Last Monday, I asked my wife if I could take a rare shower during the evening. Yes, these are the kinds of things I now have to ask my wife to do. I used to ask if she could pick me up from DC because I was out drinking on a Tuesday and forgot the Metro stopped running before the taps did. Now I ask if I can shower.

Showering has become optional for me. Because I haven’t gotten completely comfortable leaving Mabel alone, I have to shower when Jenn is home. And if I don’t shower before she leaves for work, it usually just doesn’t happen that day. But knowing that I hadn’t showered in a while and may run into people that she knows, she allowed me to shower this one weeknight.

I soaked in the warmth of the water and breathed the throat-soothing steam for about 10 minutes before even getting the shampoo in my hair. That’s about when my wife knocked on the bathroom door with her knee because she had our baby, naked from the waist down, held out in front of her with her arms fully extended, the way a punter holds the ball shortly before he kicks it. Looks like I’ll have to condition next week.

As it turns out, our baby, filled up on pureed pears which had just been introduced into her diet, had pooped so explosively, it shot up the diaper and covered most of her back. I’m sure the hour in the jumper had a bit of a hand in the smearing of it too. My lovely wife, not wanting to back down from a challenge, tried to take care of the situation herself. In doing so with a very squirmy baby on our changing table now covered in poop, Mabel managed to get poop on her head.

That’s when my wife admitted defeat.

She needed me to get the door for her because our baby bathtub was in this bathroom and so hey, now that you’re out of the shower, can you please help me clean the poop off our daughter’s head? It was too funny a situation to be upset about. This was obviously an act of God. God did not want me to condition my hair that night.

I dried off enough to get boxers on because that’s as naked as I feel comfortable being around my daughter, and then we went to work. We first laid her down in the tub without her baby tub to get the bulk off. Her shirt was still on and there was a lot of poop still in there. Mabel was a little freaked out just lying in the adult tub. Or maybe it was because she was soaked in water, still had her onesie on and there was poop on her head. In an act of baby triage, I suggested we cut the onesie off. My wife didn’t want scissors anywhere near our squirming baby. Good point.

We got the onesie off without any further damage and after we were done bathing her, I’m pretty sure she was the cleanest she’s ever been. I also learned never to shut the door when I shower and if I do, never answer it. And best of all, our little poophead has a new nickname.