Big Messes at the Museum

Disclaimer: 

If you don't like hearing stories about dealing with bodily functions (i.e. being a parent), then this one isn't for you!

We have friends visiting from out-of-town, so yesterday, Tom took the day off work and we all went to the museum - five adults and seven kids under age four. 

Linus and I managed to sneak off on our own for a bit to look at a new exhibit I wanted to see in the art museum while the older two stayed with Tom and our friends in the natural history portion.  By the time I caught up with them, Stella was already done.  She was screaming her head off, and not willing to do anything.  Tom and I decided to split off from the group for a bit and take the kids to the children's area where there are fun things they're allowed to touch and hold, hoping she would calm down.

Soon after sitting down in there, Linus got to work making an enormous diaper, and soon began crying himself.  Because I hate carrying diaper bags around, I usually bring only the bare necessities: one diaper apiece and a small pack of wipes.  I could tell Linus was ready for his one allotted diaper, and maybe Stella was too, so I started looking around for a good place to change them.  Normally, I would just find a handy bench or corner and change the baby there, but the docents at the museum have eagle-eyes and do not let you pull stuff like that.  Plus, it was going to be a stinky one, and I knew I might need access to a sink.

I asked the docent in the children's room where the nearest bathroom was, and he told me to go down the hall and down the stairs....hmm, that wasn't going to work out well with the stroller.  Stella had started screaming again, and by this point, we had literally cleared out the room.  The only person left was the young male docent, awkwardly eying the family with the two screaming children, unsure what he could do to help.

I took Linus out of the Ergo carrier - which I left hanging off my waist - so I could bounce him around more effectively and try to calm him down.  Between his cries and my huge exaggerated bounces, I was attempting to explain to Tom - who couldn't understand me well because he was holding the screaming toddler - that we needed to go find a bathroom and get the kids' diapers changed.

And then: the explosion happened.  Linus finished up that diaper he'd been working on in one tremendous blowout.  Baby poop was all over the place.  It was covering my hands, my shirt, and absolutely dripping down the inside of the Ergo.  It probably got on the floor too.  I don't even know.  I just said, "We have to go NOW!" and took off, catching just a glimpse of the docent's shocked and fearful gape.

We all hurried to the elevator, but it wasn't arriving fast enough.  "I'll take the stairs with Linus!" I said.  "Meet me outside the bathroom!" I followed the signs for the bathroom as I ran down the stairs - they took me down several floors.  When I finally got inside, there wasn't even a baby-changing station.  But at least there was a little table I could work on.  Women and their daughters kept coming in and out, and it was making me more flustered.  As they squeezed around me standing there at the table, they all took a peek to see the disgusting mess I was working with.

Linus had to be totally stripped down.  His onesie and diaper went into a plastic bag I'd brought, and I cleaned him up with some the rest of the pack of wipes and put his one clean diaper on.  I didn't have a spare outfit for him.  Sorry, baby.  I was anxious to start scrubbing down my shirt and the Ergo, but I was afraid to leave Linus alone on the little table since there was nothing to strap him down with.  And now when I could have used them as baby-holders, there were no other women coming into the bathroom.  I couldn't put him on the floor since it was gross and wet and, you know, he was basically naked.

"Where the heck is Tom?" I wondered.  I was standing there covered in poo, holding Linus on the table, waiting to hear Tom's voice in the hall.  I pulled out my phone (carefully, since it was in the front pocket of the very soiled Ergo), and tried to call him.  No reception in the bathroom.  Sigh.  I unclipped the Ergo from my waist, threw it into a sink, picked up Linus, and went into the hallway, hoping no one would recognize what the yellow stuff all over my shirt was.

I tried calling Tom again.  He answered. Through the poor reception, echoing marble halls on my end, and shrieking toddler on his end, we attempted a conversation that went more or less like this, "WHERE ARE YOU?!"  "WHERE ARE YOU?!"  "I'M OUTSIDE THE BATHROOM, I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU!" "I'M OUTSIDE THE BATHROOM, I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU!"

Tom had found a different bathroom somewhere - a "family restroom" which I really wish I had found in the first place, since his presence would have greatly simplified cleanup - and was waiting for me outside of it.  I explained where I was so he could come help.  He showed up a few minutes later with the older kids - Stella still screaming in his arms - and took Linus in his other, so I could go back in and unsuccessfully attempt to get the yellow stains off everything.

To make the day just a little more gross, a short while later, I noticed a suspicious-looking brown stain on the shoulder of Tom's shirt where Stella had been sitting - in a dress - a little earlier.   She got her own diaper change shortly after.

Crazy people that we are, we ended up staying at the museum another couple hours.  We put some food into Stella which calmed her down considerably (Tom claims she gets her "hanger" = hungry+angry from me).  Poor Linus was put back, naked except for a diaper, into a damp but dry-paper-towel-lined Ergo to be carried around for the rest of the afternoon.

Heh, it worked out.


***

In the same vein....last night while we were praying the Rosary, Stella went over and grabbed the seat off her potty (no, she's not anywhere near being potty trained!  Mommy was overly-optimistic about being able to reduce the number of diapers she changes each day) and placed it on Tom's head like a hat.  Everyone else stayed focused and prayerful, but mature person that I am, I snickered about it for a good while.