Nightmare Poopie

It has been a very, very long time since I did a poop post. I used to do them all the time, but I believe I mentioned at one point that I have lost my sense of humor about these things and so do not feel like writing funny little stories about them any more. However-- this morning has been so amazingly horrible that I am hiding here in the office, hoping that my house finds a way to disinfect itself...

So this morning I turned on the coffee maker, and as so frequently seems to be the case, I ended up with a poop mess to deal with before the little beeps indicating my delicious Texas Pecan roast was done brewing. I went into the my room and smelled something unpleasant. I moved into to the bathroom, thinking it was cat poop, but the box was clean. As I turned to walk away, figuring I'd deal with it later, the thought occurred to me that it might be Wyatt (who sleeps in the master closet). I opened the door and sure enough, there was a sad little baby sitting in a poop puddle with maybe a 12-inch radius. The smell was... pungent. I immediately ran a bath and threw him in, hosed him down, scrubbed with antibacterial body wash (kept on hand for exactly these purposes) and while he still smelled a little bit fecal, I figured that I had bigger fish to fry and he'd keep. I dumped some powder on him and sent him off with a cup of milk.

Now what to do about the puddle? We have two baby cribs, both of which are being used as day beds by the girls. So Wyatt sleeps in a pack and play, which unfortunately has a cloth bottomed pad. (WHO DESIGNED THAT AND WHY DID I BUY IT?) This was not a wipe-down situation. I did what I always do in nasty situations. I reached for Herbert, my beloved Hoover Steam Vac. Yes, Herbert was just the thing. I needed to get the majority of the chunks and sitting liquid off first, so I go out to the kitchen only to discover that I am completely out of paper towel. I debated over using old rags and towels, but then handily found some Mardi Gras brand paper napkins and decided to use those. Note: They are not absorbent at all, as it turns out. They mostly just smear things and I ended up just using them to scoop up the mess. Ok, well, keepin' on... I finally get most of it off and start using the cleaner. Leaving it to sit on the tile floor was really loud, so I pushed it back onto the bedroom carpet. As I sprayed and scrubbed and cleaned, the smell began to intensify. It was as though it was somehow activated by Lysol and carpet cleaner. I continued for probably about ten minutes before I dared sniff the pad. It still smelled absolutely horrible, plus the entire bathroom was now cloudy with the fumes coming from the carpet cleaner. At that point, I decided that Herbert did not deserve this treatment and wasn't going to fix this. So I packed up and moved him to the kitchen so I could clean him up. I closed the bathroom door, leaving the pad on the floor to hopefully take care of itself. In the kitchen, meanwhile, the mere act of bringing the carpet cleaner into the room caused the stink-cloud to relocate. I could not get the smell off of the dirty water container, the hose/hand attachment smelled awful, and it seemed like the smell was getting on everything the more I tried to contain it.

Have you ever used a particular cleaner to clean up something unbelievably awful, to the point that you can't tell where the smell of the cleaner ends and the awful begins? I reached that point very quickly this morning, and so that particular bottle of Lysol is now forever going to smell like a sick-baby-cheddar-avocado-poop conglomerate to me. I can't tell if I'm smelling only the Lysol or if there's still poosmell lingering.

In the meantime, I threw the bedding and his t-shirt into the washer. Common sense said to wash it alone, but then I saw Tom's Army backpack that I used for camping and spilled purple shampoo into sitting there on the dryer. So I threw it in. About 15 minutes later, as the washing machine on the spin cycle was hopping all over, I pulled out the backpack and wondered what on earth I was going to do. You know, since it couldn't go through the spin cycle and was now soaked in poopy soap water.

Also in the meantime, Wyatt experienced some more diarrhea, which was an enjoyable interlude to cleaning up all the other diarrhea situations.

Returning to the kitchen, the poo/lysol smell coming from the sink was overwhelming. This led to a fun sniff test of everything in the vicinity and the decision that everything just needed a little bleach. The carpet cleaner still had a lingering aroma, so it got sprayed again as well.

So somewhere in the course of all this, I did finally sit down with my cup of coffee and willed it all to just disappear. Aside from the fear that the smell might be on my actual person, the office seemed safe and I goofed around on Facebook for a few minutes. Then Wyatt, who had finished his milk, came in covered in milk. Oh, wait, did I say milk? I meant milk barf. So then I had to go find the puddle of puke, which was partially contained in the wipes container. Luckily I already had the carpet cleaner on standby, so was able to clean the barf of the carpet fairly quickly. This also helped move the bleach solution and some clean water through the cleaner, and the smell began to improve.

I ventured back into the bathroom to check on the crib pad, which smelled zero percent better than it did when it had a pile of poop on it. I decided to move it outside. Unfortunately, the playpen itself is too wide to fit through doors and the little buttons that make it collapse wouldn't press and I couldn't take it down. So while the pad is airing on the patio, the crib itself is still marinating our closet with rich smelly goodness.

My bedroom also smelled very strongly of terrible, despite having nothing in it to make it smell. Again, sniff tests. Remember when I put Herbert on the carpet to cut down on noise? Well, there was a single line of dirty water that had leaked out of the cleaner onto the carpet and the whole room smelled because of it. As I cleaned the carpet in my room, the lights were flickering (from Herbert's massive power pull? Hm.) Anyway, it was very ominous.

And that brings us to now. Wyatt has a little fever and is really crabby. Despite two baths, he smells terrible. My bathroom smells terrible, my closet smells terrible. My sink drain smells terrible, and the carpet cleaner is not smelling great. The fate of the pack and play is up in the air. Frick, the fate of my whole house is up in the air, since everywhere I go I am smelling this nightmare mutant stench. And not five minutes ago, Jacob came in to tell me: "Mom, I had to go poop and I used a lot of toilet paper and now the toilet... well, there was just so much poop. I had to use a lot. Sorry."

I need a new job.