This might be funny if I can keep from screaming.

This is essentially what I thought in the instantaneous moment of decision that comes when your husband is working another evening shift and, just as you think the busy time of day is descending peacefully toward the children's bedtime, one of your kids announces that there is a smear of poop on the counter.

And the floor.

And the stool.

And the bathmat.

Hi, my name is Jamie, and my husband is an Emergency Medicine intern (who is probably really thankful for the weird hours of his job right now).

Yes.

So as I walk into the bathroom and survey the damage (there is a poop footprint, which means I now have to inspect people's feet for poop), remembering the "calm voice" counsel I recently read in a parenting book, I manage to keep my exclamations to one rather annoyed "Oh my gosh!" and then I use all the willpower in my body (good thing I didn't waste that willpower resisting the mac 'n' cheese we all ate for dinner) to keep it together.

Luckily, as I'm wiping the affected counter, floor, stool, and feet in question it did suddenly become kind of funny in the way that many things have become funny since we started the medical school/doctorhood/semi-single-parenting journey almost five years ago: It's either funny, or I burst into tears right now. As Marjorie Pay Hinckley put it: I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache.

And anyway, I mean, of course this happens when the baby is getting fussy, right before the solo-parenting-finish-line of the kids bedtime on a night when Steve is at work, right? It's like a Thursday night sitcom. The laugh track in my head is going off. And by now I'm kind of shaking my head,  abstractly amused and silently laughing right along with it.

And I'm glad I've had those moments of disinfecting and bathroom-rule-explaining to decide that this whole ordeal is très amusant (look, I'm using my college education!) because as I am searching out a pair of small underwear in the literal mountain (literal I tell you! Ankle deep at least!) of laundry waiting to be folded on the laundry room floor, well, there was suddenly a call from down the hall and wouldn't you know it--another poop emergency had, well, emerged.

I'll spare you the details.

I feel like I write that a lot.

How about I spare you those details. But to round this all out, I'll tell you some good ones that followed up the evening's bathroom adventures:

Singing to my baby before I laid her down in her crib for the night in her very pink bedroom on the sheets printed with tiny rosebuds that I scoured the internet for when we found out we were having another girl.

My three-year-old sitting up in bed to declare, "I want to hug you," before he wrapped his arms around me and gave me the tightest preschool-hug. Oh I love the intention and ferocity of their hugs!

My big girl thanking me so exuberantly for playing Frozen with her after our 10 minutes of "Mommy Time" this evening. (She lives for those ten minutes all to herself, no sibling competition.)

There is also a very lovely doughnut waiting for me on the kitchen table.

Goodnight. :)