Okay, it involves a cold, a plumber, and a bathroom full of ....... Well, I'll let you find out for yourself.
(warning: this is not for the weak stomach)
Will some please explain to me why a three year old suddenly stops toilet training (I hate the word potty)? Why is life merrily going along and you think your kids are achieving their milestones with some normalcy when suddenly...... your child is peeing all over the place - sans the toilet? Not just once; "oopsie baby, did you have an aaaaaccident?" Noooooo, you are picking up wet, ammonia-filled clothes all day long. The washing machine is suddenly working overtime cause she has wet everything she owns by noon.
She is now wearing daddy's t-shirts (I deal with him later on this). And now it's time to hit the savings account cause there's a call to Stanley Steamer coming soon. This is one of the reasons I keep telling my husband to pull the stinking carpet (literally, please) off the floor and lay down that hassle-free Perego flooring that Home Depot is always putting on sale. Right now, I want a totally black floor that doesn't show nothing!
Her random peeing everywhere, but her toilet training chair, is causing me to curse ever being born with a reproductive system, and things are not about to get any better for me today.
To make things worse, my daughter has a cold. Not just one that seems to blow in then out (did I just say that). But one that is becoming a Mach 5, with snot running out of her nose like Niagra-freaking Falls; where we're now purchasing stock in Kleenex on ETrade because I'm making my husband buy boxes of tissues by the dozens. Not just any tissue though; it has to be the kind with moisturizing lotion, aloe vera, vicks vapor rub, and echnecia in it. Because you got to cover all the bases when your child is ill. You are a bad mommy if you don't. That's why they made baby wipe warmers. I swear to God, the cure for the common cold is gonna come out in a box of Puff's Plus one day and we mommies will buy it out!
Anyway, she has the cold that has her coughing, accompanied with projectile mucous on every body part of everyone in the house, including the poor cat (as if we're not having enough trouble keeping him in the house these days). The cold that makes her extra cranky and whiny to the point you actually wished someone would run their fingers down a damn chalkboard just so you could have something else to listen to.
The cold that makes her get........... D-I-A-R-R-H-E-A. (Faint hysterical screaming)
Not only is she reverting back to diaperhood, but she has the runs on top of it. It is not the kind you know is coming though. You know, where you can easily smell the huge gas bomb beforehand that leaves me running for every can of room spray I can find in the house. Because the plumber is coming to fix my dishwasher today and my house cannot smell like essence de le ca-ca! I swear to God, the military should bottle this smell up and let it loose all over Afghanistan. Osama would come out crying and begging to give up.
"Please Allah, make the baby poots stooooooop!"
When one of these lets loose, I usually know what's coming. I can prepare, and steer my child for the bathroom in order keep the pending disaster to a minimum. Afterall, I've been through this before with my 3 other kids; I'm a pro by now. I should have won awards for the times I have avoided poo and puke to land on my cream colored carpets. But not this child; she's different; she does things her own way. I learned that she's got her own style in the poo department.
She knows I'm a bit frustrated about her de-evolution in toilet training, so she decides at some point in the day that she's gonna start where she left off, and not tell me about it. It's quiet; it's too quiet. The mother alarms go off because we mother's know that when our children are quiet, something is wrong. I call out for Nia, but there is no answer. I know she was headed toward her bedroom, so that's where I go. And before I get there I stop dead in my tracks, turn my head to left and scream as loud as I can, but not a sound leaves my throat.
I AM MORTIFIED BY WHAT I SEE!!!
There stands Nia in the middle of a 6' x 4' foot bathroom floor. Every freaking inch of the floor is COVERED in diarrhea! I mean COVERED! Not just a little here, and a little there. Nooooo, it's on the baseboards, the entire floor, part of the cabinet, the side of the toilet. It is literally everywhere! The only place that there is not a trace is on her POTTY TRAINING CHAIR!!!!! How the hell is it all over the bathroom, but nothing is on her potty training chair? And there stands Nia right smack in the middle of floor whispering, "mom, I don't think I quite made it".
DUUUUHHHHHH!
The girl hasn't even taken her pull-ups off. She is standing in a sea of shit and her pull-ups and t-shirt are still on. She's covered, the floor is covered. part of the walls are covered. Very sweetly I say (while my brain is screaming every expletive I have ever heard in my life), "sweetie, what happened". "Why didn't you call me Nia?" All she can say to me is that she just didn't make it in time.
I am now feeling that I put way too much pressure on my daughter today over toilet training. I realize that this is one of those Karma moments.
Okay, I cannot even fathom how I'm gonna clean this up. For the first time in my 11 years of mothering, I am clueless as what to do. I am still standing at the doorway of the bathroom paralyzed; looking at my daughter, looking at the floor. "There is nothing in the parenting books about this kind of situation. What do I do?" I know once I put my foot on that floor, I'm gonna be sliding right across some nasty ca-ca like Barry Bonds sliding into home plate; just not as pretty.
So I access my situation and go into combat mode. I strategically stretch my right leg waaaaay over so I can stand up on the potty training chair. Afterall, it's the only clean place. "So far, so good." I turn to pick up Nia, and then I manage to swing her toward the tub without even getting once trace of ca-ca on my clothes, all while maintaining perfect balance in the process. "God, I am good! " I strip her down as I turn on the warm water. Do you know how hard this is to do without getting crap on my hands? I grab the towel from above my head and throw the t-shirt in the middle of it and wrap it up; what's left of the pull-up gets tossed in the trash and will be deposited into the nuclear waste dump as soon as I find one (are there people we can call to do that?). Once I have her rinsed, I drain the tub, then fill it up again and get her started on a bath with lot's of bubbles. Then I turn around and realize that I have a whole floor, wall, and cabinet of disgusting goo to tackle.
Now, I'm trying to deal with this as quickly and efficiently because I'm about to puke! I do not want to be cleaning up goo and puke at the same time. Nia is happily playing in the tub as I carefully balance myself and jump from the potty training chair, back onto the carpeted hallway. I mentally make my list of germ-a-phobe items needed as I run.......... oh God, the doorbell rings; it's the plumber. I run back to Nia and tell "Don't Move! Mommy will be right back!" Run to the front door and try to open it as if NOTHING out of the ordinary is happening. "Come in!", I tell him. Then I leave him there with the door open and run to the laundry room, praying that he won't notice what's gone down. This is my list:
- 3 rolls of paper towels
- a mop
- bleach - 2 bottles just in case
- disinfectant wipes
- kids toothbrush (I'll buy a new one tonight cause I need something to clean in between tiles)
- a scented candle to burn so I don't puke from the smell - which I am about to
- can of air freshner to spray as I'm running toward the bathroom so the plumber doesn't smell anything.
- a bucket
- a cup of coffee - God if I had some stiff Russian vodka to put in it right now, I would!
- plenty of plastic store bags, and I mean plenty!
- And.... my iPhone to take a picture. Gotta prove to my husband that, yes, I DID take a half day to clean the bathroom, and THIS is WHY! (But for your consideration, I did not include the picture)
I run back to the bathroom flashing a smile at the plumber as I whiz by him (quickly spraying a little air freshner along the way), and there I am facing the sea of black, but with a happy little girl in a tub at the end of it. I close the door in the hallway as to block the plumbers view of this whole catastrophe. Thank GOD for hall doors!
"Hi-Ya Mooooommmmmy! I'm getting clean!", Nia chirps.
I stand there with a half-frozen, stupid smile on my face and a handful of cleaning supplies topped off with a coffee in my hand. I bet Mr. Clean never used this kind of image in one of his commercials. Hell, Mr. Clean would run like a little girlie-man if he saw what I was faced with here! I take a big swig of strong caffeine and set it on the towel shelf behind me. I unleash an entire roll of paper towels on the hall carpet before me, wad it up, get on my hands and knees, and........ OH GOD, GET THE CANDLE!!!!! LIGHT THE CANDLE, LIGHT THE CANDLE!!!!! I look up at Nia with that same stupid smile and she says "mommy, you don't look so good. Are you okay?".
"Yes baby, mommie's fine, I just gotta clean-this-up.", I say with teeth clenched while frantically trying to light the candle. I have short fingernails, so I end up burning the end of my thumb in the process. I stuff my thumb in my mouth then grab my iPhone and take that picture. My husband is NOT going to believe this!
Back to the paper towels, I'm on my hands and knees trying to push the brown stuff together in a neat little puddle in the middle of the floor. How the hell can one be neat with diarrhea! You push it this way, it goes that way. I swear, Nia must have saved up a week's worth of poop and let it rip on this floor!
"What is the name of that stuff coroners put under their noses while doing autopsies. I need that stuff NOW! "
I am wiping an area clean, then I follow with a wad of disinfectant wipes. I am making progress, but I must be making noises that I'm unaware of because I suddenly hear the plumber:
"Are you okay in there?" he calls.
"I'm fine. We just had a little accident that I'm cleaning up right now. I'll be with you in just a minute." I call back.
"Would you like some help? You're in the bathroom aren't you?" (I hear his footsteps approach).
"NO! (panic level goes from 0-100 in 1 second flat!). No, it's okay, I got it!" (his footsteps retreat; I'm safe).
"Well okie-dokie (people really do say that word?), just let me know if you need any help in there." he calls back.
"Thank you!", I reply in relief.
I continue my Karate Kid technique of "wipe on, wipe off", in that continuous circular motion until I have cleaned up enough to start disinfecting with my friend Ms. Clorox. She's such a pretty bottle (the smell of the crap and the disinfectant wipes is starting to get to me now), she smells like "outdoor fresh". After two rolls of paper towels, one giant bottle of disinfectant wipes, an entire cup of coffee, I decide it's time to mop.
I turn the hot water on. Why does it take so long for hot water to reach the bathroom sink pipes? This is taking way too long; I need hot water now! I put enough bleach in the bucket to kill everything on the bathroom floor, but not enough to plummet my daughter in a fume of chemical induced gas. The bathroom is already in a noxious swirl of poop, vanilla dream candle scent, and disinfectant.
The mopping begins, then I grab the kids toothbrush and meticulously begin to clean in between each and every 4 inch tile. "God, this is gonna take all day long", I think to myself. But you know what, it is amazing how fast you can clean a floor when you think someone is gonna catch you cleaning a weeks worth of poop up!
"Your dishwashers fixed." I hear the plumber say "I'll just leave the bill on the counter for you. Are you sure you don't need any help in there?"
"I'm fine; thank you again." I yell back (please go so I can finish this in peace).
"Call me if anything else goes wrong with the dishwasher."
I hear the door shut after that, and I breath a sign of relief. I can now finish cleaning the bathroom without feeling I'm in training for the Olympics. Would that be the original Olympics, or Special Olympics? I proceed to finish mopping the floor, clean and bleach the walls and cabinets. Hell, I bleached everything! Might as well clean the whole damn bathroom while I'm here. Gets me out of watching my 11 year old daughter roll her eyeballs, and whine about how she has to clean the toilet every week because everyone else uses it more than she does. At least I get one perk out of this whole mess! I wonder what she would have done if I had saved this little chore for her to do. Oh that's good for a few laughs! Then I marvel at how sparklely the bathroom is. You would never know a lethal, brown explosive went off in here today.
So with the bathroom cleaned, my daughter cleaned and dressed in another one of my husbands t-shirts (I decided to go ahead and throw the first one away), life can resume to normal activity. I take Nia into the kitchen and turn on some cartoons for my little girl while I make her some lunch. Me... I'm skipping lunch today. With her happily sitting in her chair at the table and watching the "Backyardagans", I put up all the cleaning supplies and then pop one of her favorite burritos in the microwave.
"Moooommm!"
"Yes Nia."
"Um, I need you."
"What is it Isaboo (my nickname for her)?"
"I had an aaaaaccident!"
"You had a wha...... NIIIIIAAAA!!!"
Now where did I put that bleach?
