Warming Up

My bloody wife went off podcasting this afternoon leaving me alone with the kids. And it’s not relevant that I did the same to her yesterday. In the old days it was the men who went off podcasting whilst the women stayed at home and I would like a return to those halcyon days. 

But luckily looking after kids is pimpsy so it was no skin off my nose,

Except a booby trap had been planted.

Ernie had not done a poo for two days.

Believe me, he was about to make up for that.

About an hour into my tenure he did his first poo. It was runny and nasty, but it was smallish and should have been easy to deal with. Except Ernie does not like to sit or lie still and insisted on flipping round on all fours as I attempted to clean a mound of soft faeces from his anus and buttock area. It was mildly nasty, but I coped.

But then, once we’d picked his sister up from school, making up for lost time, he pooped again. And this one was similar but bigger, I shouted at him to stay still but that didn’t work. Almost like he doesn’t speak English and hasn’t bothered to learn the language all the time he has been here. Send him back where he came from.

He flipped and wriggled and kicked and there was a fair bit of poo clearing up to do and it was very difficult to get him in the next nappy.

This was all part of his masterplan.

After dinner I’d set Phoebe up painting on the kitchen table when I became aware of another bad smell and looking at Ernie’s baby costume (as I insist on calling it), this time there was seepage. Because someone had made it impossible to get a nappy on. I left Phoebe at the kitchen table, painting, making her promise to stay where she was (and we can all trust the word of a 3 year old left alone with paint) and took Ernie for an early bath.

The poo was really everywhere this time and in a amounts that a wet wipe could nae handle captain. He kicked around and there was poo on his feet, on the changing mat and on his face. I got him as clean as possible and then put him in the bath, but the stink of poo haunted my nostrils. I couldn’t see any on me. Maybe it had just broken my nose and I’d need it reset so as not to smell poo for the rest of my life.

My happy son enjoyed his bath and then I came to put him in his night time baby costume. I’d need to put a fresh nappy of course and the changing mat looked like the walls of the Maze prison, so I put my son, naked as the day he was born, but looking less like a baby rat, into his cot and said, “Do not do a wee in there.”

But almost as if he likes disobeying authority, when I returned after 30 seconds of clearing up poo he was sitting in a circle of moisture. So I then had to change the sheet and clean the cot. Luckily it had a wipe clean mattress. I told Ernie that the people who’d made his cot had prejudged him and their prejudice had proven well-founded.

I gave him milk and read stories as fast as humanly possible, with dullness in my voice and  put my shitty baby to bed. He wasn’t sleepy at first, but he’d made his bed and he was going to lie in it.

I went downstairs to see what sitcom disaster had happened with the paints. I mean I’d only have myself to blame. But I hadn’t had much choice. The shit needed cleaning.

Worryingly Phoebe was returning green-fingered from the lounge. Why hadn’t she stayed put like she’d promised?

It wasn’t so bad. There was paint on the table of course and she’d painted some plastic toys, including the penguin and put them on the radiator in the lounge. But it was water-based paint and it all came off straight away. Also cleaning up paint from an inanimate table is much better than trying to clean shit off a wriggling child.

I told Phoebe it was bath time and she was upset because she wanted her mum to do it and also to watch Noddy: Toytown Detective (it’s a very short show - a crime happens in toytown and Noddy just arrests the golliwogs regardless of the evidence exonerating them - just like in the original books). So in the bath she was plaintively saying “Mummy… Noddy” over and over again. I don’t mind coming second to mum, but Noddy?

Later in her bedroom I could still smell poo, and she kept up her protests about mummy and noddy, even though I occasionally made her laugh and forget for two seconds. She told me she loved mummy a big bit and Noddy a big bit and Ernie a tiny bit and a big but and me a tiny bit. It was enough

I told her I loved her more than anyone in the world (Ernie has lost a few points in the table due to the shitting) and she looked at me and said with wonder “you love me more than anyone in the world.” She was simultaneously delighted and trying to work out how she would use this wondrous power. 

It’s true though. I do. She’s magic.

The boy’s OK as well.

I like mummy next best, but Noddy doesn’t even make my top 500. I guess a father rarely approves of his daughter’s first boyfriend.

Later I noticed a bit brown smear on my jeans. That was the source of the smell. I hoped it had come from Ernie, but at this stage I am not ruling anything out.

I had just put all the other poo and wee soaked stuff in the washing machine.

I've been trying to stop drinking, but tonight I drank. Alone. My children, luckily slept.

According to Warming Up fan and archivist, at 384 words into this blog I hit 200,000 words for Warming Up this year. Which is basically three books. What a waste of my valuable time.