Steph Peters Something else I have learned as a parent, you are going to get dirty. If you were a clean freak before the baby, brace yourself for messes and learn how to live in the mess. Don’t stress out because it is now a never ending part of your life for the next 18 years. I love talking with other parents who share the same story, “I was not going to let my living room be taken over by my kids’ stuff, and then I had kids.” As I look in front me, I see a pile of books thrown on the floor, a pile of stuffed animals tossed about in front of the TV, a remote control car, a teething toy, and 2 bins of other toys pushed over. It’s their nap time so I have a choice: do I pick up this mess or sit down to write about it? Eh if I pick it all up, it will be there again in 2 minutes after he wakes up anyways so we’ll wait ’til after bedtime to finally get our living room floor back. 
Now to the messes that you have no control over: poop. You are going to deal with more poop than you ever thought was possible, and I’m not talking about nice little turd droppings. I’m talking about experiences you have to share with others to have a good laugh about after dealing with it, like the one I’m about to share with you here. Don’t worry, I won’t go into all the disgusting details.
It happened over the weekend. Both babies were sleeping so nicely and my husband and I were enjoying a movie together. Our youngest, 8 months old, starts crying. We let her cry it out for a couple minutes as she will self sooth back to sleep, but she keeps crying. Of course this is happening when we only have 10 minutes left of the very suspenseful movie. We pause the movie, I go into the room in hopes to just rub her back and get back to see how this movie ends. Instead I feel her pajamas are wet and I get smacked in the face with the smell of poop. Her diaper had become lose and she was wet thru her pajamas and onto her mattress.
I stay as quiet as possible since it’s after midnight and I want to get her back to sleep asap. I get her cleaned up with a bunch of baby wipes and take her to my husband to change into clean pjs while I go back to change her crib. I have to go to the bathroom myself at this time and that’s where I see our cat also wanted to share in this poop story and left a nice pile of poop literally right outside of his litter box. “Are you kidding me?!” Finally after 30 minutes, everything is cleaned up, everyone is comfy again, and we can finally finish the movie.
I left the dirty laundry to do in the morning. You have to pick your battles and priorities, and it helps to always have spare sheets and mattress pads for this exact reason! That’s a lesson I learned after being out in public and not having a spare outfit packed in the diaper bag after an explosive diaper happened right before we entered the restaurant and we had to call it a night and head straight home. But that’s another poop story for another day.
