There’s Poop on the Slide: Confessions of a Work-From-Home Mom

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I’m a wife and I’m a mom. I am also a work-from-home mom.  For real. I work a real job from home, all while I manage my three children, their activities, meals, snacks, screen time, etc… all the things, and all the snacks. If you’re a mom you get what I’m saying about the snacks.

I’m also pretty sure I’m not the only work-from-home mom who feels like she just can’t quite balance everything out. I started working from home when my oldest child was 8 months old. I just walked down to my office turned on the computer and did my thing. Sometimes while nursing, or changing a diaper, or giving a kid, you guessed it, a snack. Eventually, I realized I needed to hire a part-time nanny to occupy them while I worked from home. In my case, “nanny” is a fancy word for a college girl that I paid to play with my children and feed them while I locked myself in a home office for 3 hours a day. I just like to say, nanny, because it sounds more important.

Here’s how I realized that a part-time nanny was a necessity…

I teach for an online school from home. At the time, I was teaching 8th-grade students. (Go ahead and bless me, I need it.) This meant that I taught my class using an interactive program that allowed me to move things on the screen, instant message with students, and speak on a mic so they could hear the lesson all at the same time. This particular day, my then almost 2-year-old and 3-year-old were playing sort of quietly in the playroom adjacent to my office. This was perfect because I needed to teach a class live at the time and I was wearing a headset to speak to them. We were mid-way through the lesson when I hear my daughter say, “Ew!”, quickly followed by “Ew! Ew! Yuck! Yuck! Moooooommmmyyy!”

I mute my mic and ask, “What’s wrong kiddo? Can it wait 5 minutes, I’m almost finished here.”

“Momma, there’s poop on the slide!”

“Poop on the slide? Oh, my goodness! How did poop get on the slide?” I run into the other room fearing that one of them surely has poop on their hands and it is likely all over my cream carpet. (Don’t ask me whose idea it was to put cream carpet in a playroom. It’s another story.) There is, in fact, poop on the slide! I am so grossed out. Also, my almost-2-year-old is bottomless because she has obviously removed her poopy diaper and gone down the slide a few more times for good measure. Smearing the grossness all over her bottom and the slide. Ew.

Frantically, I clean up the kiddos in record time! (Remember those students? They’re just taking a quiz! They’ll need me at any moment.) I rush back to the computer to rages and roars of laughter. Finally, my phone rings and my co-teacher shouts through tears of laughter – “You FORGOT to mute your mic! We’ve been cracking up forever!”

Awesome. This is a true story of a work-from-home-mom. Honest to goodness, people. If you can convince my employer to release it, there’s a live recording floating around somewhere.  You really can’t make this motherhood stuff up.