Poopocalypse 2012

We were really busy this weekend. From spending time with family, to planning our garden (OK, my husband's garden, I've gladly handed it over to him since I'm so busy working from home and taking care of Amelia), to visiting a close friend in the hospital, it felt like we were constantly on the run. So, Sunday morning I decided to leave Amelia with Jon while I took Molly to the college campus down the road for a walk. The start of the day was gorgeous, and it was nice to take a walk, just Molly and me. She was my constant companion pre-Amelia, running all my errands with me and often accompanying me to the houses of friends and family. These days it is too overwhelming to pack her and Amelia and the stroller, along with leash and diaper bag, so she's often stuck at home.

It was a great walk. I'm a two time alumni of the college, and they had done a lot of construction over the summer, so it was great to see all the new buildings and landscaping. Plus, I really exercised hard this week, so the walk loosened up all my tight and aching muscles.

Molly and I were finishing up our hour long walk when I received a picture message from Jon. Aww, I thought. It must be a cute picture of my little sweetie pie.

Instead, it was a picture of an overly full diaper.

Are you serious?!? My husband did not just text me a picture of a poopy diaper. It was so unexpected that I started giggling. I texted him back, "Uh oh, did we have a poo bomb? Better you than me!", and continued on my way.

Not much later, I received this text: "It's on the her and her clothes, the foot rest, toy box, tub, and Daddy."

Wait, what??? How did she get poo all over so many things? I was giggling so hard at this point that I was rather glad that the campus was fairly deserted.

When I arrived home, Jon was in a fairly worked up state, waving his hands around and describing how he hadn't even known at first that she had pooped, but when he did figure it out, he seemed to find evidence of this biological function all over the house.

You may be asking, how did it get all over so many things? Well, there are two parts of this. First, I try to make sure Amelia gets a fair amount of fiber in her diet. She is a great eater, but not so hot on veggies, so I am always inspecting food packages and trying to buy her treats and breads with a higher fiber content. Any mother knows that a constipated baby is an unhappy baby and therefore, I try to avoid that issue. Apparently, I'm doing a great job at making sure things are moving along for her! The second part of what I am now deeming as the "Poopocalypse of 2012" is that Amelia has discovered her butt crack:

Because she has found this part of her anatomy, she often sticks her fingers back there and pushes her diaper down, or in this case, makes a mess of whatever her diaper happens to contain.

And yes, I am definitely putting this picture in the "Items to show a future boyfriend" pile.

So there you have it. The events of Poopocalypse 2012, successfully managed by my dear husband. It's a good thing that I enjoyed that walk because he may never let me out of the house again!

Post Poopocalypse

**Psst.... did you catch me over on Curvy Girl Guide Friday? Here's the link!

Poop and Manners Are Important

Yesterday was a little rough. I mean, granted, Amelia has had the flu and we think she has some additional teeth coming in. Unlike us, she cannot tell us specifically what is wrong when something hurts. All she can do is whine and fuss. I do my best to be patient, but honestly, it can be really frustrating at times, especially when I am by myself. When you add that I have not been able to get as much work done as I would like since I had the flu right before she did, things were challenging yesterday.

Jon and I did come up with a few options though:

1) Buy a pair of prosthetic arms so I can type with one pair and hold her with the other pair. We are thinking of looking on Craigs List.

2) Clone myself so one of us can work and the other one can play, rock, feed, nurse, and change Amelia. That sounded like a good idea until Jon suggested a third clone. I can't handle that much competition, even if it is from myself, although it also highlights how productive I generally am as a mommy-- enough that it should take three of me to get everything done.

3) Baby straightjacket, which would allow me to pin her arms down so I can hold her and she won't slam her hands down repeatedly on my keyboard. Don't wrinkle your nose at me, swaddlers do the same thing as a straightjacket. So, I guess what I need is a toddler swaddler.

I coped by taking deep breaths, eating Halloween candy, and listening to Brittany & Meredith Live podcasts. Suddenly, at 2:00 p.m. I smelled something. I looked at Amelia all the way across the room and decided that it could not possibly be her. She has never produced something so smelly that the odor wafted across large spaces.

Until yesterday.

After I cleaned her up, she was like a whole different baby, smiling, clapping, reading her books. An important life lesson taught by an 11 month old:

Everyone feels better after a good poop.

So, with that, I worked a bit longer and we headed to the gym. Afterwards, we stopped at the grocery store to pick up some odds and ends, which included cat food because OMG when our cat can see the bottom of his bowl he follows us around meowing driving me frickin' crazy and then poops on the bathroom floor out of spite. Which teaches another life lesson:

Poop can also be used as revenge.

After we grabbed everything we needed, which included sushi, roses, and chocolate covered pretzel ice cream for mommy because I earned it, damn it, we got in line to check out. Then it happened.

Amelia turned towards the cashier next to us, opened and shut her hand repeatedly, and said "Hi!".

My jaw dropped as everyone around us said Awww, smiling and waving back at her. She turned to the teenage boy bagging our groceries and said it again "Hi!" with her little open and shut wave. He looked like he could care less about this little baby and her cuteness and maybe considered ignoring her efforts at friendliness until I gave him my tight lipped smile that said 'You'd better wave back and say hi or I'm going to kick your pimply adolescent ass.' He waved back.

I can't pinpoint exactly what was so thrilling about this moment. Maybe it was that mommyhood has been a little more tiring than usual lately and this was a reminder of the good parts of parenthood. Maybe it was because her 'hi' was so distinct and intentional, another step towards toddlerhood as she nears her first birthday. I don't really know for sure. All I know is that I texted all my family, as if she had just taken her first steps.

Now, if we could just get her to stop picking her nose...

Random Thoughts for the Week

It has been a busy week in my little mommy world, so I haven’t really been able to collect my thoughts into one cohesive writing. So a scattered brain results in a scattered post. Here it is:

1) My biggest realization this week is that the title of my blog is apparently somewhat pornographic. Out of curiosity, I put the title of my blog into Google. Yay, there’s my blog, right at the top of the search results! Wait, what’s the next result? Amateur mommies doing what? Oh, no…  that really wasn’t what I was going for when I developed the idea for this! I immediately called my husband and yelled at him, asking why it had never occurred to him that the phrase ‘amateur mommy’ would result in many perverts viewing my blog. Don’t ask me why I thought it was his fault, it just is.  I briefly thought about changing the name, and then realized, I really don’t care if I disappoint sexually excited men (or women? I’m trying not to think about it too much). What’s the saying? Bad publicity is still publicity? Let’s just run with that.

2) Apparently, I text the word ‘poo’ so much that it’s the first word that pops up before son, soo, or ron… I feel like this says something about the lack of interesting things I’m able to communicate to my husband about my day. Another disappointing auto text? A sad face pops up before the smiley face. I’m totally blaming that on the amount of annoyed, sad, and frustrated texts that were sent back and forth between me and my fellow co-workers that were recently cut from the school district I was at. Budget cuts = :( That’s a fact.

3) Since we’re on the topic of unemployment, I must admit I’m having a wide range of emotions about it. Getting any correspondence from the office of unemployment pretty much makes me feel like I’m going to hurl. I don’t know why. I could totally analyze the hell out of that feeling, but Amelia hasn’t slept well this week, so I’d rather not expend any brain cells on over-thinking. On the plus side, I might get to stay at home with Amelia for quite a while. Even if home ends up being a cardboard box.

4) I want to get rid of our television just about every day due to the Casey Anthony trial. I look forward to it being over. This is not news to me. It’s sad, and disgusting, and I don’t want to hear every little last detail about the court proceedings. I especially don’t want to see Nancy Grace discussing it all the freaking time. PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!!!

This concludes the deep thoughts I’ve had for the week. Note that there are only four, and really, they are rather superficial. This is what happens when I spend the majority of my time job hunting, running, swimming, and taking care of a baby. Perhaps more extensive thoughts will be in store for next week. Thoughts that don’t include the words ‘poo’, ‘porn’, or ‘sad face’. Although it will make for some good tags.