Everyone remembers the Folgers jingle right, "The best part of waking upppp is Folger's in your cup..." I totally agree with that. I need coffee in the morning, preferably first thing in the morning. Now, as a mother I don't usually get it FIRST thing, but it's pretty darn close. However, even as a mother NO ONE should have to wake up to what I did this morning...

I heard Ben fussing this morning. Now, because I live such a life of leisure and because Andrew works nights and gets home in the morning just before Ben wakes up he usually gets him up and they have some bonding time in the morning. So when I heard him I waited for a minute to hear if Andrew was home yet and to hear him clomp up the steps in his boots.

No Andrew. I roll over and look at the clock. It's 7:45. That's pretty good. Usually Ben is up at 7:00:01. So he slept late this morning. My alarm was set for 8:00 so I would have been getting up pretty soon anyway. All that to say I didn't mind getting up and going to get him even though Andrew was way late.

I walk into his bedroom and what do I see? Ben standing in his bed wearing a t-shirt and nothing but a t-shirt. He had taken his diaper off and it was sitting in the corner of his bed. Aww, it was so cute and funny. Right?

WRONG. Because he was standing in a big pile of POOP. And he wasn't just standing in it. He had apparently been wallowing in it. There was poop smeared all over his sheet, the crib bumber, his musical lion, all over "Blankey", "Imposter Blankey", "Big Blankey", and "Aunt Laura's Blankey". There was poop rubbed into the spindles of his crib. There was poop all over his legs and feet. There was poop on his hands. And there was poop on the floor. It was like trying to walk through a mine-field to approach the crib. And had it been a mine-field I would have died because I stepped on poop...twice.

The first thing I have to do is get the poop off the floor because I can't keep stepping in it while I'm cleaning everything else up. That would have made me loose my cool quickly. So, I'm cleaning it up and talking to Ben and while this is happening he takes one little poop covered hand and PUTS IT IN HIS MOUTH!!! (And we thought he was smart...)

I get the poop off the floor and am wiping his hands off when Andrew comes home. He can smell the poop from downstairs so at least I've had a headcold and couldn't smell it. A blessing in disguise. He comes up and Ben gets a good-morning-we-don't-play-in-poop-bath while I clean up the rest of the poop and start my newfound four loads of poop laundry.

While I'm doing all this I was remarkably calm, not even mad or frustrated, or irritated. I was a little grossed out when Ben taste-tested his poop, but besides that I basically had no reaction. Do you want to know the secret of my parenting success? What kept me from yelling at him or at least feeling so put-upon...?

Simple. I just knew in my head that this was not my life. This was not me cleaning up piles of poop, walking in poop, washing clothes covered in poop, watching a child eat poop within thirty seconds of waking up in the morning. This was not me. Not my life. Not my kid. And therefore not my problem.

I wish a blessing of many poopy diapers upon you all.