Most people seem to think that you gain an arsenal of funny stories involving various bodily fluids around the time you give birth, accumulating on through at least the first couple of years of your child’s life. Although childless until recently, I’ve been accumulating these stories for many years, as a result of parents who took me camping and backpacking with regularity throughout my childhood, combined with the fact that I live with several pets that we refer to as the “animal pack.”

I could share fantastically true tales such as a certain family member of mine, who, while on a deep woods backpacking trip in the mountains of West Virginia, chose to take his morning coffee and hike up the steep mountain to find a nicely sized stump to perch with his backside over the end to do his business. He got settled and was just beginning to enjoy the coffee and take in the crisp, sunny morning in the woods when the stump broke and he went careening down the mountain, somersault style, with his pants at his ankles. He stumbled back to the campsite, bleeding, with dirt, leaves, and coffee all over him. Thankfully, everyone in my family knows how to enjoy a good laugh at their own expense.

As of Sunday morning, I could also share the most fantastic of poop stories so far in our new experience of parenthood. On Friday night, with a most arrogant sense of command, I announced to my husband and twins that, on Saturday morning we would begin using cloth diapers on Andrew, by God! Saturday morning arrived and we pulled out the brand spanking new cloth diapers and snapped and velcroed our hearts out, exclaiming over the cuteness of the diapers. At each feeding to follow on Saturday afternoon, we took turns holding our breath with fear, while slowly unsnapping the diaper, expecting the worst mess. It never came. We uneventfully accumulated about five dirty diapers in the laundry pail before going back to disposables for the night. Having called Saturday a relative success, Sunday morning diapering came with all the cockiness of new parents 24 hours into trying something different and having it work out ok. Dave and I got up and got the kids started on feeding. Andrew finished first and wanted to lie in his crib and stare at his mobile. Dave was still working on feeding Audrey when we heard the most fantastic of farts bursting forth from Andrew’s crib. I was the unlucky empty-handed one, so I sidled toward his crib with trepidation. I was not wrong to be frightened. Poop was everywhere! It was on the crib sheet, the crib, and the kid. I picked him up to fix it, and it then proceeded to be on the carpet, the changing table, the diaper pail, my shirt, pants, his shirt, pants, legs, feet, and face. As I turned around to share a laugh with Dave over our child bred of apparent colonic exuberance, Audrey began vomiting all over him, the nursing pillow, her clothes, blanket, and chair. The twins, who must have been in cahoots, managed to ruin four outfits and create an entire load of laundry in ten seconds flat. We joke that we have not yet found a diaper that can contain Andrew’s colonic exuberance. It took us a good twenty minutes to change our clothes and theirs and clean up the mess. We went back to disposable diapers for the rest of the day.

For this round, it is twins 1, parents 0. Well played, twins, well played.