Motherhood: Make Sure You Read the Fine Print

As my friend Took also warned in her last post, this post contains major TMI. Read at your own risk, therefore, knowing that you have been dutifully warned :)

So, I took Madelyn bathing suit shopping with me this afternoon. Apparently, I didn't learn my lesson from three weeks ago when I did the same thing and had one of the most frustrating parenting days I've had yet. Alas. I intended to try on only one specific suit in two different sizes and then get out of there. How much of a hassle could it be, right?

The perky sales gal gave us the big dressing room, and Madelyn immediately commenced to making faces in the mirror and climbing on the vinyl covered bench. I got the first suit on and was just in the process of taking it off to try on the next size (read: naked from the waist up) when I heard Madelyn start to say "pee pee...pee pee..." quietly from the back corner of the dressing room, on top of the bench. I ignored it for about 30 seconds when it occurred to me that she wasn't moving on to a new topic. I looked up quickly to see Maddie sitting, slightly awkwardly, in an alarmingly large puddle of, what I brilliantly deduced to be, urine...that was also dripping down the side of the bench onto the carpeted floor. I cursed the specific kind of cloth diaper that she was in and grabbed her and moved her off of the bench and frantically opened the diaper bag to see what might be in there to mop up the pee. Washclothes! I grabbed as many as were in the bag and immediately started mopping up the mess and then followed with wet wipes to get everything as clean as I possibly could.

I was dimly aware as I was de-peeing the bench that I was still rather...exposed. Oh well. No time to worry about that.

It was about this time that the perky sales gal came back to ask us how things were going. "Great!" I replied and prayed that the slatted door wasn't nearly as see-through as it looked from my vantage point. She left, and I grabbed Maddie to strip her down and begin cleaning her off as well. As is frequently the case with these kinds of debacles, the urine had miraculously traveled into seemingly every nook and cranny of her body as well as all over her clothes and down into one of her shoes. Honestly. I laid her down on the floor and wiped her off as thoroughly as I could and began to put a clean diaper on her. Not accustomed to being changed in such close proximity by a topless mommy, Maddie immediately started giggling and, ahem, amusing herself with my exposed anatomy...and let's just say she wasn't exactly being gentle. As if the child hasn't already ruined "the girls" once in my life. No no...she had to do a little encore performance, all the while giggling and squealing "naked mommy!" for all the dressing room to hear.

Sigh. I figured the least I could do was buy the suit.

Those are the moments when I fully realize that you can't even put a hypothetical salary on motherhood: unconditional love is the ONLY motivation for that kind of job description :)