another poop story

Recently, I decided that it was time for us to go back to cloth diapers.  We used to have do a diaper service, and it was great.  Every week, they'd come and haul our bag of dirty diapers and bring us fresh ones.  We used disposables during the first few weeks (because G stole like a million packs of Pampers from the hospital -- we were there for a week, and he'd hide half-used packages in our bags so that they'd bring us more.  Plus we had a lot from our baby shower, so it made sense to use them up first) and at night.  But ultimately, we switched to cloth for full-time day use and I've always liked them better.  They seemed to be better for preventing diaper rash, better at holding in the poop blow-outs, and nicer to the environment. 

Diya's daycare wouldn't deal with cloth, though, so then we switched to a cloth/compostable option.  Still with the service, but they take away all our diapers and compost the non-cloth ones.  The compostable diapers are actually pretty cool.  If you're willing to spend the money and want to be environmentally friendly, these are almost like disposables.  We gave those to Diya's daycare and used cloth at home.  And then when Diya got into her cast, the cloth didn't fit inside there, so we had to full time compostable -- a little one stuffed inside the cast, and a giant one on the outside to hold everything in.  It's been almost 5 months since she came out of the cast and we just hadn't bothered going back yet.  Mostly, I worry about dealing with frequent diaper changes with Diya's brace.  It's a pain to take off and on.

I've missed cloth diapers though, and as Diya gets older, I've been wanting to give them another go.  For one thing, she pees less frequently now, so it doesn't seem like it'll be as much of a pain to take her brace off and on.  And, there are a lot of cloth diapers that are more absorbent than the ones we'd been getting from the diaper service.  So it's not like we'd be changing her diaper every 30 minutes like the olden days.  Also, her new daycare has said that they'd be willing to handle cloth diapers too, so really, it'd be there problem during the week. 

So . . . we're trying again.  But this time, I want to go all in.  No more service, we do our own wash.  Mostly just so we have more options as to what kind of diapers we get.  And I want to start using cloth at night time too.  I've been buying all kinds of diapers online to get our stash built up enough to just do laundry every few days or so, and to stop our service.  I think G's getting a little tired of the daily diaper packages. 

The big problem with this plan is that I'm pretty grossed out by diapers in general and all things poop-related.  I had a bit of a melt down when Tucker kicked up poop on my leg (I tried to find the link to this post and couldn't), and it's all I can do to shake Diya's solids down the toilet now without yakking (yes, like responsible people, we dump her dumps into the toilet, even with our compostables, and there have been times when I've missed the toilet and poop's landed on the rim.  Last week, I thought I lost my poop in the hallway, only to realize it landed on the underside of the rim somehow.  I seriously went down the hallway looking for a nugget, ewing the whole time.  If you visit my house, don't worry, I'm obsessive about cleaning that toilet rim now).  Anyway, I'm still worried about how this is going to work with me having to wash this stuff. 

So far, though, the trial runs have proven to be not much grosser than the compostable poops.  I shake the poops out, and put the diapers in a laundry bag.  The only difference is that I keep a little Bio-Kleen next to the toilet to do a quick spray before throwing them into the laundry bag.  Just to avoid any staining.  The pee ones I just toss in as is.  I'm a little grossed out when I throw the diapers into the toilet, but honestly, I'm always just as grossed out pulling out the disposable/composable bins and trying those bags up. 

Sounds good right?  This morning, though, I realized there might be a few tweaks to still work out.  Well, actually, the other day she had a poop and I realized I didn't know what to do with the wipe.  See, during this trial period, our diaper set up isn't really optimized for the cloth diapers.  We have 2 diaper pails, one for compostable, one for trash/disposable wipes/etc.  I have a little laundry bag on the side, but once we switch over, it's not going to be the best way to go.  For one thing, it's kind of hard opening the damn bag with a diaper in my hand.  Anyway, the other thing is that if the wipes are really poopy, we take those to the toilet too and flush them down.  Just to avoid stinking up the baby's room too much.  Anyway, the other day she had a poop, and I didn't know where to put the wipe.  Usually, they just lay on top of the diaper until they all get hauled to the bathroom.  But I don't want poop stains on the outside of my new cloth diapers.  So while trying to figure out where to set it down, I accidentally TOUCHED poop.  So ew, ew, ew. 

Anyway, that was earlier.  This time, I thought I had it figured out.  Diya had her first monster poop in the cloth (actually I feel totally bad -- I think she may have pooped during the HALF HOUR it took for her to fall asleep for her nap this morning, but then finally just fell asleep with poop in her butt.  Maybe.  I don't know, it was a monster poop, I would think it'd be hard to sleep through.  But whenever it happened, she had a monster poop in her butt when she woke up).  It was mostly solid but super soft, and there was poop all over her vag, and it was pretty disgusting.  And of course, fun to clean up, because for one, she's been really squirmy in the changing table lately.  Plus, she had this stuffed dog in her hand that she refused to give up. 

So here I am, trying to hold her butt up long enough to clean it (cuz there was poop in the back too and I was trying to avoid getting it all over the changing table).   She's waving her fricking dog around, and started SCREAMING when I took it away.  I figure I have this wipe/diaper thing sorted out and set the diaper down on the floor and several extremely poopy wipes on top of the diaper pail.  I even set a kleenex down on the pail to avoid getting poop on the pail, and worked hard to avoid, you know, touching!! the poop.  So far, so good.  The kid is still screaming, and I have no idea if the stuffed dog touched poop before I managed to wrangle it away from her.  So when she was clean enough to give it back to her, I still wasn't sure if it was ok to.  I tried to smell it, but man the whole room reeked at this point, so it was hard to say if there was a particular funk coming from it or not.  (Do you think I'm terrible for admitting that I finally just gave it back to her?). 

OK, so this right here is the whole point of my post, so if you've stuck it out for this long, you're in for a treat.  So I'm feeling proud, right, of getting better at this.  Things are going well, and aside from maybe some poop damage to a stuffed animal, I'm doing all right.  The kid's only screaming a little bit now.  And all of a sudden I look over and there's Tucker EATING the poop from the kid's diaper!!  Not smelling, or just checking out, but totally noshing.  And had gotten a fair amount of it out.  Can I just say, OMFG, really????  Dude, I'd even mostly closed it, but he'd somehow managed to nose his way in. 

EW EW EW EW

So yah.  That was fun.  I chased him out of the room, screaming like a banshee (which of course had the kid just staring at me like WTF).  The most unsatisfying part was that I couldn't even really chase him far b/c I had this kid squirming away on top of the changing table still.  I stuck a new diaper on her, set her in her crib for a few while I went to dump out the poop.  Like I said, it was a bit soft, so there was some that wouldn't come out so I sprayed the hell out of it and I guess we'll see how well it washes out.  I did manage to make it past the rim and into the toilet.  The wipes got flushed, and whatever, the room still stinks so it was a lot of work for not much reward (contrary to what you might be thinking, it's not my cloth laundry bag that reeks -- that actually just smells like BioKleen).

I, of course, then immediately called G to tell him what HIS dog had done.  When he stopped laughing, he asked me why I hadn't just put the diaper on top of the OTHER diaper pail instead of the floor.  In retrospect, I said, that probably would have been best.  But never in a million years did I even think that I'd have to worry about the dog eating the kid's poop.  Then he wanted to know why I hadn't just let Tucker help me clean that portion of the diaper that wouldn't fall out into the toilet. 

Clearly I'm not utilizing my dogs to their full potential.  

these are the days

I've always loved LOVED kids.  Like, seriously, I think I knew when I was 9 years old that I wanted one or maybe two or five.  But I tended to like them on the older side.  Babies seemed a little tiny and useless.  Honestly, all they do is poop and cry all the time.  I thought that when I was 9 and pretty much thought that right up until the moment I gave birth, probably several months after even. 

And then I don't know when I started to come around (I'm assuming I've come around anyway, seeing as how I have this kid that I kind of think is awesome).   But still, I realize why you really just can't see the value in babies until you have your own.  And then, I'm not sure how that translates into liking OTHER people's babies.  Because you hear it all the time, including from my own mouth -- some other baby comes into the room, and I'm all "AW, so cute, I remember when my little bugger was this tiny.  Those were the days, huh kiddo?"  And I look wistfully down at my much larger child and remember the days when it didn't hurt my arms to carry her around. 

All of us are on crack when we think this.  Or we're lying.  Or maybe the hormones that let us willingly endure torture from a little nugget barely the size of our hand still haven't worn off.  Because back when our own darlings were that size, we were a colossal sleep-deprived mess with vomit and poop all over our clothes.  

So before you start thinking I'm terrible (but come on, you know you agree with me, whether you have kids or not), I will say that I'm SO aware of how quickly this time has flown.  These days, Diya doesn't want to be rocked to sleep anymore.  We're down to nursing once a day.  She wants to try to eat on her own.  She hands me her sippy cup to give her some water, and I melt, just happy to be needed for something.  I know I'm going to blink and suddenly she's going to be off to college in another state.  It scares the shit out of me, and there are days when I want every moment to last forever, just like exactly the way it is.  

But then there are mornings like today.  And I don't look back, I look forward, to a time when she becomes some one you can talk to, reason with.  Today, she's been having one of those "goddangit, i woke up too early with pee up my back and i'm not letting you forget it, witch" days.  The tears started when we were changing her outfit (although apparently dad was able to win giggles before he took off for work), continued after her morning milk.  Which seemed sufficient at the time, but ten minutes later, she caught sight of her sippy cup and decided that she needed more seven seconds ago.  Then it was on to pointing at the window wanting to play ball.  Which entails me carrying her, throwing the ball, running after the ball, picking it up, letting her throw the ball, and then leaning down again to pick it up and throw it again for real.  You know, kind of like playing chess with yourself but so much harder on your arms. 

That ended much too soon for her liking because I may have enlisted Mia's help with the fetching portion but that was not to her majesty's liking.  Of course Mia then went off with the ball, and you would have thought the world had ended the way tears started flowing. 

I was finally able to convince her to chase the ball around in the kitchen herself, and she happily threw it across the room, crawled over to it, and repeat long enough for me to get her breakfast going.  I think Mia was peeved to have both her ball and her game be commandeered by the baby (who has way too many off-limit toys already).  She sulked in a corner, but honestly, I could only deal with one offspring's drama and hurt feelings at a time. 

Anyway, she's napping now.  It was one of these mornings where 8:30 rolled around and I figured it was respectably late enough to try for a morning nap while I finally got some breakfast and tea.  I had already called G at 7 to tell him that he better not be late coming home from work because there was only so much I can take.  He was still driving to work at the time.

The drama queen behavior is a new thing.  She points and cries if it's not immediately offered to her.  Whether it's running around outside or the hot pan on the stove top, it has to be hers if she wants it.  And seriously, the tears will start running down her face immediately.  She's an on and off switch, laughing with glee when you provide and in utter despair when you don't.  I had been thinking this was something I could look forward to in teenage land, but clearly, my daughter has gotten a head start. 

I'm finding that I have no patience for this phase.  Give me the hospital visits and middle-of-the-night wake ups.  I might complain about them but they don't grate on my nerves the way the whining does.  On these days, I look forward to the time when I can tell her, "I'm sorry, you can't have that knife because you can do some serious damage to your pretty face if you're not careful" and have that be the end of it.  Anyone have some earplugs I can borrow until then?

In other news, you know how dogs sometimes have pieces of grass stuck in their butthole after they poop?  And you have to help them pull it out because if they're like Mia, they freak out that it's there and can't just push out a little harder?  And it's because you can't stop the damn dogs from eating grass because they're idiots like that?  Well, anyway, this morning, our human child had a blade of grass stuck in her butt when she pooped!!   Dammit, why won't anyone listen to me when I tell them that grass isn't for eating???

Clearly, it's been an eventful morning.