I need a super-sized box of Calgon.

It's been one of those days. Should have been good - Izzy slept in his own bed, without crying out a single time, until about 7:30. But it's all been downhill from there.

The downhill slide started when Izzy took off his pj's, took off his diaper, and pooped in front of the coffee table. I glanced over at him to see him squatting above it, and as I grabbed him up, to keep him from, say, sitting in it, he said rather indignantly, "Poop!"

"Yes, Izzy you pooped in the floor. I'm glad you didn't poop in your diaper, but next time you have to poop in your potty, okay?" I told him in a rather indignant tone of my own.

I clean him up and we head straight to the shower. When we're done, Izzy gets out and starts slamming the door shut, over and over, narrowly missing my toes each time. I keep yelling no at him, but he's decided that no means to keep doing whatever he's doing until it drives us insane. Then he caught my toe. I screamed, "I said NO!," and I pushed the door back open. This knocks my poor child to the ground, right on his tush, and sends mommy into super-guilt mode.

After I suck up to him for a while, we head to the kitchen. While I'm making lunch, Izzy falls into the dog's water bowl. On his butt once again. But at least he wasn't drinking from it this time. I tell him to take his shorts off, because I now know he can do this, and he quickly complies, then proceeds to eat his lunch and half of mine. Who knew the kid would love jalapeno cheese spread?
Then we begin the struggle to take a nap. We're getting rid of the paci, and all in all, it's going well. We cut the tips off a couple, and he still sucks away on those. But I cut the whole round part of the nipple off of another, and he finally got mad at it last night. Still though, it only took daddy about 10 minutes to get him down. Naptime with mommy, however, took about an hour and a half. He kept looking at the paci and saying, "Bad paci."

After struggling for about 15 minutes, I tuck him in and leave the room. Usually, he gets mad and screams until I come back, in about 5 minutes, and then he settles right down and goes to sleep. The first time I tried this, when I came back he was feeling playful, so I played with him for about 15 minutes. Then I rocked him, yada, yada, and left again. This time, no crying. I was hoping he'd fallen asleep, but then I heard him moving around. I give him a couple of minutes, and I go back in to find him standing naked, trying to put on a new diaper. Luckily, he'd only peed this time. So we went to the bathroom and then back to bed again. Rocked, tucked, left, came back in 5 minutes, and he laid down, sans paci (don't know what he did with it) and went to sleep.

It was a beautiful thing, and hopefully a good omen for this afternoon.