I have worked at home with children for years. There is nothing easy about it. Perhaps if I’d never worked outside of my home, you could convince me that packing kids up each morning and dropping them off at daycare before going to work was harder than working from home. But in my twenties, I did that. I got a lot more work done at work than I ever have at home with my little ones. Plus my home stayed cleaner.

Small children can make the biggest mess. Some of these messes are with you for the rest of your days. Or I should say nights. We sleep in sheets covered in black sharpie pen. I was working on one of my novels a few years ago, fixing dinner at the same time, and didn’t know Cruz was writing while I was writing. Realizing the house was way too quiet, I went to investigate. I found our three-year-old in the bedroom, drawing all over the new sheets I’d just put on the bed. Really soft sheets. Expensive sheets. Sheets I’d splurged on the day before. I now call them our Picasso sheets.

The sheets were upsetting, but not embarrassing. I’ve had plenty of embarrassing moments working at home with my kids. In 2005, with just five children, I was on the phone with my literary agent. Before this phone call, I asked our oldest, Cami, “Can you please watch your little brothers? This is a very important call, and I don’t care what your brothers do as long as nobody dies and everyone is quiet while I’m on the phone.”

In the midst of my conversation with my literary agent, baby Joey pooped his pants. Cami, being a trooper, decided to change him. She asked her eight-year-old brother, Luke, to go fetch her a diaper. Two-year-old, John was beside baby Joey, holding his hand while Cami removed Joey’s baby clothes. I was smiling as I listened to my agent while watching my children from the other room. The kids were being so good, and my agent had high hopes for me as a writer. I had high hopes my children would continue to behave well while I was on the phone.

Cami took the poopy diaper off the baby and placed it wide open on the floor next to her as Luke ran back into the room with a fresh diaper. Luke was moving fast, totally not paying attention while running. I see this all unfold while I’m having my “professional” conversation.

Luke barreled into the room, running right across that poopy diaper. With poop on his bare feet, he began screaming and jumping around. Poop flew into Cami’s hair, onto John’s face, and all over the baby. Cami started screaming too. John and the baby began to wail as well.

Watching the poop disaster, I did my best to remain professional with my agent, but at this point, I didn’t feel professional in any way, shape, or form. My agent was going on about publishing, what I needed to know, what we needed to do to further my career. All I could see were my children losing their minds with poop on them.

“My kids are falling apart. I’m sorry. I have to go,” I told my agent. Later by email, I explained to him about the poop disaster. “I cannot stop laughing,” my agent wrote back. “You really should be writing books about your kids.”

If you’ve ever worked from home with small children, you’ve felt this parental pain. Of course your pain hasn’t gone viral, entertaining millions of folks on the Internet like this man’s did. I have watched this video a dozen times and it still makes me laugh until I cry every time.

I adore this video and wanted to share it with you for so many reasons. Let’s start with the small daughter. If we could bottle and sell this little girl’s confidence, we’d all be rich. This is a child who knows she’s loved. She walks into her dad’s home office like, “Your little Miss Sunshine is here. Let me make your day, Daddy. I know you adore me!”

Even after the dad stiff arms her, she isn’t deflated. She plops right down beside him to wait out his boring BBC interview, her confidence still intact.  I love how the little daughter dances into this room and lands beside her daddy like she’s queen of this whole thing. May we all be so bold with those we love, even when they’re working.

walk into the club like pic.twitter.com/Dp4rcdI0pj

— Valerie Loftus (@valerieloftus) March 10, 2017

Though I love the dad, the daughter, and the baby in the walker, it’s the mom, racing into the office to round up the children, who wins my heart. There was debate on the Internet this past weekend if this was the mom or the nanny. I kept seeing people refer to the woman as the nanny, but clearly, she is the mom.

A nanny would never show such desperation. This woman loves her kids, but she might love her husband even more. She’s determined not to let him be upstaged by the children. Like that old movie Risky Business, she slides into the room to save the day. If you look closely at the video, you can see the mom’s pink panties because her pants are kind of pulled down. The poor woman was probably just trying to go to the bathroom when her children went rogue.

We also know she’s the mom because a nanny would never drag children from the room this way. You can still hear the kids screaming in the hallway as the mom stealthily closes the door behind them. Bless the dad’s heart, for he bravely soldiers on with his interview. Let this be a lesson to parents everywhere. If you’re going to do a live interview from home, don’t just lock your office door, send your children on a long walk somewhere before you Skype with the BBC.