Reverse Poopology

Once of my all-time favorite comedy specials was by Dana Carvey entitled "Critics' Choice." In this particular special, he covered a vast array of topics, but I always laughed a lot when he was talking about his kids and "naked time." I know many parents go through that phase with their kids, so I've been patiently waiting for it to happen with the boys. So far the biggest issue we've had with this is that Carter loves to take off his shirts which sounds better than getting an eyeful of bing-bong all day. So far William hasn't shown any signs of wanting to be naked, but that doesn't mean we haven't had other issues with his clothes.

William has refused to nap lately. With all this extra time he has started to figure out the process of getting undressed. It's quite helpful in the right situation, but clearly the right situation is not while he's alone in his room. Unsupervised.Without going into too much detail, I've had a few horrifying moments of opening the door and almost gagging at the sight and smell inside. Finger painting is fun, isn't it folks? Children are beautiful, but they sure can create a lot of ugly.

We spent a long time talking about it and decided that while it was a lot of fun, we just didn't want to clean up the floor, walls, bed, floor, dresser, floor, door, child, and floor anymore. So we ventured into the googlewebs to see what other folks had thought up to prevent this type of nap time activity.

What we found initially was not very surprising. Things like trying to wait for him to go potty before we put him down for his nap or trying zippers versus snaps or vice-versa. Nothing. Then we moved on to duct tape, an option we first thought was a bit mean really. Duct taping the diaper seems to be a little bit of a hot-button topic with certain people. It's seems to fall into that category with those backpacks that have the leash attachment on the back, allowing your child to have a bit of freedom while maintaining control on their general location. Before kids, I would look at those people "walking their kids around like some kind of dog" and scoff at how mean that seemed. While I never did buy one of those contraptions, after we had the boys I can understand the frustration that leads to it, or perhaps the convenience of it. Let me be clear, we never used the duct tape to adhere the diaper to his skin in any way, it was just a strip over the diaper flaps so it would take some real effort to get the diaper off. It was an effort that William was willing to give, so with that failure we went to a full strip of duct tape over the flaps which overlapped in the back. Surely he wouldn't be able to undo that kind of adhesion. Yep, he sure could! Kids are pretty strong willed little buggers.

After further research into ideas, we found a gem of an idea. I really wish I could credit the source, but I don't know where it started. What I do know is that this was not my brilliant idea and the more it is shared, the more parents have a chance to save on carpet cleaning supplies.

So it's simple we take a set of pajamas that look like this:

And turn it into something that looks like this (note the lack of feet):

You take pajamas that have feet (some companies have non-feet versions but they seem pretty hard to find) and trim the foot area fabric off near the ankles. There's generally a seem right in that area to follow. At this point you load you child up into the pajamas backwards so that the zipper (or snaps, though we've not seen snap up pj's in William's size) runs up their back. It's perfect because it really doesn't add any sort of discomfort and there just isn't a way for the child to undo the zipper like that. We have had zero issues since doing it this way, and as William's potty training progresses, so will this idea. From time to time we have put him in normal pajamas and have not had a problem, but it's nice to have what, for us, has been a fail-safe method. Cutting off some fabric has been far less time consuming than cleaning a room that has been "repainted brown."

It's strange what little inventive things you have to do just to make it through the day with your kids without the threat of getting elbow deep into a poop covered floor.

Makes you wonder....

did MacGyver have kids?