The Poop Story at B & J's

Leyla has provided me with a lot of poop stories in her 2.5 years here on this earth. But this one takes the cake.

Some time last week, Shane decided to take us all out to eat. We don't do this very often. First of all, we don't have enough money to eat out, and it's also kind of a hassle with the small children. Anyway, neither one of us wanted to cook and clean up dishes, and he had a little extra cash, so he took us out. We went to a local pizza parlor. It was nice. But the girls and I had chowed down on some serious sugar cereal before he got home, so they didn't eat very much.

We were getting towards the end of our meal. I was finishing my drink. Shane was watching a baseball game on the big screen. Leyla and Chloe were messing around with their chairs. Then I started to get a whiff of something nasty. The table next to us had a little girl who was probably about two and half or three. Her mother picked her up and took her somewhere. I blamed the nasty smell on the neighboring child (of course it couldn't be MY children).

However, despite the absence of the neighboring toddler, the smell lingered. I asked Shane if he could smell it, but his mind was elsewhere. Chloe had been telling me she needed to use the restroom, and I had told her no, because she ALWAYS says that when we're in public places because she likes public restrooms (gross). So then I got worried that maybe she really did need to go potty and she'd gone in her shorts. I checked her first. All clear. Then I checked Leyla. I was NOT prepared for what I found.

She had been playing on her chair for a while now. It was black with a fabric seat. And on that nice upholstered chair were two separate smears of Leyla poop. She was standing next to the chair like nothing had happened. Then Shane noticed that it was all over her leg. All over the chair. Down her leg. On her shoe. I stood staring at the mess and kept exclaiming "I don't know what to do!" I thought about grabbing napkins to try and clean it. Napkins??? Then what? Just load poop-covered napkins on the table? Shane suggested asking for a bar towel from the bartender. I'm not going to unassumingly ask for a bar towel and then use it to clean up toddler poop! As soon as I got over my shock, I decided I was just going to tell an employee so they could deal with the chair and I could deal with Leyla.

I tentatively approached the register. A young guy, probably a college student, asked if he could help me. I replied, "I've got some bad news," and I proceeded to tell him that even though my little girl was wearing a diaper, she managed to get poop all over the chair, and I didn't know what to do. He looked at me and replied that he didn't know what to do either. He thought about it for a minute and said, "I guess we'll just throw the chair away." Sounded good to me. We headed towards the table and I apologized about the poop. "well... I guess that happens," was his reply.

He went towards the table, and I took Leyla to the restroom to get her cleaned up. Of course, I didn't have a diaper bag with me. I did my best to clean her up using moistened paper towels. I had to completely rinse her shorts off in the sink and ring them out as best I could. I took the pizza guy's lead and threw her sandals away. They were also fabric and had poop all over them. I didn't have a diaper to put on her, but I didn't want to go all Wedding Singer and carry her across the restaurant with a naked butt, so I put her wet shorts back on her. Then I picked her up and carried her back through the restaurant to the register to let the employees know that they should change the waste basket in the restroom because we had a poop catastrophe in there.

When I arrived at the register, there were several employees standing there. They all smiled and were very nice about it. I turned to leave, and the girl said "Wait!... she's still got a little on her elbow." Her elbow???? I thanked her and walked back through the restaurant to the restroom to clean poop off Leyla's elbow. When I opened the door, there was a full-size mirror directly in front of me, and I discovered that Leyla's wet shorts had gotten stuck on the bottom of her butt cheeks and I had carried her through the restaurant TWICE with her naked butt hanging out. The exact thing I was trying to avoid by putting the wet shorts on her.

Now, up until this point, I had been pretty frustrated by the whole thing. But when I saw that tiny, naked butt in the mirror, I couldn't help but laugh. In situations like this one, that's all you can do.

So I cleaned up her elbow, pulled her shorts over her buns, and headed back out to the table where Shane was waiting with our left over pizza in a to-go box. As I passed the other patrons, I wondered what was going through their minds as this ridiculous situation unfolded. I met up with Shane, and we got the hell out of there. By the time we were out the door, I was still laughing hysterically over the naked butt discovery. And thinking back to the look on the employees' faces when I approached the register with naked-butt Leyla made me laugh even more. I think it's hilarious that no one said anything about her buns flying in the breeze.

So... that's the poop story.

On a side note, I'm considering starting a public blog under a pseudo-name. This blog pretty much hit the dust as soon as I went private. I'm thinking I'd like to start one and keep up with it like I used to do on this one, but I need to figure out a way to ensure that Miguel can't easily stumble upon it. And I'll probably use pseudo-names for everyone involved in the blog.