While my parents were visiting us and helping with newborn insanity, their car got broken into. Nice, huh? The thief(ves) took their GPS system. I called the police to file a report, and they said they would send an officer to the house to get all the information.

The next day, an officer arrived at our door. I let him in and tended to baby Emile nearby while my dad explained what happened.

After the novelty of having a uniformed officer in our house wore off on me, and I realized that this would be nothing like an episode of COPS (I’m home with a newborn; I’m sleep-deprived and sensory-deprived), I decided it was a fine time to change baby’s diaper.

I padded over to the pack and play set up in the room, with a changing table insert on top, and proceeded to change his diaper. As soon as I took the diaper down and while I was grabbing a wipe, a vicious pee stream came shooting out. I mean, we’re talking fire hose vicious. (It took me by surprise to say the least. This was the first time I had ever seen his stream, and it frightened me, frankly.) It arced up and back towards the wall the pack and play was set against. By reflex (read: not thinking) I stuck out my hand (an ungloved hand, mind you) to barricade the stream from soaking everything in a 3 feet radius. I have a terrible habit of screaming in such moments but I held it in, in part because of the officer’s presence and fear that he might taser me.

Just when I thought it was safe to remove my now-so-unclean hand from the field, his stream resumed, shooting back into the pack and play proper (ew), soaking his clothes (ew), and PEE WAS ON HIS FACE. He peed on his own face.

EMERGENCY CLEAN-UP. I frantically grabbed burp clothes, wipes, anything, to start cleaning him off. I called over to my dad to hold my now-stripped down naked son while I grabbed clean clothes and got an impromptu bath going.

Officer Stoic stood nearby, not saying a word, but appeared to have frozen in place. Perhaps he didn’t have kids. Maybe he never will.

I raced back to my dad and was about to take Emile when I noticed something yellow on my dad’s lower leg of his jeans. Mustard yellow. A glop of mustard. I followed the glop upwards and watched more mustard glop falling from Emile’s bottom, right into my dad’s hand, down his jeans, EVERYWHERE.

AAAACK! POOP ON HANDS! POOP EVERYWHERE! It was a code mustard alert.

The officer excused himself, “I….uh…think I’ve got everything now. You all have a nice day! I’ll let myself out….” We heard the door swing closed moments later.

It was the second nice repayment for my parents’ generosity of coming to help us. (What, Mom and Dad? You don’t want to come visit? But why?)

Afterwards, we all had a nice laugh, you know, after the grossness of the moment passed. It only took a few weeks.