The morning had not progressed as normal.  Instead of a morning 8:30 nap for M, we were sitting in the waiting room of the clinic waiting to be seen regarding some respiratory difficulties that M was having.  A half-hour later we were seen by the only non-English speaking nurse at the clinic, but were able to get what we needed anyways.

We made it back to the apartment, where I vainly hoped that M would take his nap…only an hour late.  That didn’t happen, which was okay as some tax paperwork I had been waiting for arrived in the mail.  Unfortunately, all official paperwork is in Swedish, so there was no chance in filling it out myself.  Bundle M back up and head back to the same office building we were at for the clinic, but now we were waiting in the tax office.  (And I have to say, the clinic has much more comfortable chairs.)  An hour later the forms were mostly completed by the wonderful tax officers behind the desk; just a few additional details that I needed to get from home.

Home again, and with an hour to spare until K needed to be picked up.  Perfect amount of time to feed M.  Now, M had been in the midst of another bout of constipation.  It happens regularly enough, so I was not really concerned.  I have been loading M up with black beans for a few days, so knew it was just a matter of waiting for the extra fiber to get the juices moving.  M is done with his food and is crawling around the kitchen as I clean up.  Nature calls for me and I head to the toilet.  (Don’t worry; the apartment is pretty well baby-proofed, so M was perfectly fine on his own for a few minutes.)

A few minutes later, M is at the bathroom door opening it and closing it and grinning away at his own self-amusement.  As I work to open the door a bit wider to squeeze out, I notice something horribly unpleasant.  There is a layer of poop coating the bottom-rear of M’s shirt!!  (Now take a moment and imagine your eating an overstuffed bean burrito, and as you bite into it the added pressure forces the beans and juices from the burrito out a small tear at the back.  That is about what I was looking at.)  Black bean poop is oozing out of M’s pants!!  (Now, for those of you that have read my Poop entry, you will know that I do not handle poop the best.)  In panic, I freeze.  Frantically I try to think what my wife would do at a moment like this.  I assess the situation further…there is poop on the shirt, there is black poop oozing out of his pants; I can now see that there is poop on different parts of his pants…with dread I look down the hall towards the kitchen and see a nice black bean poop trail leading from the kitchen to the bathroom.

Shower!!!  This has gone beyond my capabilities to calmly handle, so harnessing my inner wife; I pick up M and place him directly in the tub, strip him and proceed to hose him off for the next fine minutes.  Dry, dress, place M in a secure location, and then begin to tackle cleaning up the poop trail that is smeared across the floor.  Get to the kitchen and see that some of the chairs have scrapped off a disgusting amount of black bean extract from M.  But, within a short amount of time, it is all contained and cleaned up.

Typically, this sort of thing would not happen.  I am a big fan of onesies, you know, those shirts that snap closed around the diaper.   One of the great things about those is that when there is an excessive amount of poop, the onesie contains the mess pretty well.  However, today as we went to the clinic, I put M into a normal pull-up shirt that would be easy for the nurse/doctor to check his breathing.  Well, that choice directly contributed to the ensuing poop trail later that morning.

So, after getting M cleaned up and the floors spic’n’span I had just enough time to rush M out of the house and get to K’s preschool in time to pick him up.  Everything worked out just fine…but I have to admit, this incident did give me momentary cause to ask myself, “Why be a stay-at-home dad?”

As always, I encourage any of you readers to share your own poop stories.

And thanks for reading.