Baby Alive

Last Monday morning I was awoken by my four year old laying her baby doll on the bed next to me an hour before the alarm was set to go off, saying "Mommy, Baby Alive pooped in her diaper." Baby Alive was a Christmas gift from her great grandmother this past year, and my daughter is in love with it. She is especially in love with the fact that she can give the baby water in a tiny sippy cup and the doll then wets her diaper. She has also become obsessed with anything diaper-related, and that means both forms of human waste.

My first thought when she did this was, Why do I smell real poop? Oh, no. She had pooped in her potty chair and put her own (very real) poop in the doll's diaper. Totally not something I wanted to deal with first thing on a Monday morning, especially when I was supposed to have a full hour more of sleep. I ripped the girl a new one. I think I may have lectured her for a full hour straight, taking short breaks when the smell got to be too much for me. I also gave her potty chair to her two year old cousin and took away all of her baby dolls and accessories. Then I lectured her some more and told her grandma (my mom) the whole story while lecturing her still more, just in case she didn't get the message that what she did was Really. Really. Gross.

Still, I'm a sucker. As much as I wanted to be a hardass and throw the thing directly in the garbage, I couldn't do it.

I wiped the poop off the surface of the doll, scrubbed it, and flushed the fluid tract with disinfectant in an attempt to save it because it was a gift from my grandma (her great grandma). That didn't work. I swallowed my sentimentality and put the doll in the trash can. Luckily I'd just taken the trash out and it was a clean bag, because it wasn't long before I rescued the poor thing, whose only crime was having a poo-obsessed preschooler for an owner. It is now soaking in a five-gallon bucket of oxiclean solution mixed to saturation point. I have no idea what I'll do if that doesn't work. I'll keep you posted.