Ladies and Gentleman, a word about naked time

A Word about Naked Time,

Every parent knows the risks and benefits of naked time. The benefits can be a fun, soothing and harmonious time before bed in which the child delights in the newness of nudeness. It’s healthful and freeing and teaches all that the human body is ok.

What I want to caution you about are the risks. Ok, so the kid might pee on the floor a time or two and that’s ok, because frankly it’s not such a yucky thing to clean up. It’s the poo that you have to watch out for.

Every night after dinner we let Zoe have her naked time. She runs around the house with complete abandon, enjoying being free of the stress of the day. Naked time (which sometimes is story time too) then becomes bath time.

Tonight, whilst enjoying her perfectly “free and clear” promenade around the house I noticed a particular look of concentration come over Zoe’s face. “Uh oh” the slow reacting idiot in my brain thought. I got to her too late. The product of her concentration had already made its break for freedom and was halfway there. “My God!” that idiot thought “we usually have more warning”. As if it would matter. By that time, she had shit on the floor. I’ve cleaned up a lot of cat turds in my time, but this was a yucko factor of 10. What really gets me is the JOY with which she was pooping. I almost didn’t want to inhibit her. Thinking these thoughts the jackass operating my brain lost about 10 more seconds. The other shoe had dropped. Only this time, she stepped in it. The similarity of the situation to one of our slightly slow cat Jupiter hit me. I remembered him litter training and stepping in his poop. It was an awful mess to clean up.

NOW the dimwit manning the controls upstairs kicked into emergency gear and I screamed “DIAPER!!! DIAPER!!! DIAPER!!!” while picking her up bodily and holding her about a foot out from my body. Oh how she fought as we tried to get a diaper on her. She knew she’d never have it again and wanted to give it hell.

It was war, and she came out cannons blazing. As David was cleaning her up, she farted all over him. Like a good soldier he tried to finish up without gagging, but nearly didn’t make it. It was a close thing.

I think we’ll be on full alert tomorrow night, waiting for the same thing to happen. And I think we’ve learned an important lesson…even your birthday suit can pick up a stain.