Let me tell you a tale of Sunday morning. It is 8.30, Tim is at his meeting and we have 45 minutes left before church. Henry is in the baby bath, and I turn away to switch the iron on. When I look round, Henry is sat with an expression his face has never worn before. Somewhere between confusion and embarrassment. And pride. There is modest pride there, too.
And then I see what he’s sitting in. Poo.
Oh, I am not just talking about a single jolly turd bobbing around with his bath toys. I am not such a lightweight. This is an explosion. There are ribbons expanding from him in every direction. He’s sat on a brown angry jellyfish of waste. The water – argh, the water. I can’t see his legs.
We just look at each other for a single, baffled minute. Right. Him first. Save him. (That’s the maternal instinct kicking in.)
I lift him unceremoniously out of the baby tub and into the square foot of bath surrounding it. I stretch up and just manage to flip the shower on while keeping hold of his arm. I shove the bath screen out of the way. The bath screen starts leaking all over the floor. I try to move a towel underneath it and suddenly the shower head is whizzing all over the room. I am soaked. Henry is soaked. Every conceivable surface is soaked. The water is cold, by the way. We are both shrieking. This is getting ridiculous.
I grab the shower head, hose him off, turn off the water, get him out. I am wet to the skin. I take off everything. I get him dry, dressed and down for a nap. Oh gosh, and the baby bath is still upstairs, swilling its craptacular cargo.
Sieve?
Kitchen roll?
How will I get a bath’s worth of water down the toilet without getting it all over the floor?
I opt for a bowl. I am butt-naked, standing over an excremental catastrophe in my bathtub, panning for gold. IF BY GOLD YOU MEAN BROWN. IF BY BROWN YOU MEAN POO.
I do not think I have time to wash my hair.
We are ten minutes late for church, crazy-haired and dishevelled. I would like to come in wearing a sign saying ‘PLEASE DON’T JUDGE ME. THERE WAS POO’.
At times like this one must look for silver linings.
Lining one: he hadn’t started drinking the bath water.
Lining two: or splashing.
Lining three: this time yesterday, we were here.
I’ll take linings wherever I can find them, thank you.
make a long story short 
Thomas had one that fell out of his trousers and rolled down a slide the other week. I think only one of the other children in the park landed in it before I managed to retrieve it. Poo sagas do not go away, but you have had people staring at me in bemusement this morning and wondering why I’m chuckling so much at my desk.
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Atleast he’s still small enough to be in a baby bath, and he wasn’t sharing the big bath with you. Or an older sibling, because let me tell you, they do NOT take kindly to it.
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Haaa. Oh dear. This is not the last time this will happen, is it?
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