Define...Clean.

I started off my day with a rice cereal sneeze. You know, when a baby has a mouth full of rice cereal and the urge to sneeze hits him and before you know it, you're covered head-to-toe in the stuff?

And why is rice cereal so hard to clean up, by the way? I take my time wiping him down with a warm, wet cloth, and an hour later I'm peeling off dried, flaky deposits of it in his ears, on his toes, in his hair, etc.

After his second rice cereal wipe down this morning, I came to the conclusion that we moms tend to surrender to a new definition of the word "clean." I think I can sum up this new definition to this: If it doesn't smell like poop or look like it's been pooped on, it's fine!

My son didn't ease me into motherhood. Oh no, it wasn't long before I was "showered" at the changing table. But perhaps the time when we were officially inducted into the parent club was when my husband and I took our son for his one month pictures. We wanted to do those ever-so-popular nude baby pictures- for blackmail down the road, of course. He managed to urinate all over the black sheet he was laying on- twice. Then in the ten seconds it took to pick him up and lay him down to get a diaper on, he managed to go "number two," which landed in the pocket of my denim skirt. Ew. Then, as if that wasn't disgusting enough, he gave us an encore which this time landed on daddy's shirt. He sported a nice yellow stain for the rest of our time in public.

I will say, though, that the spit up, slobber, and the diaper disasters are all nice scapegoats for my own personal messiness. I rarely go a meal without something falling either off of my fork or out of my mouth and onto my clothes. My husband likes to point this out to me regularly. But now, if I'm out and about and my typical eating clumsiness occurs, I blame it on the baby. Baby stains are more socially acceptable, so I'm milkin' it for all it's worth!

Well, I have to go spray-n-wash four onesies, the slobbery shoulder of my t-shirt, and the pants that I...er...uh...the baby spilled food on, then draw a bath to scrub the pesky dried cereal that somehow got up his nostrils and under his armpits. Oh, motherhood...