Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Butt Paste, Paint Jobs, and Carpet...

Anyone know what "butt paste" is?

It's what the doctors at Emanuel Hospital N.I.C.U. called the special diaper cream they used on the babies there. It consists of 1 part each of Desitin, A&D Ointment, and Vaseline. Tiffany's pediatrician just called it her special secret recipe. Anyway, it really works on diaper rash, so we had some mixed up...

Yesterday, when I was at the dentist and Tiffany was home doing homework, the girls found the container of "butt paste" and emptied it on the carpet, both outside the bathroom door and in my bedroom closet, which is a walk in. It is thick, so it wasn't accidentally spilled. It was purposely dipped into with little fingers and smeared onto the carpet. Tiffany was beside herself when I got home, trying to get the thick, greasy globs off the bathroom floor and out of the carpet. The girls were grounded to their room for a very long time.

It reminded me of years ago, when Bobby would make big messes. But his messes weren't made of "butt paste"... or at least not the kind that treats diaper rash. We called them him "paint jobs" and he seemed to do it every day. I would wake up in the morning to a smell drifting through his bedroom door. The floor would be smeared from wall to wall with a layer of brown. The smell was strong enough to gag you, and I had to learn to laugh with this in order to not loose my mind. This was where I learned A LOT of patience. I ended up having to seal his bedroom floor with very expensive primer (it was a wood floor) and then painted it because I could not get the smell out of the floor. I tried to get him to stop, to catch his messy diapers (he was in diapers until he was 8!) but he was determined I would not interrupt his routine (put autism with O.C.D. and A.D.H.D. and you have my little boy).

Eventually, he changed his routine and stopped the "paint jobs". But not after he ruined the couch, living room carpet and several other things. Those were trying times.

Shortly after his 8th birthday, he agreed to start using the bathroom. One day I had enough. I told him they didn't make diapers any bigger and he was too big for the size we had. I took duct tape and taped the diaper onto him to hold it in place, because the sides barely touched. He didn't like that, so he went into the bathroom and used the toilet! He never had an "accident" after that. Had I known that is what it would take, I would have done it a lot sooner.

I looked at the floor of my closet... I'm grateful it is just "butt paste", and it is coming out. Just a few more passes with the carpet cleaner and I'm sure it will be only a memory.

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