Dad? Daddy? Daaaa-ad. Hm.

Have you ever experienced one of those times, when something kind of horrible happens, but you know if you were in someone else's shoes, you'd probably be laughing. And it's kind of terrible at the time, but as you are going through it, you know in the back of your mind that you'll be laughing about it later? That happened last night. I had a similar, but much more disgusting (for me, anyway) experience about 5 years ago when my daughter started potty training. 5 years ago, I went in to check on my daughter, who had just graduated to a big girl bed. Her room was dark. I crept over to her bed, leaned down, and she touched my cheek with a sticky hand. Something wasn't right. I walked out her door, turned on the hall light, and turned back into her room. There was poop on the wall. There was poop on her sheets. There was poop on her, and, it turns out, now there was poop on my cheek. She had taken off her diaper either pre or post defecation. Gross. I still have flashbacks to the moment when I realized that I had poop on my face. Horrific. But also kind of funny as a metaphor for parenthood.

Jump forward 5 years and Bubba has recently been spending some time on his frog potty. Like a light switch on his second birthday, he's gone from a cute, mischevious boy to a cute, awnry boy. Yesterday, for whatever reason, I caught him pulling down his pants and ripping off his diaper 3 different times in the span of 45 minutes. Don't do that! We only take our diapers off in the bathroom. An exhausting swim lesson (for me) later, and we were back home, dawdling over dinner. After that, we were both exhausted, and it was time for bed. I put him in a fresh diaper and pajamas, brushed his teeth and tucked him in.

Ben came home shortly after that and also said good night. Bubba did not sleep. He sang, and flipped and flopped. I asked Ben to check on him. Bubba popped right up when he heard/saw his dad. Oops. Sorry. After that, we purposely ignored him. He needed to fall asleep on his own. At one point, he started asking for his dad. He sang "dad, daddy dad." We ignored him. I was getting some stuff ready for the morning when I saw a diaper on the floor of Bubba's room. I looked at his crib. He was standing up with no pants on. A familiar smell enveloped me. Oh dear God. No.

We completely strippd his crib. He had, at least, kept his hands out of it. From the looks of the INSIDE of the diaper, he took it off before depositing treasure all over his bed. From the looks of the OUTSIDE of his diaper, he knows how to wipe. The whole time I was re-diapering him, he kept saying, "Diaper....OFF!" and throwing his hands up, like he ripped that thing off chippendales-style.  And for the second 2 year old in a row, I'm zipping him into his footy pajamas backward in order to stimey the stripping and ripping. I never would have thought that I'd spend my evenings cleaning out monkey cages. But here I am...