Well, there went the last of my dignity...

We're in North Carolina, y'all, so you know I'm happy.

My brother and his lovely family drove down from Maryland and Chris and the Boy and I drove up from Georgia and we all converged on my Sister and her family to celebrate my Dad's birthday and New Year's.  It's lovely being back here so soon, I hadn't expected it, but Chris was in need of a break so here's where we are.

We spent most of yesterday at my Sister's.  We all contributed some fingery foods and sat and talked and snacked most of the day.  The Boy bounced like a ping pong ball between his EIGHT cousins until, in a fit of over-stimulation and exhaustion, I hauled him upstairs for a bath and his bed time routine.  At the time we intended to get him ready for bed and then get on the road.   (We're staying with my parents who live about an hour away from my sister so we were hoping to get him winding down in the car and then he'd go to sleep that much easier when we got back...HAHAHAHA!  This is the tale of the best laid plans of Mice and M and how they often go astray.)

I had the Boy upstairs and I stripped him and Chris was helping me to bathe him, so once he was in the tub, I took his dirty clothes and dirty diaper and started to trot DOWNSTAIRS to where I had left the diaper bag.  In a fit of over-confidence in my ability to oh, descend the stairs, I missed the bottom step, slipped on the hardwood floor, tripped on the rug and landed rather forcefully on my right knee.  As I lay there, SPLAT, on the floor all I could think was, "Well, there went the last of my dignity.  The last few slender pieces I had remaining after pregnancy and childbirth, they're laying about me like tattered pieces of confetti.  Now, do I attempt to pick them up, or do I just leave them where they lay and attempt to reconstruct my dignity once we're done with our family?"  It was a very exhistential moment for me.

I left my dignity there.

I scraped myself up, put the dirty clothes and dirty diaper away.  Had a few moments of histerical laughter and then trudged back upstairs where my child was screaming through his bath time.  I dried, diapered and dressed him and much more carefully descended the stairs again. 

Then, I proceeded to get caught up in my brother and sister's conversation...which lingered...and lingered...and then was permeated by this stench which seemed to be eminating from my child.  I looked at him and inquired,

"Did you poop AGAIN?"

No comment from the accused. 

I lingered with the conversation until the stench became un-ignorable, at which point I picked him up and schlepped back to the bathroom to address the crisis.

Oh dear, bless us and save us.  It seems my child's entire gastrointestinal track exploded in that diaper.  It was EVERYWHERE.  Suffice it to say I'm still a little shaken up by it.  The grossness of it was such that I was able to acknowledge that situations such as these might be why people wrinkle up their noses at cloth diapers.

But left with no alternative, I cleaned him up, changed his clothes (AGAIN) and this time I was fleeing the scene, sans dignity, sans bed-ready Boy, sans any remaining sense of smell.  I'm telling you, it was a SCARRING experience.

And yet, like the band playing on the Titanic as the ship goes down, my family was awesome.  Totally unphased by any of it, the stories continued, the jokes continued, the conversation continued.

We're heading back today.  It's family dinner, and the last one we'll have all together until June.  Tomorrow my nephew returns to college, my Brother and his family return to Maryland and on Sunday we'll be returning to Georgia.  As for today, I'm going to wallow in the familial love.