Wordless Wednesday: When Daddy's Not Quick Enough

(At least it was his side of the bed)

DON'T Flush the Flushies!

Have you ever had one of those moments where you just wish you could go back in time and undo something stupid you did? Well I had that moment this week while I watched a disaster unfold.

Lil' J and I were going out to run a few quick errands, so instead of taking cloth diaper inserts with us, I thought it would be quick and easy to just grab one of the gDiaper flushie inserts I had in the closet.

Before she was born I bought eight bags of the stuff because Amazon had them on sale for a ridiculously low price at the time, plus I thought I was going to be using gDiapers. Anyway, they fit perfectly into our Sprout Change diaper covers so I just stuck one in there, buttoned her up, and off we went.

We went out and came back quicker than I thought, and before she had needed a diaper change but when we got home she was wet so I took her upstairs to change her.

Her changing table is against her bathroom wall so when I took the flushie insert out I tossed it into the toilet.

About a week before I had bought one of those blue bowl cleaning tablets to use in the toilet because it was looking pretty yucky. When I threw the insert in there I noticed it was still looking pretty yucky, but with blue water inside of it instead of clear. I made a mental note to look for our toilet bowl brush to give it a little scrub later.

I flushed the toilet to send the biodegradable liner down the drain when at about the same time I noticed it wasn't going down the drain, but coming back up towards me.

I let go of the lever to stop the flushing, and made another mental note to grab the liner out of the toilet before flushing again. Meanwhile, I was worried about Lil' J falling off the changing table, so I grabbed her and went to look for the scrub brush.

I'm not sure what happened next, but sometime between walking out of her room and into our room I forgot what I was doing, and ended up leaving the insert in the toilet.

Fast forward to later that night. I'm working on my computer and Lil' J needs a diaper change. I'm in the middle of writing an email so I beg my husband to change her so I can finish it up and spend the rest of the night chilling with them.

He takes her and heads up stairs when the next thing I know I hear my husband screaming "NO NO NO NO", and stomping his foot on the floor. I'm wondering what in the world is going on when I realize I hear the toilet flushing.

I run upstairs and see a horrifying scene. My daughter, half naked but thankfully strapped down to the changing table, probably in shock from her daddy's screaming. My husband straddled between the changing table and the bathroom, trying to turn off the water to the toilet. And worst of all, about an inch of bright blue water rising on the linoleum floor as what looks like gallons of water spills over the toilet.

I stood there in shock and prepared for the wrath that was about to come down on me.

"Did you take a dump in here?" My husband asked frankly.

"No." For one, I don't poop. And two, if I did, it surely wouldn't cause that. My third realization was that the evidence of my mistake wasn't visible. He didn't know I had tried to flush a diaper down the toilet. And now wasn't the time to confess.

"Why did you flush the toilet? Did you take a dump?" I wasn't sure what I was doing. Trying to turn it around on him I guess.

"No, he said."I noticed the toilet needed to be flushed so I flushed it. And when the water started coming up I was worried she'd fall off the changing table, so it took me forever to turn off the water." He was mad at himself for what happened. I felt bad, but not bad enough to tell him it was my fault.

I stood wide-eyed and horrified that he'd soon find my goof. I sure wasn't going to admit that I did it. I was completely fine with playing dumb.

By then our daughter was crying, so I picked her up and paced around upstairs, offering towels to my husband as he tried to soak up the man-made lake in our bathroom.

I kept hearing him spout things like "We must have a bad pipe" and "Maybe we could call maintenance."

I knew a maintenance worker was good for fixing our problem, but dad for keeping my secret a secret.

My husband instructed me to go down stairs and look for more old towels.

When I walked into the kitchen I heard what sounded like bugs crawling around our counter and hesitated a little. But when I looked in the direction of the strange sound I didn't see bugs. It was actually much worse. Blue water was dripping from a giant bulge in our ceiling.

Crap.

I turned around to go upstairs and tell my husband what was up downstairs and noticed the kitchen light was also full of blue water.

I'm a dead woman. I thought to myself.

I walked upstairs and told my husband the news downstairs and he asked me to call the emergency maintenance line. I listened to the message on the machine that said not to leave a message unless... And listed things like "your power is out" "your air conditioning or heater isn't working" and was happy when I heard "your house is flooding." I left a message but secretly hoped they wouldn't call back right away.

When my husband went downstairs to assess the damage on that level I saw that as my chance, I ran upstairs with Lil' J and grabbed the plunger to do some secret plunging. But it wasn't working. I couldn't get the dang diaper out.

I grabbed a plastic bag, put my arm inside and tried to reach as far as I could to maybe pull it out.

Nothing.

And that was gross.

I gave up and decided I deserved whatever scorning I would get once everyone knew it was I who clogged the toilet.

I was getting ready to leave for work to work the next day and was amazed at all of the work my husband had done to clean up my mess. The floor looked like it was never flooded, the carpet outside the bathroom was no longer wet, or blue. And he had poked a hole in the drooping ceiling and drained out the water from the bottom floor.

When I got home my husband told me the maintenance guy came by and fixed our toilet, and emptied our kitchen light of water.

"Oh yea?" I asked my husband, curious if they'd found the culprit of the disaster.

"Yea, he had a giant plunger thing and unclogged everything."

I'm guessing either he pushed everything through, or pulled it all out but didn't dissect the remanence because he didn't ask why in the world I tried to flush a diaper down the toilet, even though, to my defense it says "flushie" and "flush" on the package.

I haven't admitted my mistake. I think it's still too soon. But one day, when the time is right. This will definitely be one of those "hey, remember the time when..." conversations.

Why babies and blackberries don't mix

You know how they say "it only takes a second"? And by they, I mean anyone who ever preaches about how quickly things can go wrong. Well, they weren't lying. Especially when it pertains to children who have the slightest ability to move.

Case in point:

Lil J was just beginning to roll over, but usually didn't move as much when she was calm and sleepy after a nice warm bath. She was all wrapped up naked and snug in her little hooded towel when I set her on the bed and turned around to grab her diaper that was hanging on the shower rod. Bet you can guess what happened next.

Yep, my giggly naked little infant was giddy as she turned herself over on her stomach. I saw her smile for a split second before her little body rolled off my California king-sized bed, feet first. It was the saddest thing I had ever seen. Luckily she wasn't hurt, just surprised into tears, and I scooped her up and soothed her.

Of course my husband came running upstairs to ask what happened and chastised me for turning away from her.

"It was only a second!" I defended.

But that was all it took.

You'd think I'd learn my lesson to never take my eyes of my little one, especially now that she is extremely mobile, opening drawers pulling things out, throwing things etc. I'm not sure if her favorite thing to get into is the spatula drawer or the toilet but neither are a real good thing.

She loves water so we have to be sure to shut the bathroom or else she'll crawl in and play in the toilet. Not climb in, but she'll splash around.--I know, it's gross. But we don't let her do it, we grab her and shut the door as soon as we see her going for it.

She also likes to play in the bathroom while I'm using the bathroom. I'll usually hand her something like a (closed) tube of mascara or a bag of baby wipes to keep her entertained, and from reaching behind my butt when I'm going to the bathroom. Last night, I handed her my blackberry.

After I was done, washed my hands, and ready to get a move on, I realized I had forgotten my iPhone on the porch, where we were just a moment before taking pictures. The guest bathroom is a few feet from our front door, so I left Lil' J content with my phone in the bathroom while I ran and opened the front door to grab my other phone.

Just a moment after shutting the toilet, turning away, and opening the front door to grab my phone I heard it... CLUNK!

It wasn't a large enough clunk to be Lil' J but it sounded a little louder than her hand. I turned back around and looked in the bathroom to see what I'm sure thousands of mom around the world have seen. A blackberry sinking to the bottom of the toilet, and a very proud baby looking down amazed--hand still outstretched, and palm still wide open with excitement over her achievement.

I couldn't be mad at her. I actually laughed. If I were watching a movie about this experience I would have seen this coming from a mile away. Turns out, Hollywood can be more realistic than I thought.

For a moment I even thought of taking a photo but that just didn't seem right. I'd better save the phone first. But inspired by Amber Dusick's series of "real life parenting" series, I decided to draw a depiction of how it went down. Dude, Paint is way better than Photoshop, I'm all over this!

I quickly grabbed it from the toilet, said a quick prayer of gratitude thanking the Lord for not letting us be one of those "if it's yellow let it mellow" families. --Maybe pre-kids but once you have a baby you've gotta flush that stuff. Or get a child safety lock on your throne, and hope you've never have a restroom emergency while forgetting how to get it unlatched.

I disassembled the phone and set it on the counter to let it air out. I had another phone once that had gotten a little wet, but after setting it in the sun to dry off for a bit it worked like a charm.

My husband got back from his jog and noticed my phone in pieces.

"What happened to your phone?" He asked me. I didn't feel like admitting my stupid mistake.
"Don't worry about it," I told him.
"Why it is in pieces?"
"Because she threw it... in the toilet" I added softly.
"She threw it?"
"Yes!!!" I was getting annoyed.

I don't know why he didn't just leave it alone but he put my phone back together and asked why it wouldn't turn on.

"BECAUSE SHE THREW IT IN THE TOILET. WILL YOU LEAVE IT ALONE?"

My patience was running out with these people as I was still looking for my other phone (which wasn't on the porch like I had thought).

After using "Locate my iPhone" to find it stuck between the couch on silent, (this is actually a really cool tool. You can get it to make a noise for two  minutes even when it's on silent so you can find it) I was ready to handle to the original problem.

I grabbed the pieces of my blackberry, a Ziploc bag and some rice from my cabinet. I remember reading someone's facebook status just a day earlier about her son dropping her phone in the toilet (seriously, does this happen to everyone?) and several people had told her to put it in a jar/bag/container of rice and that it would suck the moisture out.

I'm not sure if it matters if the rice is white, brown, regular or minute, but I used the brown minute rice I had on hand.

I put all of the ingredients together in a Ziploc back and swished it around. Then I realized I wasn't making shake and bake chicken and that my additional technique probably wasn't necessary.

"What are you doing?" My husband again had the nerve to interfere.

I told him I had read somewhere that uncooked rice can help suck the water out of dunked phones.

"Really?" He wasn't buying it. "What if it's some kind of a sick joke to mess up your phone?"

"Well it's already broken anyway so it can't hurt," I pushed back. "Besides, this is like all over Twitter and Facebook, how could that many people be in on it?" I couldn't believe I had just cited social networking sites as my source but I guess that's the day and age we live in.

So my phone is sitting on my counter, immersed in a bag of uncooked rice. I would have been more devastated if this were my iPhone but my blackberry isn't as much of an addiction. I'll take it out of the bag in about 12 hours and hope for the best. I'll let you know if it works.

I'm also probably going to buy a few of these just in case.