I Stuck

Both the washer and dryer are running, my 5-year-old daughter is doing her homework at the kitchen table and I am cooking dinner while helping with her homework. My 2-year-old daughter is in top form and as usual and wants my undivided attention, which is clearly way too divided already. But to appease her and basically ward off the crying for as long as possible, I convince her to bring a toy into the kitchen so I can run from the table to the stove to my 2-year-old, and so everyone is happy.

Because my 2-year-old has decided that although she doesn’t mind going potty in the toilet, she has no intentions on going poop in there, and I have been giving in to her by keeping her in a Pull Up. Now at this point, I should have had a clue that things were going far too smoothly, but I was too busy checking the clothes in the dryer along with homework.

My 2-year-old leaves the room and comes back to tell me she has been to her office to do her business and I can tell by the smell, that its true. I take her hand to go upstairs to change her, but stop in my tracks when I hear the washing machine making a loud banging noise. It is off balance again due to the waterproof mattress cover that throws the thing off every week.

So I tell my 2-year-old to stand by the stairs for a moment and I will be right back. I return after temporarily rectifying the washer issue only to find my 2-year-old with her head stuck between the rails of the stairs. She says to me, “I stuck, Mommy, I stuck.”  Leave it to a 2-year-old to point out the obvious. My 5-year-old hears this and comes running to see her sometimes nemesis put in her place.

As I try to free her head from the wood bars, she starts to cry, “I stuck, Mommy, I stuck.” Her Pull Up is completely full and completely stinky, her head is stuck and my 5-year-old thinks this is fantastic. I tell her it is not fantastic at all while I soothe my now scared 2-year-old who has stopped crying, if only temporarily. I ask my 5-year-old to watch her so I can go turn off the stove. I now know that this gave my 5-year-old great pleasure.

I return with a camera to take a picture of my 2-year-old to use as leverage at a later date and then go back to work to release her head. After pulling and pushing and twisting and turning her little head, I finally give up and call my husband at work. My husband, being well educated, Ivy League actually, asked me, “Can’t you just get her head out?” Seriously? I hadn’t thought of that.

My house no longer smells sweet from the delicious pasta sauce or fresh from clean laundry, but now smells of a stinky Pull Up. So I ask myself this, should I try to change her Pull Up while she is standing on the carpeted stairs, or do I make her endure the discomfort and the stench along with the rest of us? We have a very light cream-colored carpet, but my guilt was taking over, so I decided to make a go at it. Lucky for me, my husband walked through the door just as I was about to attempt the changing. We were able to free her head and change her soon after his arrival. She was unscathed physically, but emotionally I wonder as she kept repeating, “Never, never, never again.” She may have actually learned the valuable lesson of “what goes in may not come out.”

And I’ll always have the photo evidence.