So let me tell you about my last 12 hours. Amanda and I finished watching the second episode of Persons Unknown then she went to bed and I was going to follow shortly after. Going to bed around 10:00 is early for me, but I felt much better after a little snooze earlier so I thought it would do me some good.
Before I was going to bed, and this was still before 10:00, Michael gave me a call to ask about some Photoshop/web design things. As I was talking to him Amanda asked me to bring some Motrin and water up to her (for ladytime stuff). While I was doing that Jason called. Since it was Jason’s birthday I told Michael I’d call him back. I finished my delivery to Amanda, talked to Jason for a bit then called Michael back and help him out. I got in bed at about 10:15 and fell asleep saying my prayers.
I woke up about an hour later. I’m not sure if it was the noise or Amanda calling my name, but she was busy sicking in the bathroom. On my way there I noticed some thick, sticky black stuff on the floor in front of the bathroom door and asked Amanda if she’d let some out before making it to the porcelain. She hadn’t, and it turned out that Bruce had pooped there. It was very gooey, making it very hard to clean.
I held Amanda’s hair out of her face, rubbed her back and got her some water. She said she felt much better after that episode. Then I went to work on Bruce’s mess; picking it up, wiping it, spraying it down with some Nature’s Miracle then scrubbing away at it. I sprayed some more Nature’s Miracle on it after I was done because it wasn’t completely gone, figuring I’d let it soak in and give it another go tomorrow.
I fell asleep pretty quickly after that and woke up a little after 8:00 this morning. I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, and at that time I heard Milly announce that she was awake. I went in to get her and she smiled at me like she always does every other morning, but I noticed when I went to pick her up that her shirt was very crusty.
Must have been quite a poop, I thought to myself. I looked around in her crib and saw that it was all over everything except for one toy, but it wasn’t poop; it was puke. I called Amanda to see if she remembered Milly waking up last night (because it was very dry so it couldn’t have been a recent thing) and she said she heard the baby moving around this morning while she was getting ready, but that happens pretty much every day.
Anyway, I took Milly to the bathtub and stripped her down to her diaper, but she was upset. She knew it was feeding time, so the bath was going to have to wait. I took her downstairs, gave her a bottle (I’ll worry about doing a sippy cup later) and went back up to strip her crib. When I finished that I went back downstairs and fed Milly some apples and blueberries baby food then opened up a thing of baby yogurt Amanda got for her yesterday. She really liked that, though she didn’t finish it.
When she was done eating we both went upstairs to the bathroom. I took Milly’s diaper off and found a small poo. I should have known better by now then to just take off a diaper like that. I tried a couple swipes with toilet paper, but that wasn’t doing the trick so I left her propped up against a cabinet for a second and grabbed a wipe from the nursery (right next to the bathroom). I got back and cleaned her heinie, but then I noticed a yellow puddle between Milly’s feet. That’s the first time since being a few weeks old that she’s peed with her diaper off.
Anyway, I put her in the baby tub and went to town cleaning the pee off the floor (which also got on the bathmat a little bit) then cleaned Milly up. She usually loves the bath, but it wasn’t doing much for her this morning. Still, I got her clean, then I wrapped her up in a towel with her sitting in my lap. She seemed very content then. I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her on the cheek and told her everyone who loves her.
I diapered her up and put a dress on her in the nursery then let her crawl around and play a bit in there while I assessed all the things her puke had gotten on. There was a total of four stuffed toys in the crib. One, a bear that makes different noises (kind of a white noise machine) was unscathed, which is the best one not to have to clean since it’s got electronics in it and all. The sock doll Aunt Robbie had given her was pretty wet, but at least that one is machine washable.
The other two, the microwaveable duck with a lilac smell and Changing Table Bear, were surface clean only, so I took a washcloth to them in the bathroom and sprayed some Nature’s Miracle on them since I couldn’t find any Febreze then took the washcloth to them again. I’ll have to clean them up pretty good again before I give those back to her.
Then I took Milly’s sheets and pajamas to the bathroom and set the sprayer on the hardest spray level and rinsed them off. The throw-up was caked on in some places, and I thought it would be better to hose them off than to just throw them in the washer and let the puke get all mixed in with the water. The fitted sheet was mostly okay, so I left that one dry and piled everything else, all the wet stuff, into that and started the wash.
Milly, all the while, was happily playing in her nursery. After I got the wash started I went to spend some time with her and put some fresh sheets in the crib. She seemed fine and ended up getting in her rocking chair for a minute. I rocked her a bit and she wiped her eyes, so I went ahead and put her in the crib. She went down without any fuss at all.
So far my morning has been go-go-go. Fortunately I’m not inundated with emails. I ate some cereal and now it’s time for work, which might just be more relaxing than the rest of my day has been so far.
Zach Dotsey