The Naked Baby Walk of Shame

I know what you are thinking, gosh that was incredibly fast for running 5 miles, strength training and stretching! While I wish I was Olympian fast, I was actually interrupted by my Mommy duties. No matter how serious about training I am, nothing stops a session faster then a nasty leaky putrid diaper at the gym. As any Mom who utilizes a gym child care knows when you see the girl walking around peering down the aisles of machines, someone’s child is stinky, and it is probably yours. If I was in fact incredibly fast I would have been tempted to hide from her, but she found me and let me know with a look that my child was indeed the malodorous offender. After expertly disposing of Mica’s diaper and deciding against replacing her obviously poopy pants, we were forced to do the naked baby walk of shame out of the gym.

Oh how I wish this was an isolated event, and that my gorgeous daughter Mica would never commit such a foul act in public. Unfortunately Little Miss Diva has a sensitive stomach. Between her bowels and her attitude, not to mention JT’s penchant for spilling drinks and eating with his hands as I hiss at him to behave-or-I’ll-smack-the-brown-off-you, we have become “That Family.” You know, the ones with the screaming, stinky toddler demanding the fork she has thrown for the 3rd time while our older child whines incessantly that he wishes he were at Burger King? THAT family. Of course Paul would always chuckle, a bit cheekily actually, whenever he came home and had to listen to me complain about Mica releasing her liquid nastiness allover a shopping cart at Trader Joes. Until one day, he was there with me. Parent Bloggers has a contest to blog about a family like ours dining out with our precious offspring, well on a recent trip home from Las Vegas we stopped for breakfast at Coco’s… A bit tired (hung over)we dragged the kids in and attempted to keep them busy with the cheap crayons that always break just as the waitress tries to take our order over the high pitched screeches of my crayon obsessed children. I suddenly detect a smell… I know this smell, it is oddly familiar, sweet, sour and rank all at the same time. Paul and I lock eyes and both look slowly down to see green bile pouring out of Mica’s cute pink sweats, dripping contemptuously down the highchair and saturating the floor beneath her. Panic sets in, and we vainly attempt to stay calm and create a game plan without alerting everyone around us. Paul fetches a plastic bag and napkins from our waitress who is pretending to be oblivious to the entire disgrace, she obviously does not want to be associated with “That Family.” Paul dry heaves and gags as he wipes as much as he can into the bag. I run to the car and grab a towel. The people sitting behind us shoot us damning looks, and leave without ordering, no doubt talking the whole way home about my smelly princess. I quickly wrap Mica up and do a walk of shame out of Coco’s, snaking a trail of tangy stench in our wake. In the car I immediately deride Paul for showing a moment of dry heaving weakness, his defense is that as he began to wipe, the poo… swished. Next time we’ll keep our stink to ourselves and just drive through Burger King!

(This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by Burger King Corp.)