This morning Carl woke up early to go fishing. So, for the first few hours of wakefulness, it was just me and my boys. Cale is becoming so good at entertaining himself...especially when he is on a DVD kick. It's been Blues Clues, it's been John Deere Heaven (thank goodness that seems to have passed, the annoying soundtrack makes my skin crawl), it's been, and probably still would be, Polar Express (but the addiction to that was getting so out of control that we had to mysteriously "lose it" until next Christmas)

Right now the addiction is GeoTrax...a train DVD that came with a Fisher Price toy Cale got many months ago. Trains are the new tractors for Cale. There was a time when Cale wanted EVERYthing "tractor". He lived and breathed tractors. But, now he seems to be losing interest and he only has eyes for trains. Steam locamotives, mountain trains, bullet trains...yes, I guess I'm becoming more informed about trains these days. This morning Cale spent much of his time with his babysitter...uh, I mean GeoTrax DVD. I would like to say it was educational, but it wasn't. It did keep him entertained, though, and made my morning fairly easy. Until...

At one point, Cale ran into my bathroom and said he wanted to "poop". Well, he sat down and within a few seconds started to pee. I quickly pointed the "gun" downward because Cale doesn't quite have the hang of that and things can get messy if you don't intervene. After a few minutes of serious grunting, Cale gave up on the pooping thing. He got an A for effort. He did get his handful (it's only suppossed to be one or two but I usually end up giving him a big 'ol handful) of M&M's. I pulled Cale's tight pajama pants back up and let him walk off diaperless, because we were in my bathroom and I didn't have any diapers handy. I had intentions of walking straight into his room to get one. But, as I often do, I got sidetracked picking up toys, washing some bottles, the stuff that never ends.

About thirty minutes later, I went to check on Cale. The door to his room was shut, as it always is when he's playing at his train table these days. Guess he likes his privacy. I opened his door and was greeted with a bad, but unfortunately oh-so-familiar, stench. I heard Cale saying, "Gross. Poop is nasty". I agreed with him of course, and then asked him if did indeed poop. He actually fessed up, which is progress because normally he says "no" and runs off to hide somewhere as if that's not obvious. I could tell by the way he was holding his hand that he had touched the poop. I guess he relapsed, as all addicts sometimes do. Oh, what was his addiction? He had a bad problem with touching his poop awhile back. Back to the story. So I grabbed him, in the same way one would grab a skunk...holding him as far away from myself as I could, and headed to the bathroom to wash his hands. The whole way there I was giving him the "We don't touch our poo-poo" speech...a speech I've given far too many times. After washing his hands I got ready to change his diaper. As I was about to pull his pajama pants off, I noticed a mysterious big lump in one leg. You know, like if something such as a ball had been put down his pants and had slid down to the mid-calf area...that's what it looked like. What on earth was it? Then it hit me. I never put a diaper back on him. Darn it, darn it, darn it. I knew better. Not putting a diaper on Cale is like an open invitation for bodily fluid release. I guess it's the freedom. Or maybe he likes to torture me, I don't know. All I know is, the poop had been smeared all up and down Cale's leg. I don't really know how it made it so far down, but it did.

So I put Cale in the bathtub and prepared for the worst. Let's just say his cute little pirate pajama pants are resting in a tied-up Wal-Mart sack in the bottom of the garage trash bucket. I'm not usually wasteful...I mean I attempted to "scrape" the pants...but I'm not super-mom, I guess. It just wasn't worth it for a cheap pair of pants. He was almost too big for those pajamas anyways. And believe me, Keaton would not have wanted those hand-me-downs.

Carl made it back from his fishing trip about five minutes after I got Cale all cleaned up and had hosed the house down with Febreze. How convenient, right? It's like men have a radar for difficult moments, especially those involving poop.