time that Lucy starts bringing boys around. Heh. Payback is a.......well, it's not sugar and spice.