Dirty Jobs

Too bad I didn't have Mike Rowe from the show Dirty Jobs here today.  He could have helped when this evening I discovered what Nicholas decided to do.  If you read my previous post, you would know that just recently Nicholas started to put his hand in his diaper after he "dirtied" it.  He had never (to the best of my knowledge) done anything with what was on his hand until today.  So several days ago, in an attempt to figure out why he was doing this, I googled the toddler issue to see what I could find.  To my horror I read all sorts of stories about kids playing with their own poo and putting it in various places around the home.  Ironically, I told Mimi just earlier today that thankfully Nicholas hadn't done anything of the sort.  I spoke too soon...

So as I was baking some brownies and heating up leftovers for dinner.  Nicholas was (I thought) playing in his room.  After not hearing him playing for a few minutes I checked on him.  The door to his closet was wide open with - you guessed it - smeared all on it.  Nicholas was nowhere to be found.  I looked everywhere throughout the house and called his name but didn't hear a thing.  Finally I found him hiding behind the door to his room. 

At this point I remembered something from my google search the other day.  While I was reading the horrific stories of "dirty jobs" and how parents dealt with the situation, I remembered one effective technique that many parents used.  They put their child in the bathtub and would run a cold shower on them.  Granted I didn't get into the reasons why this worked because honestly I didn't think I would have that same problem.  Well I did put Nicholas in the tub and ran the shower.  I didn't run cold water though since he has had a cough all week and that just seemed like cruel and unusual punishment.  He immediately didn't like it and said that it was hurting him.  I let him stand in the shower for a minute while I worked on clean up efforts.  Who knows if this technique will work or not, but I am going to be overly aware of anytime Nicholas even thinks about making a dirty diaper, because I'm going to be all over it like poo on the closet door...       

I did go a little easy on Nicholas even with the situation because he has been sick all week.  His cough became so persistent that I took him to the doctor on Wednesday.  The doctor basically said he had a dry cough and also a slight ear infection in one ear (his first one).  He prescribed him some medicine and gave him something at the doctors office for the infection.  While we were there, they decided to go ahead and give him a flu shot.  Nicholas weighed almost 32 lbs, but my guess would be that has decreased as he has eaten very little this week with all the sickness.  Thankfully he seems to be getting better and has definitely caught up on his sleep. 

Needless to say I don't have any pictures to post on this entry, as I don't think the readers would appreciate that. For those reading this, could you please just say an extra prayer that my son will soon be potty trained?? I just don't know how many more dirty jobs (inside and outside the diaper) I can take.