Longer than a Blink, Yet Faster than We Think

Andrew and I wander the yard holding plastic bags. He points out dog poop when he sees it, which is not as often as I do. I scoop it into a bag and carry it until we find more. When a bag is full, I tie it, and Andrew proudly deposits it by the garage door. Our task is made more difficult by the brown oak leaves all over the ground. This is Andrew's first time recognizing the change of seasons, and he says "Uh-oh" every time a leaf falls.

I hope we won't discover any poop the hard way today.

His help is a bit nerve-wracking, but I try to embrace it, realizing that it's good for him, and that someday getting him to help won't be this easy. I think back to when little Margaret thought it was fun to scrub toilets, and Jack made our bed with hospital corners each morning. These days, I slip out of the sheets, damp from night sweats, and leave the bed unmade to air out. Margaret hasn't cleaned a toilet in a decade. I leave the extra bags in the garage and wonder if I've prepared her at all for adulthood. Those preschool days seem like yesterday.

We enter the house,and I expect the aroma from the crock pot to delight me. Instead, the house smells terrible. Another dinner fail? Certainly not worth cutting celery at 7 am, I think.

From the adjoining room I hear "Uh-oh" and enter quickly enough to see Andrew pointing at dog diarrhea sprayed and pooled on our carved wool rug, trailing off onto the cover of Andrew's favorite book. He knows we've been on poop patrol, but this is no job for a baby. I scoop him by the waist to deposit him in his little chair and say, "Stay," as I would to one of the dogs. Just as I'm trying to figure out which dog is afflicted, Shadow starts vomiting. Another "Uh oh" and pointing from Andrew. I tell him I'm not quite sure how to approach this mess, but if he stays in his chair, he can watch Little Einsteins while I figure it out.

What I see is neither a solid nor a liquid. I dive in, and do the best that I can, grateful for rubber gloves.

The fact is not lost on me that in a fit of optimism and/or stupidity I'd ordered a WHITE SHAG rug for my office just the night before. Something about a quiet house at 11pm made me think that the world of HGTV or Pinterest could me mine. Even as I pressed ORDER, I knew it was likely a mistake, but I did it anyway. Did I  hope that making my beloved office cozier and more chic would jump start my writing again? That bare feet on a soft rug would somehow garner me the time and creativity to put words to paper? I hadn't been in that room for weeks, except to set up a laundry drying rack in the corner. Now I realize I'll have to close the door at all times, to keep the dogs, their hair, and their funk out, and I wonder if I'll spend time in there at all, the beautiful room that birthed Rare Bird.

I know Tim will be annoyed when he hears about the diarrhea and vomit. He'll toss the dogs outside, as if they will be able to equate evening exile with early afternoon grossness. With a sweep of his arms, he'll say maybe we shouldn't have rugs in the house at all. That rugs are disgusting. I'll agree, and hope that that exact moment is not when the delivery truck pulls up with my new shag.

I've never been one to get too riled up about messes, or when things break. My mom used to say, "Everything has a life," and I've interpreted that as nothing lasts forever, and that it's okay. It applies to the material as well as the those things we cannot touch. Who knows if the new rug will outlast the our dear dogs, or vice versa? I do know these days of traipsing around the yard with Andrew will not last forever. Stopping to look at ants, pointing at airplanes, waiting for the mail man and school bus to arrive are distinctly toddler occupations. In the not too distant future, I'll have more time to write, to sit in my office, to think. When I look ahead, it may seem far off, but I know that the warp-speed of life I've experienced up until now will not change.

After all, I wouldn't have believed another fall had come so soon, if today I had not felt the leaves crunch under my feet.

Adventures in Diapering

I'm sure Jack and Margaret must have done some squirming when we changed their diapers, but  Andrew makes diaper changes an Olympic event for both of us. And it's painfully obvious, this Mama is no Olympian.

Months ago, we moved the changing pad to the floor, since his lunging in every direction was heart-stopping. He's much safer on the floor, but it gives him too much room to work with as I try to man-handle him into a diaper.

Poopy ones are my favorite.

He gets suspicious as I carry him up the stairs. When I place him on his back, he starts to wail at the injustice, perhaps lamenting that excrement removal keeps him from his favorite activities of immersing his hands in the toilet, reorganizing the pantry, crab-crawling his way up the stairs, or changing my Facebook Profile picture while messing with my phone.

I start in Veteran Mama pose as I breathe deeply and try to press his little body down with one hand,  lifting his chubby feet with the other. A quick release of his torso to whisk the poop-filled diaper away gives him the opportunity to perform a quick flip and land in what I like to refer to as The Wheelbarrow.

This is when his head and chest face downward, he's twisted in the middle, and I have his legs and bottom raised high in the air. He paddles his arms in a swimming motion off of the end of the changing pad and onto the floor. Before I lose my grip on his legs and my mind, I attempt to dislodge any large clumps of poop.

Then the quick little rascal scoots away, his prodigious rear so clenched and dimpled, it's nearly impossible to make progress on the more recessed areas of his nether-regions. "Crack is whack," I mutter, as I nab him by the trailing snaps of his onesie and try to gently poke a wipe where it  really needs to be. His body may be stationary for the moment, but his legs stay moving in a cartoon-style running motion.

When I lose my grip on the onesie, clearly taking a deduction on my final score, he darts out his door into our tiny hallway, grabs the baby gate, which I have (thankfully) locked, pulls himself up, and clings to the bars like a unduly happy circus animal.

My 47 year old shoulders ache from effort, but I know we're near the finish line. I crawl up behind him on the hardwood floor, give him a loud smoochy smooch on the soft folds of his neck and finish my floor routine with Standing Diaper, something moms have perfected over many decades. It's slightly inferior to Regular Diaper, as one chubby cheeks seems to be hanging out more than the other, but it'll do.

He's no longer stinky, or confined, or angry. I conclude a diaper and an unsnapped onesie is perfectly appropriate indoor winter wear, because I'm not about to wrassle him back into pants. I scoop him up, and we head back downstairs to take a bow, hoping that the next poop is hours away.