Other times

There are times when I realize that in that particular moment, being a mom is exactly what I pictured. Like today, when my baby (almost a toddler!) was sleeping in his room and my 2.5-year-old was entertaining himself quietly at my feet while I shelled peas in the kitchen. (Yup, I SHELLED PEAS. First time.) Or any time one of my sons gives me a hug. Or when they're splashing in the bath. And even sometimes when I'm changing a diaper--I knew that would be part of the equation.

BUT. Then there are other times.  Moments and minutes and hours that should NEVER BE A PART OF ANYONE'S EQUATION. Not even Hitler's.*

What follows is not for the faint of stomach. I told my friend Melissa that this was way too gross to be posted on the internet, but she felt my blog would be a misrepresentation of my life as a mom if this momming moment weren't included. So with fair warning, here it is. I'm going to try to put everything delicately.

On the fourth of July, we set up a tent in my in-laws' backyard so we could give camping with babies a low-risk trial. When our kids started to get sick of fireworks, we retreated to the tent to go to sleep. Sleep didn't happen for hours. Jonah was too excited from the best day ever (at least within the scope of his goldfish memory). Then Andy woke up a few hours after we'd fallen asleep and we couldn't get him to go back down. But that's not the bad part.

The bad part is that as we were trying to calm Andy, Jonah woke up and climbed in the big sleeping bag with Seth and then vomited all over himself and Seth and the sleeping bag. ("Vomited" is a delicate word, right?) The other bad part is that while Seth was bathing Jonah (in a house full of theretofore sleeping people) and I was holding Andy and trying to help and figure out what to do with the sleeping bag, we looked down into the bath water to find it had turned murky and brown. Jonah had made a large deposit from his other end, and now there was a bathtub to drain, scoop out and disinfect and a crying toddler who still needed to be cleaned. The other bad part is that after we had showered Jonah and grabbed what we needed and were ready to speed home to lick our wounds, Seth put Jonah down on the bath mat to change his diaper, and its disgusting contents spilled out all over Jonah and the bathroom. The OTHER bad part is that after Jonah's second shower, when we were in the car and almost home, we heard a gross noise from the backseat. When I opened the door to get Andy out at home, I found him sitting in a 4-inch deep pile of nastiness that his diaper could not handle. (I'm giving myself a pat on the back for "pile of nastiness." Way more delicate than the other options.)

So. Bang, bang, bang, bang. One bullet wasn't enough. My sons wanted to make sure the holiday was good and dead.

I'm sorry you read this, but honestly I'm more sorry for our family and the memories that can never be erased.**

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*Just doing my part to make sure when someone googles "Hitler" and "diapers" something shows up.
**But still. LOOK AT THESE BOYS:

Babysitter

We got a babysitter this weekend. We never get babysitters. This is what I always envision:

And then I envision the babysitter avoiding eye contact with me at future meetings, and since I want everyone to love me, that's not okay.

But we got a babysitter anyway--a fun, sweet teenager from church--and she came over and I handed over my nearly nude baby and reintroduced her to my (formerly very unfriendly) toddler and this is how things looked:

Andy was doing that really darling thing where he reaches for someone's face and laughs and Jonah was showing her all his stuff. And this is how I looked:

I'm tilting my head because my heart is warm, and that is what people do when their hearts are warm. 

But then something really awful happened. Something so awful that it should never be illustrated. The babysitter got something on her hands that she thought was broccoli-tinted spit up (Andy is known for his prolific spitting) and she looked for something to wipe it up with. But then +Seth came over to help and took a closer look at his DIAPER and discovered that the green stuff was NOT SPIT UP. IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. 

I THINK YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. 

So my head quickly untilted itself, and my expression switched to this one:

Horror. This poor girl. She did not deserve this. 

She handled it with all the grace of a ballet-dancing queen, though. She just said "Oh. I'll wash my hands" -- and then washed her hands. And then went on to take such good care of my kids that the first thing Jonah did when he woke up the next day was ask where she'd gone.

So this is my family and my home -- if you enter, you will surely not escape without spit-up on your clothes, but now there's the added risk, apparently, of being pooped on. Word will get around that this happens -- primarily because I feel compelled to share this tale of shame with everyone I meet -- and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to ask someone to babysit again. 

I paid her well at the end of the night, and I threw in a you-got-pooped-on-bonus umbrella with ruffles, but there are some memories that can't be erased for any amount of money. Or umbrellas.