The House At Poo Corner

Last Thursday morning, I got up and wandered blearily down the hallway to retrieve Joshua from his crib and had to tiptoe around little splotches of runny dog poo. I was elated, as you can imagine. So I left Joshua in his crib for a few extra minutes (he was distinctly unhappy about this turn of events but...well...the smell couldn't really be ignored) and went through two cans of Spot Shot (our carpet cleaner of choice these days...though one does need to ask why carpet cleaner needs a website) getting the majority of the mess taken care of. We dealt with dog poo and vomit off and on for the rest of the day.

Cassi periodically has gastro issues, so we're no stranger to the magic "fix your puppy's tummy" diet - no food until the issues stop (usually between 24 and 36 hours) then reintroduce food slowly, beginning with plain rice, then dry food, then back to normal. So Saturday night, we started Cassi on some rice. She did great with that all through Sunday and Monday, so we went to her dry food for her Monday night meal. And all appeared to be well in the land.

Last night at about midnight, I heard the siren call of the little one. I stumbled to his room and popped his paci back in, thinking that surely would fix the issue since it seemed too early for him to need to be up. But no sooner had I stumbled back into bed and begun to enjoy feeling the lapping waves of exhaustion steal over me to wash me into slumber, the calling began again. This time with urgency. In a fit of great mental effort, I calculated how long it had been since he ate and determined that it actually wasn't unreasonable for him to be making his hungry cry. So back down the hallway I stumbled (Fun fact: every night when I walk past the stairs, I'm momentarily worried that I'm going to drop off to sleep while walking and pitch to my death. I need a week of solid sleep. Desperately.) back down the hall, noting out of the corner of my eye that Cassi had decided to tag along. This is not unusual. But it's also not common for the early night visits - usually Cassi only tags along when it's late enough that she thinks there's hope for wheedling an early breakfast out of me. (And if she's really lucky, second breakfasts out of Tim.)

As always, I shut our bedroom door and closed Joshua's door as well to keep the disturbance of Tim to a minimum. I prepped the bottle and began rocking and dozing while Joshua slurped greedily and Cassi paced. And paced. And panted. She finally settled at my feet after I told her to sit, but she cast a much aggrieved look in my direction as she did so. And for one blissful moment I was able to doze and rock and the only sound was the little slurpy noises of a baby on a bottle.

And then came the noise that you never want to hear in the middle of the night. The sound of a squeeze bottle that's nearly out of its contents being squeezed vigorously...all over the carpet in the baby's room. My eyes flew open, though the smell was enough to tell me exactly what had happened, though Joshua continued to slurp as if nothing had happened and Cassi stared at me with an almost palpable mixture of embarrassment and defiance.

Blinking and trying to wake my brain up enough to react, I capped the bottle over the baby's protests and gingerly picked my way over to the door, squeezing through and leaving Cassi and her mess on the other side.

Waking Tim in the middle of the night is always sort of amusing. The first whispered, "Tim" will get a muffled mumble followed by him rolling over. I get this. I have to do this at least once every night in order to silence the snoring enough that I can get back to sleep. A second whispered "Tim" will get flailing arms that virtually shout, "Leave me alone, already, can't you see I'm sleeping here?" The third, slightly louder, "Tim" will get him to shoot straight up in alarm as he asks, "What? What?" To which I responded, "I need help."

You could see him blinking at me as I stood in the doorway holding Joshua with nothing apparently wrong with either of us and very little urgency in my voice, just the quiet resignation that our peaceful slumber had just been ruined. So I clarified, "Cassi just pooed all over Josh's room."

We looked high and low for more Spot Shot, but it appeared that our escapades of puppy fun previously in the week had run through our supply. A friend had recommended Woolite's Carpet Cleaner and, on a whim, I had bought some when I saw it at the store. So, we tried that. Can I just say that you might as well just smear the poo around on the carpet with a wet sponge? Seriously. What a waste.

Fortunately, Joshua slept through the whole cleaning mess, since I plopped him back in his crib while Tim went to search of carpet cleaner. Once the whole mess was cleaned to the best of our current ability, we scrubbed our hands and feet and crawled back into bed, locking the puppy in the bathroom after a quick scoot outside to see if she had other issues to take care of. Not five minutes after doing so, just as I was about to drift off, Tim says, "It wasn't too chemical fume-y in there, was it?"

I had just had a mental conversation with myself wherein I convinced myself that Joshua would be fine and not suffocate from some strange chemical smell brought on by Woolite and their crappy carpet not-cleaner. So to have Tim ask meant that we had to go drag the bassinet up from the basement and move Josh to it so he could sleep in our room.

Silver lining of it all? Joshua didn't wake up again until 7:30 this morning. And I'm wondering if it's because Tim and I sleep with a white noise thingy...and if it is, how much do I care that there are studies out there that say that having one running in your kid's room is bad for them?

Now I just need to go get some more Spot Shot to clean up the mess that Woolite left.