Poop Happens

This past weekend I went to the best baby shower ever - everyone got neck massages and enjoyed a chocolate fountain while swapping parenting battle stories. The topic of discussion when I arrived was "your worst mommy moment" and I quickly discovered that these stories fell into one of four categories: 1) children falling off highchairs or down stairs 2)irrationally yelling at your child to be quiet/go to sleep 3) children eating things they shouldn't have been eating and 4) children pooping in places they shouldn't have been pooping.

My story fell into the last category and was gruesome enough to win me a door prize. I haven't shared it here because of its gag factor, but the multitude of poop stories that night inspired me to put it in writing. (If nothing else, my mom will print it and put it in my memory book so I can use it against my children later in life.)

Still, to be fair, if you are faint of heart or weak of stomach, do not press on.

My tale begins on an average day...Fionn was upstairs taking his daily micro nap and Emerson was downstairs eating a snack. I heard Fionn start to wake up and move around, so I went up to get him - leaving Emerson plaintively wailing for more food. By the time I got upstairs, Fionn was already happily playing on the floor, so I assessed the situation: baby-proof room, happy baby, crying toddler. I figured he would be fine for five more minutes while I finished up with Emerson. What could happen?

Famous last words of parents everywhere.

Literally five minutes later, I went upstairs to retrieve the baby. I got about half way up the stairs when the unmistakable stench of poop nearly knocked me over.

Dear lord...he pooped in his diaper and stuck his hands in it! I thought and made a terror-stricken dash for the bedroom.

Ha - if only it had been that bad.

The first thing I saw was a clean diaper laying in the middle of the floor. Insanely, I breathed a sigh of relief.

The next thing I saw was Fionn playing on the floor near the door. From my perspective, he didn't look dirty, so I breathed another sigh of relief. Then I bent down to pick him up and saw it - poop on his cheeks, in his hair, in his ears, up his nose. I didn't dare smell his breath.

I was like a crime scene investigator....everything was blocked out except the details right in front of me. Slowly, I retraced the evidence. There was a light streak of brown on the floor that got increasingly darker until, all the way across the room, was the jackpot. It was then that the story of what had unfolded became clear.

In the five minutes he was alone, he had taken off his diaper, then pooped, then fingerpainted in it, then proceeded to crawl across the entire room, touching every bucket of toys that lined the wall along the way. He even stopped and opened a few bins up, touching several toys inside. Somewhere halfway through this adventure he stopped to pee, then he finally came to a rest near the door where he spit up. And that's where I found him.

The situation was so awful I had no idea where to even begin. The smell was outrageous and of course we have rustic pine floors full of cracks...cracks now filled with poop.

When I finally regained my composure, I threw Fionn into the tub and gave him a solid scrubbing. Then I called Robbie at work.

"I need you to come home....now."

When I explained what had happened, I heard cackling on the other end of the line. I, however, was far from laughing. Robbie thankfully was able to come home and help watch the boys while I scraped, scrubbed and disinfected everything for nearly two hours. He thought it was hysterical - until he came into the room to check on me and nearly passed out from the sight and smell of it!

Needless to say, I learned a very important lesson that day. Fionn is NOT the kind of kid you can leave alone...not even for five minutes. He is the kind of child that grabs everything within arms length and throws it to the floor within 30 seconds of sitting down at a table. He wriggles out of seat belts and safety belts of all varieties. He eats everything he can fit into his mouth. Yesterday, I could not keep him in the grocery cart, so I had to carry him upside down through the rest of the shopping trip while he giggled maniacally and tried to grab everything off the shelves. In short, we are in serious trouble with this kid. Serious.

Speaking of which, I now hear him making his way back to the dog's water bowl. Wish me luck....

More Poop

I just had to point out that ever since my post on poop a few weeks ago, the google ads at the bottom of my blog have been for various "poop-scooping" services. Seriously, how lazy do you have to be to hire someone to clean up after your dog?! Then again, this is the same country where people buy frozen pre-made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches....

Oh Poop

Yes, my life has reached a point that inspires me to write an entire blog post about poop. As a child, I remember reacting to the bathroom humor of the men in my life (mainly dirt-smeared neighbor boys and raunchy uncles) with utter horror. Several times I gritted my teeth and thought, "Never, EVER will I marry a man like that and have disgusting boy-children like that. NEVER!"

But when you marry a man after only dating him for two weeks, sometimes you miss a few details. Ok - I can't totally blame it on the short courtship when it was at least partly blind love. He told me his favorite movies were "When Harry Met Sally" and "There's Something About Mary." I just chose to focus on how sweet his first choice was and ignore the second. I also should have known what was coming when he told me his family considers one's poop to be a great source of medical information and therefore they discuss it regularly (no pun intended).

In any case, here I am, the wife of a man who gets endless joy out of horrifying me with typical "guy" humor. For instance, our nephew Alex came to visit from Texas this week and so not only did Robbie spend the entire visit wrestling with him and our little cousin Ricky, I also heard numerous comments from him along the lines of, "I'm going to sit on your face and fart!" Then he would make a farting noise and all the boys, including my only 18-month-old son, would giggle.

People wonder why I am so terrified of having not one - but TWO - sons. Can't they see I am drowning in the testosterone?!

As if the bathroom humor weren't enough, I also have to deal with the real poop deal on a daily basis. Every morning I wake up and start my morning by changing a poopy diaper, yelling at Robbie for leaving a stinky bathroom, scooping dog poop out of the dog's litter box, and trying to find one minute of my own time to elegantly retire to the "abode," which usually ends with Emerson flinging open the bathroom door (it doesn't latch properly) and whining to be picked up. Pretty soon we are going to add to this mix yet another boy who, for at least the first few months of life, will contribute half a dozen more mustard-yellow poopy diapers to a day already brimming with....well, you get the point.

After that, the years stretch out ahead of us, filled with belching competitions, feigned farts and poop jokes. I'll do my best (for the sake of my sons' future spouses) to counterbalance their education with lessons in things like table etiquette, proper cleaning, cooking and gift buying 101.

[Which brings me to a strange side-note. I was looking at reviews of Danish aebleskiver pans the other day - in the hopes of reviving my grandmother's tradition of making them on Christmas morning - when I came across this quote:

"I want to teach my sons how to cook aebleskivers themselves because they will be out on their own soon, and it never hurts to be able to attract a woman who loves Danish delicacies."

I found this immensely humorous for some reason. What does a woman who loves Danish delicacies look like - and do my sons really want to attract her?]

Anyway, I suppose poop and other disgusting things are ingrained somehow in the y chromosome. I once had a boyfriend that I thought would definitely break the stereotype. He was snooty and fastidious all rolled up in an effeminate package - certainly not the sort to tell a bathroom joke or see a Jim Carrey movie. But, alas, even he eventually revealed a secret delight in discussing all things feces.

I guess the point is that I know probably shouldn't be so hard on my husband. I'll still grit my teeth and give him the stink-eye whenever he says or does something nasty, but sooner or later I have to accept my fate. I love him dearly and I will love both our sons just as much....even after they learn to play the national anthem with their armpits.