A Cautionary Tale

A lot of my friends are currently trying for a baby, or at the very least, entertaining the thought. They often text me about how adorable my daughter is and how fun parenting looks. Yes, fun. If parenting is fun then so is falling down the stairs, while using your face as a battering ram, and ending up covered head to toe in rug burns. While people douse you in lemon juice. So fun. Just 24 hours a day of a non-stop laugh riot.

Sit down and let me tell you a story of just how fun parenting can be.

On Saturday my daughter and I had A Day. It began at 5:15am, her super amazing new wakeup time, and continued through grabbing my face while screaming the word Elmo for an hour, and kicking me in the eye. I pushed on. These are all things a veteran parent of a toddler can deal with, especially knowing that at some point they will go to bed and you get to reenact The Crying Game in your shower and drink wine. We staggered into her bedroom for a diaper change. She demanded I rescue her toys from her crib so I walked over and scooped them out. My back was turned for less than 5 seconds. It's at this moment I turned around, brandishing her Ernie doll, when I see that there is now dog shit on her carpet. I looked at it, I looked at her, and I knew what was next. I shouted in vain 'No! Stop! Stay there!' but it was too late. She had run, full speed, directly through the poop.

As she skidded through the pile she looked up at me in bewildered horror. Yes, my child who hates touching dirt had just lived her own personal hell, she had touched poop. She immediately fell to the ground and began to writhe while bellowing the word 'poop' at a volume that could be heard from space. She didn't yet realize that the ground is where the poop lived and she had flung her tiny body directly into ground zero. She sat up and turned to me, now covered head to toe, not an inch of flesh missed, in shit. She stood up, panicked and flung her body at me, knocking us both to the ground, and you guessed it, into another pile of poop I hadn't yet spotted.

This entire ordeal took exactly 30 seconds.

It was at this point, as I held my hysterical daughter, both of us completely covered in smeared dog poo and closed my eyes. I imagined myself back in Bali, floating in crystal blue waters. There, I had a cocktail and my C cup boobs were still perky and pointed skyward. I had not a care in the world. And as a bonus, there are no dogs on this island. That 20 second fantasy is literally keeping me sane still, two days later.

I, however, had to open my eyes and face the horror. As I am a parent and needed to secure my own mask before assisting the passenger next to me, I set her down, stripped nude and said ICK! with force. Then I burrowed down into the last reserves of energy and sanity I was tenuously holding on to and said 'isn't this funny? That silly dog didn't use the potty! And now we can go play in the bath. Yay for bubbles!'

My daughter took pity on me and slowly nodded her poop covered face and said bubbles. I quickly stripped her naked and threw us both in the bath, keeping up the facade that this was just the most fun you could ever have. Best Saturday EVER!

So, my friends considering procreation: take a look look at your life. Because my dears, THAT is parenting. At some point, sooner than you would ever except you will find yourself literally covered in shit and you will have to smile and declare it an adventure. So, so fun.