Reality check

In my life BC (Before Child) I used to get grossed out easily. Touching raw meat, cleaning up after the cats, even pulling the seeds out of pumpkins were all things that made me feel like I needed an immediate shower.

Now, however, I find that I can utter phrases such as "We don't need to change her shirt - she only peed on it a little bit," with a straight face and mean them. This has come in especially handy because in the past two days Liza's had a diaper rash that was sufficiently virulent that we've been letting her run around pants-less for as much of the time as possible, with predictable results.

Her score so far is: hardwood floors=3, wool rug in her room=1, bathtub after she'd finished her bath=1, crib=at least 5, but who's counting at 4 am? Plus she gets bonus points for one episode where she peed on the floor, then managed to step in cat puke and track it all over the upstairs while I was cleaning up the puddle. She also gets points for artistic merit for the time she peed on the floor just after she had taken her bath, then slipped in the puddle and ended up rolling around in it, necessitating another bath.

And lest you think that I'm the only one who treats a little pee as nothing to worry about, check out my daughter, who pees in her sleep on the towel on top of her mattress. Rolling over into the cold spot wakes her up, so she starts crying and trying to get back to sleep. By the time we manage to grab a fresh towel and get to her room, 99% of the time she is snuggled up to the towel, face down with her naked ass in the air and her face pressed into the puddle as if it has some magic sleep-inducing properties. We literally have to wrestle the soggy towel out of her half-asleep grasp in order to get the bed changed and get her back to bed.

Personally, if she'd drift back to sleep on her own, I'd be willing to let Liza snuggle with her own bodily waste for a few hours ... but I imagine it would be hard to treat a case of diaper rash on a kid's face without someone noticing and calling the cops, right?