The Great Pull-Up Letdown

Sometimes I think how much I'd love to have another baby. I look at Corbin, my two-year-old, and get this deep mournful sadness that he's, like, getting really tall and talking in clear sentences and stuff, and that the pudgy little baby days are pretty much in my rear view mirror.

But then something happens and I think ... babies? Nah. I'm good.

Case in point: the poop disaster of epic proportions that I had to contend with over the weekend.

You would think that after potty training three boys already, I'd be a pro by now. But I am a notoriously ineffective potty trainer. I hear people say, "Oh! Boys are so easy to potty train!" and I'm like, "Sure. It only took me ... over a year."

Right now I'm potty training a kid for what is supposed to be the last time. (I say "supposed to be" because until my husband gets that vasectomy he's been promising to get for the last two years, anything is possible. He doesn't believe me when I threaten him with the scissors.)

Corbin is in the frustrating stage where, like his brothers before him, he will do just fine if he's naked from the waist down - he runs to the toilet every time. But when he's wearing anything on his lower half, be it diapers or underwear, it's like he's never seen a toilet in his life. I don't get it.

So over the weekend I thought I'd see how he did with some Pull-Ups. I figured they were a nice compromise between underwear and a diaper: easy enough to pull down, but absorbent in case he peed (like he does within five minutes everysingletime I put undies on him).

He seemed excited to wear them. But after a few minutes I noticed he looked a little ... bow-legged.

"What's wrong?" I asked him. He just looked at me, wide-eyed, so I beckoned him over. He obliged ... waddling.

When he approached me, I gingerly pulled open the back of the Pull-Up to peer down toward his buttcrack in the universal "did-you-poop?" move. And when I did, it was like some sort of seal broke, because a cascade of liquid crap began to pour down his legs like a fountain, puddling at his feet.

It was like this. Only it was poop.

"DON'T! MOVE!" I shrieked.

There were two problems with this: number one, you try telling a toddler not to move. It never works. And number two: the person who was supposed to be moving, me, was completely frozen to the spot. Like, I was paralyzed with indecision. I stood there open-mouthed, gaping at the diarrhea deluge spreading across my floor, having literally zero idea where to start in my cleanup efforts. Should I try to take the Pull-Up off first? Clean his legs and feet off and then worry about the Pull-Up?

It's not my first rodeo when it comes to cleaning up poopy messes (remember this? Or this?), but now that the majority of my kids have outgrown that stage (THANK YOU SWEET BABY JESUS) I'm kinda rusty at it. So when I was able to move, I ran straight into the bedroom, where my husband was sleeping. "Curtis!" I wailed. "I need help! Corbin has diarrhea and it's all over the place and I don't think I can take care of this mess alone!"

Curtis got blearily out of bed and trudged behind me to where Corbin was whimpering down at his poop-covered feet.

"What the ..."  he whispered.

"I'll get a plastic bag," I said, dashing toward the kitchen cabinet where we keep like ten bazillion of them in a crumpled stash. But every one I pulled out had a hole in the bottom, and a hole is not the best thing when you're trying to clean up a mess of dripping poo.

"Just grab two and double-bag it!" Curtis hollered.

He held the bags open underneath Corbin's crotch to catch the Pull-Up, which I carefully ripped down the sides to avoid having to pull it down his legs. But the bag wasn't open wide enough so some of the poop dribbled down the sides.

Two old towels, a bunch of cleaner, a roll of paper towels, a load of laundry and a bath later, the crisis was resolved. But needless to say, I was traumatized, and swore off Pull-Ups for the rest of the weekend ... just in case. Because clearly I'm no longer at the top of my poop-crisis-handling game.

Someone remind me of that the next time I start blathering about another baby.



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