After thirteen and a half hours of driving with three young children in the backseat, a parent can get very good at tuning out little voices, noises, smells, screams, toys where they shouldn't be, flashing lights, and other such unpleasant and/or unusual sensory triggers.
This can be very useful mechanism when your three- and five-year-olds are arguing over who gets to hold the plush puppy toy (especially when there is an identical one lying untouched by your elbow). However, it can also lead to unfortunate, disgusting, and altogether laugh-because-that's-all-I-can-do situations.
This is how the Great Poopscapade of 2017 was allowed to get as bad as it did.
With only an hour and a half left in crosss-country cruise, we felt secure in our knowledge that it was well past bedtime and our little ones would soon wear out. Berto, unfortunately, was not in tune with our desires. He cried and cried and screamed and cried. He refused food and water, so I assumed he was merely at his breaking point and would soon conk out under the soothing tapping of my fingers on his face (there was precedent).
We should have been alerted to the atrocities that lay before us by the stench that soon enveloped our little vehicle, but alas, we were not. Blame it on overtired, travelworn nerves. That is my excuse. I wrote the smell off as a passing longhorn farm: we were finally in Texas, after all. And as Berto's cries were at long last turning only to the occasional whimper, I believed the bulk of our day's trials were nearly at an end. Oh, how I was mistaken.
No, it was Janie's disgusted cry that finally cued us to the disaster that lay before (or rather, behind, if you will) us. "Eeeeew! Is that poop?!" Not much makes a mother whip around quite as quickly as the dreaded "P word." I was on my knees facing backward in in a flash. One of the disadvantages of it being "well past bedtime" is the accompanying darkness. I could see only that there was a dark, smudgy something on Berto's knee. What is a mother to do in this situation? Yes, I wiped that smudgy something onto my own finger to determine its origin. "Oh please be chocolate" I thought to myself, though truthfully I knew my luck was not that good.
It took us about three seconds to decide the situation needed attending. Mercifully, an exit with a superbly lit gas station was immediately on hand.
What we found was that Berto had not grown quiet because he had found sleep; rather, he had found entertainment in the (adult) fist-sized, corn-riddled mass of poop that, because of the angle at which he was sitting, and smushed out the side of his diaper. I say entertainment because he chose to use it as a form of artistic medium, as is common among one-year olds. It was on his hands. It was on his legs. It was on his clothes. It was on his face. It was on his carseat. It was on the door. It was on the seat between the door and his carseat.
Blessing to be counted: It was not in his hair.
I am fairly certain we used half a packet of wipes at this marvelously lit, middle-of-nowhere gas station. Of course, there was nowhere safe to lay him down so the entire cleaning was done with one of us holding his rump in the air for the other to wipe down or with the babe standing completely nude behind the car, flashing his glorious manliness to all the drivers flying by on their own, hopefully uneventful, journeys.
Now, as distressed as we were by the wholly unexpected and unpleasant task, we could not keep from laughing. The ridiculousness of the moment did not escape us. Of course we could not have a fifteen hour drive without some detrimental occurrence. The Fates would never allow that. Something was bound to happen, and happen it did. Plus, Berto seemed extraordinarily pleased with himself.
Note: incidentally, Berto fell asleep within five minutes of getting back on the road after cleanup was concluded
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