The Tale of the Poopy Princess Tent

This past Saturday, I was getting ready to give my 21 month old daughter a bath. Prior to, she had just finished pooping. So, I took her upstairs to change her diaper and get her cleaned up for her bath. It was a monster of a poop. After about a box and a half of wipes, she was finally cleaned up. I carried her to the bathroom (naked – because what point would there be to clothe her when she’s going to be getting in the bath soon anyway, right?), where I began to run the bath water. I set her down in the bathroom and I sit on the edge of the bathtub to start filling the tub.

At this point, I should probably fill you in on what my “normal” routine is with bath time. We typically head upstairs around 7pm. First thing I do is go into the bathroom and begin to run her bath water. I set her down and she proceeds to run into her room and dive bomb into her princess tent, grab a book, and pretend to read while laying on giant pillows we’ve placed inside the tent. After the bath water is to temperature, I go into her room and coax her into getting out of the tent and I take her into the nursery to the changing table and get her undressed. From there, we go into the bathroom and begin the bathing process.

So, as you can already see, the process was a bit different this past Saturday. And this is where the story takes a serious downturn.

After I set her down, she proceeded to look at me, and, while standing in the bathroom, pee on the floor. I didn’t notice at first. When I turned around to look at her, she was giggling. “No, what are you DOING?!? STOP!…Okay, well, go ahead and finish at this point…”

As I was cleaning up her pee, she did the customary run into her room and I assume dive bombed her princess tent. I thought nothing of this. I would go in and get her soon anyway. After the bath water was to temperature and all the pee was cleaned up, I went to her room to get her. “C’mon, Little Miss. Time for bath!” She squealed, got up out of her princess tent and ran to me, arms outstretched for me to pick her up and take her to the bath. As we got into the bathroom and I set her into the tub, I noticed there was something on her right foot. It was poop. And not just a little poop. Like, her whole foot was covered in it.

Confused, I began to clean off her foot in the bathtub, completely unsure as to what happened. I quickly ran to her room and looked in her tent. There was about a 2 foot long smear of poop on the floor of her princess tent, all over a Mickey Mouse book, and on parts of the walls of the tent. There was also spots on the carpeting from when she ran to me, obviously every place her right foot hit the ground. And that was just at a glance. I ran to the stairs and yelled for my wife to come upstairs and help.

After my wife came upstairs, I told her what had happened and she put my 7 week old son down and began to clean everything while I took care of my daughter. She brought be the Clorox bleach for the tub to disinfect. My daughter began WAILING when I took her out of the bathtub after 2 minutes. But, I needed to drain the tub and disinfect it and re-run her bath water. While I was disinfecting, I turn around to make sure she is still in the bathroom. She was. Standing in the same spot before her poop-scapade…PEEING on the bathroom floor again.

In the countless times I’ve bathed her, she has NEVER peed on the floor. It was very strange.

My wife finished cleaning everything in my daughter’s room and asked me to go into the room and smell around a bit to see if there was anything she missed. She thought the tent still smelled poopy. I agreed with her. So, I told her that I didn’t want to mess with a poopy tent and that I would buy a new one that was exactly the same from Amazon that night and it would be here in 2 days and my daughter would never know the difference. She agreed that was a good plan.

The new tent came on Tuesday and I set it up first thing Wednesday morning. Little Miss loves it.

Fast forward to today: Trash Day.

I took out the trash, and the poopy princess tent, excited that I won’t have to smell it anymore. I sandwiched the flat tent between the trash can and the recycling bins this morning before leaving for work. I came home at lunch today, and as I’m turning onto my street, I see this in front of the house on the corner of my street:

The sign read “ARE YOU MISSING ME?”

The recycling always gets taken first, so the guys must have taken the bins and let the tent just float on down the road, where it was picked up by my neighbors and then strung up on this sign pole.

I couldn’t help but laugh, and I thought it was too great a story to not tell.

And that, is the Tale of the Poopy Princess Tent. I feel it is haunting me now and I fear I will never be able to get rid of it. Please pray for me.