Job Title, Part 3: Janitor

So, bodily fluids are, unfortunately, a pretty big part of what I do all day.  I used to joke that I spent all day walking around our house turning off lights and flushing toilets.  I now see that I should never have joked about that.  I am paying for it now.  I am paying for it by cleaning up things from places they shouldn't be at all hours of the day and night.  But, like the blog's name says, you either laugh or go crazy and luckily this time I am able to laugh about it.  Here's what happened one morning last week:

I woke to the sound of yelling and general merriment coming from the "Big Girls' Room" at about 10 minutes to seven, but since they are supposed to stay quietly in their beds until seven a.m., I went to investigate.  (Really, I went to chew them out, because if they wake the twinkies up before they're ready to be awake it makes for a bad day for all of us.)  I walked in to see D lying naked on her completely stripped bed, yelling "I smell like pee!" repeatedly and A changing her underwear in the middle of the room.  Only L is a. quiet or b.  in bed.  I talked to D and found that she had had an accident in her bed, but was fine except for some slight paranoia about a pee smell and moved on to questioning A.

It went something like this:
me: "Anna, what happened to your underwear?"
A: "Nothing."
me: "Then why are you changing them?"
A: "Because they smell like potty."
me:  "Well if they smell like potty, then they must have potty in them, and that's not nothing.  That's something."
A: "No.  Nothing happened."
me:  "Get back in your bed."

The morning progressed. The twinkies miraculously slept through most of our noise until at about 7:55 I heard them.  Since we were right in the middle of getting snowpants etc on and shoving A and L out the door and towards the bus I decided to wait a couple of minutes to go get them.

I opened the door to their room and the first thing I thought was how terrible it smelled, but I figured it was just a smelly diaper or two and I'd get them cleaned up when we went downstairs (we keep all their diapers in the living room because we are hardly ever in their bedroom.)  I walked across the room, opened the curtains, pulled up the blinds and as soon as I turned around I saw it.  V was standing naked in her crib looking at me while her footie pajamas and dirty diaper were on the floor next to her crib.  The top half of her body was clean, but her bottom half, her sheets and the beautiful hand crocheted blanket in the crib with her were another story.  E was fine, but apparently a bit disgusted by how filthy her sister was.

Doing damage control is what my life is about right now and I started in quickly.  I got E out of her crib so she'd stop crying and could play with D.  Then I went into the bathroom right next door and started filling the tub; it was clear Vivi would need more than just a wipe down with a washcloth to get her clean.  I walked into their bedroom, picked up V as carefully as possible so as not to get anything on myself and carried her to the bathroom.  This took 30 seconds maximum.  I walked into the bathroom and what did I see?  A fully clothed E sitting in the bathtub.  And me with only two arms!  What an inconvenient problem when you have more than one child.  I set V down, told her not to move and fished E out of the tub and stripped off her clothes amidst great torturous screams.  I turned around and started working on some of V's filth with a disposable baby wipe, in the hopes of keeping some of the chunks out of the bathtub, but quickly discovered that it was too cemented to her skin to come off with anything that flimsy.  (This is where it gets really gross, you may want to stop reading if you haven't already!)  Keep in mind that it is now about 8:15 a.m. and I (what a way to start my day) wiped dried poop off my daughter's skin with warm water and my bare hand!   Eeeeeeew.

That's not actually the end of my incredibly disgusting day, but that's a good place for a break.  Sorry if you are completely grossed out now.