First Time for Everything … Unfortunately

I was all set to write about how I’m a human barometer and in the process of trying to figure out how to profit from this skill, but something happened last night that bears recordation in the annals of my life.

My child shat the bath.

Now I know that this is not something that warrants press stoppages or media blitzes. From what I hear, almost every kid does it at some time or other.  But my kid hadn’t, and – perhaps foolishly – I was starting to believe I was in the clear.

Not so.

Just as I was clearing his toys out and getting ready to start the nightly ritual of “whose turn is it to pull the plug tonight?” (it’s always his turn). I looked over his shoulder and spied a floater. It took my brain a moment to register what it was seeing. I honest-to-goodness thought was that it was somehow part of the Q-tip he was playing with (“mixing” up the water in his bath cups). But a split second later I knew we’d crossed over to the time in our lives when our child had, in fact, sullied his bathwater.

I think I said something along the lines of: “Gus!nonono-ohhhhh crap! MASAAAA! HelpHelpHelp!”

FYI - you'll be glad to know this photo is NOT from last night.

And at some point in my flustered, bordering on panicky reaction, Gus caught sight of the offender himself and the boy Freaked. Out. I had – in the two seconds I’d had to process this – decided to keep him in the tub while we cleaned it out and then run him under the shower to clean *him* off. This was not to be. As soon as my son realized what was going on he set about climbing up my torso and out of the bath. In retrospect this was probably the best idea, but I was hoping to keep myself poop free.

In the end we got the tub cleaned out, and I took him into the shower with me for a couple minutes to clean us both off. Poor kid was traumatized for the rest of the night though.

And mama will never look at the bath the same way again.

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