Oh. No.

I made the mistake of mentioning to T.Puzzle that he was going to have a bath before I was actually ready to give it to him. I was cleaning up dinner and had a few more things to organize before I headed upstairs to start the water. Since Full Speed’s eye is still in a delicate state, I am only doing one boy per bath. Full Speed is content knowing he will have a solo bath tomorrow while T.Puzzle is at school.

As soon as T.Puzzle hears the word ‘bath’ he’s off like a shot-put and zips upstairs. Full Speed and I laugh because we can hear his little feet running from one end of our second level to the other. It’s funny because he’s so fast and it sounds like he is overly caffeinated (which he wasn’t).

I work hard to make sure my boys know their routines and are full participants in said routines. Having boys that know what needs to be done before a bath (i.e.- get undressed, go potty, dirty clothes in hamper) is a mostly wonderful thing. It helps to tone down a highly charged situation (boys love their baths and demonstrate this love through extreme physical motion that can easily spiral out of control). Routines can become a thing of fright when an unsupervised two year old attempts to go it alone.

I tie up my loose ends in the kitchen and Full Speed and I go upstairs. Awaiting us at the top of the stairs is a half-naked T.Puzzle.  He is without pants and is diaper-free. He is also grinning from ear to ear. I grab him quick as can be and place him on the potty.  He doesn’t go of course and when I lift him up I notice a small, brown smudge on the seat. Oh. No.

I examine his hindquarters to find that there is a stain of poop, not a full-blown messy butt situation, but a smear of poop just the same. After I take some wipes and clean him up a feeling of dread washes over me. I run to his room to his diaper pail praying I find the remnants of a poopy diaper in there. There is none to be found. I can’t even imagine the poop-destruction to be uncovered and where it will be discovered.

Ninety percent of the time the boys are bathed in my and Mad Dog’s bathroom. Even though I feel a distinct pit of fear, I hold my nose and bravely enter this bathroom.

The good news is I’ve seen worse (there was an unfortunate runny poop/bath situation when T.Puzzle was about a year old that will forever be known as ‘the poop soup’ incident of ’08). The bad news is that T.Puzzle has pooped all over one of our bath mats and partially on our floor. I have this moment where I feel that I’m not the mother of a child, but a pet owner with a poorly trained dog (I had one those, poorly trained and all, back in the day). I’m relieved that most of it ended up on the bath mat and scold myself for letting him go upstairs in a bath frame of mind unattended. Apparently, I need better training, too.