I work evenings and weekends, so usually I come home after everyone else is asleep. I have never been able to walk in the door, go straight up the stairs, and go right to sleep, though. I have tried that, and it only results in my tossing and turning keeping my long-suffering husband awake. Much better to have a nice little snack, cruise PoopReport, and unwind for a bit first.
That's what I did last night. I came home, ate some cereal, gave a few people an electronic piece of my mind, commented on a few PR threads, and then headed upstairs. Changed into jammies, brushed teeth, washed face, went potty, of course, brushed out hair, applied my favorite PearBerry lotion to face, hands, and arms, and turned down the light almost all the way. It was now one o'clock in the blessed AM. I was t-i-r-e-d.
There was just enough light for me to see my side of the bed. The boy had taken up residence there, with his feet on one of my pillows. The other pillow was on the floor. Rotten kid. We have a reading area in our room with a small sofa on which our son has spent many a night. I scooped him up in my arms, walked the six or seven steps to the sofa, and laid him there. I MIGHT have known something was amiss at that point -- were it not for the strongly-scented lotion I'd just liberally applied.
Shuffling with fatigue, I made my way in the dark back to the bed. I bent, picked up my pillow, and dropped it onto the head of the bed. I stepped one foot forward and leaned to flick on my alarm clock. I stepped the other foot forward and placed it into a pile of crap.
Cold crap. Cold, sticky, crap.
I thought for the briefest moment that the boy had eaten a banana in the bedroom, but my husband would never allow the kids to bring something as messy-prone as a banana upstairs! No, I knew right away what it was. To confirm my horror, I touched-on the make-up mirror on my nightstand, which lighted the area a little better.
"There's CRAP on the FLOOR!" I announced to the slumbering form of my beloved. "I just stepped in CRAP. In the BEDROOM!"
He turned over and squinted at me holding my foot off the floor. "Where is he?" was his question.
"Over there. But there's CRAP over HERE. But he WAS here. It must be HIS crap, but he's wearing a Pull-Up! How did the CRAP get OUT of the Pull-Up?" I was whining now, and reeling with tiredness. To my extreme consternation, my husband squinted over at the boy, looked at me again, and then promptly flopped back over and went. Back. To. Sleep. Leaving me to deal with caca in three, count 'em, THREE places. On my foot, on my floor, and, plausibly, on my boy's butt.
I did that walk like you do when you stub your toe. Heel-hop-heel-hobble. I washed off my foot in the bathtub, dried, and went down the hall for a new Pull-Up. I undressed the boy, used about twenty wipes to clean up the carnage, and redressed him -- without him even waking up.
Finally, finally, I stumbled back to the bed. I took another handful of wipes and picked up the mooshed turd. HOW on EARTH it got OUT of his diaper AND pajamas, the world may never know! Then I scraped at the carpet with some more wipes. I threw the whole mess away and nearly crawled back to the bed.
The poo god and the motherhood god smiled at this point and rubbed their graven hands together with glee. As I reassembled my side of the covers, I realized the wrong pillow was at the head -- I hug one of the pillows, and I like the other under my head. The pillow, remember? On the floor? The one I'd picked up? THAT pillow had fallen ON TOP OF the turd, and I -- I had plopped the poopy pillow in precisely the place where I lay my pretty head! There was poop all over the pillowcase and poop on the sheets EXACTLY where my face would be.
Still holding the pillow suspended over the spot, staring, I considered my options. Briefly.
And then I dropped the pillow back into place, poop and all, and went down the hall to sleep in the boy's bottom bunk. His sheets, after all, were clean.