Ahhh, the sweet smell of 2.  In the first 12 hours of being 2 years old, my daughter Lo tried to eat my razor (which I hide behind shampoo bottles that apparently she can now reach-luckily no damage to the child…), and covered herself in poo.

I get carried away for my kids birthdays….on purpose.  It’s a celebration all around.  I love remembering the day they were born, and celebrating the year they’ve had.  Each year, the parties get more and more elaborate and creative as I get more experienced at throwing them.

Party day is crunch time.  I wake up early, and let myself go into a creative tornado…finishing projects on the list and creating others that never before existed.  For Lauren’s 2nd Birthday, I started a few days early.  So, when party day came, there was no distracting me from party set-up zone.

Lucky for me, Lauren decided to take an early nap and Brianne was taking full advantage of the amount of TV she’s not normally allowed to watch.  I got to prepare without being bothered.  Streamers, dog bone cut outs, Snoopy’s House…if you haven’t read a couple blogs back you should go check out the pictures from my daughter’s Snoopy Party.  A visual on my madness.

Half hour before the party started, I went to wake up the birthday girl.  As I got closer to her room I picked up on a different kind of cry.  No.  I knew that cry.  Crap.

I did not feel like changing a poopy diaper right before everyone showed up.  Since Lauren had been taking it upon herself to potty train, I hadn’t had to change one in a while, either.

I opened her door to be hit with the stinkiest wave of poo air I have ever been smacked in the face with. What did I feed her this morning…yesterday…oh, no.

There she was.  Sitting on her big girl Tinkerbell bed with a frightened look on her face and poo all over her hands….legs..belly…I stopped checking there and headed straight for the tub.  Poor Lo.  She hates poo.  She looks at it in the toilet and tells me, “that is so disgusting mom.”

Rinsing her off in the tub, I noticed that she’d been at this for quite a while.  It wasn’t coming off!  The poop was stuck to her skin!  Sacrificing a loofah overloaded with way too much soap, it took some serious scrubbing to get it all off.  She’d made an attempt to scratch it back off…apparent from the poo lodged underneath her nails that I then had to clip.

So much for the birthday outfit I picked out.

“Lady bug dress, Mamma!”  she cried as we went to her room to get clean clothes.  She had asked me to wear it that morning, but I said no and put something else on.  Funny how she won that battle, I thought.

Instead of sitting down to enjoy all the hard work I’d done, I was vacuuming poop off of my daughter’s comforter, and saturating it with Lysol.  Only other moms will appreciate this…but thank God is was a crumbly poop and not a smeary one.  Whew.

The party goes on, and it was a blast.  I’m a little thankful for the distraction, actually, because it’s been hard to realize that my little baby is 2.  As I watched her face light up as everyone sang her ‘Happy Birthday’ around her ‘Snoopy Cake,’ sitting there with a smile on her face in her favorite ladybug dress, I wished I could stop time.  Stop her from growing up one more minute.  I love her so much.

I knew God’s love before my kids.  But they cement it.  Remind me of it.  Over and over again.  How great it is.  What a gift it is.

Happy Pre-Party catastrophe’s…

Megs