Tonight was girls’ night out for my wife and her colleagues from work, so I pulled double duty and extended my daily allotment of L time into the evening.

Most of our night together was awesome as always; after a leisurely dinner of puffs, tangerines, bananas and chicken with yam/apple/zucchini compote, the baby joined me for a stroll around the block.

After our walk was when things went south. L has developed a nasty habit of staging her biggest diaper-changing squirm-a-thons when Powergirl is MIA, and tonight was no exception. Her episode left her and part of our couch covered in poop and pee. It left me feeling soiled as well, though in a completely different way.

I’ll spare you the details because they’re sort of gross. Suffice it to say the diaper came off, and within seconds, poop was everywhere. Just as I managed to clean up the poop, the pee arrived.

Oh, and to make matters worse, there was blood, too—L had cut herself with her own nail (and my dry knuckles split open as I tried to grab her, flip her and wipe the poop).

Instead of losing my marbles as I’ve done in the past, I (somehow) managed to keep it together and deal with the situation at hand. Still, I yelled quite a bit—at least enough to force my daughter to shift her crying into overdrive.

The yelling was just the beginning. After the storm, once everyone/everything was cleaned up, I proceeded to spend the better part of the night beating myself up for my overreaction. Did I have to yell? Was it really that bad? Is L going to grow up and think I’m a hotheaded father with no regard for her feelings? Am I a terrible father for losing my patience…again?

After these rhetorical questions, guilt consumed me. I couldn’t sit still. So I did what any other moping stay-at-home dad would do: I went on a dad-related binge of chores.

I folded laundry. I did the dishes. I made three batches of L’s food. Then I reorganized her toys.

Eventually, I managed to calm down and come to terms with the way the night played out. Was it one of my proudest evenings? Not exactly. But it’s also was an evening that will make me a better father down the road.

The lesson: As parents, it’s perfectly acceptable for us to lose our patience every once in a while. How we deal with these situations, how we learn from them, is another thing entirely.