I’ve Been Put in My Place

So I was feeling mighty proud of my latest creation for Miss Eloise and I decided it was just the thing to wear to our baby sign language class last Friday. I’ll be honest; I may have had fantasies that the other mothers would writhe in jealousy and demand to know where I had happened upon such an elegant creation. At which point I would humbly, yet breezily, say: “Oh that old thing? That was just something I whipped up in my free time.”

As I sat on the floor with the other babies and moms, I patiently waited for the first exclamation. As I was waiting, I began to smell an odiferous scent. I sniffed. And sniffed again. I determined the smell was a soiled diaper. As my sweet Eloise had already pooped this morning (and what a poop it was!) I was quite confident that the offending stench did not come from my daughter’s adorably clad hienie. I jiggled Weezy on my knee and made small talk with the other moms.

A few minutes later, the stink still had not dissipated and I thought to myself, “Good Lord, these women really need to check their kid’s pants!” I jiggled Weezy some more. Just as class was about to start, I shifted positions, which required bolstering Eloise’s bottom with my right hand. As my palm curved around her tush I spied the telltale feel of wetness seeping through. I froze, looked down, and much to my horror, my fabulous onesie now sported two baby-poop yellow halos around the inner edges of each thigh. And now my hand had joined the fray. Nice.

As I dug around the bottom of my purse, finally uncovering a tacky-too-small-emergency-onesie mixed in among the gum wrappers and hand sanitizers, I knew that this was the universe knocking me off my high horse and putting me back in my modest place. I rejoined the sign language class, not as a triumphant baby-onesie-designer-genius, but as a simple mom with her robust daughter positively bursting out of a dingy and wrinkled body suit rescued from the depths of her very humble handbag. Nothing like poop on the hand to bring you back down to earth.