Learning curve, oh and poop

All of Eleanor’s poop looks just like this. Seriously.

 

So the other day I literally caught poop in my hand. Despite being the mother of two, this was a first time experience for me. Obviously I’ve been pooped on, thrown up on, peed on, had things throw at me, been covered in projectile vomit repeatedly… You know, the usual badges of honour that us parents wear.

But this was, honestly, a first.

Sometimes I think that I can communicate with my baby. She seems to understand me when I babble things like ‘Who’s a pretty girl? You are! Are you pretty? You ARE! Who loves Mummy? YOU DO! Who’s my sweetie pie? YOU ARE!!!!’

(Also, I have to admit…. It is slightly humbling to hear your older child talk to your younger child in the baby voice you use. It makes him look slightly psycho. He’s four. And so that would make me…??? Old and more psychotic. Great.)

She smiles a lot while I say these (and even more ridiculous) things. So clearly we are communicating. And so when I ask her things like ‘Please don’t poop on me. Or pee. Please don’t poop or pee on me.’ as I am carrying her to the bath, I feel optimistic. Since we’ve been ‘communicating’, we’ve have no issues. 2 weeks ago, I started feeding her cereal and since then, things are a little more up in the air. Bowel movements are a bit up in the air these days….

Ie: Feed cereal. Poop it out instantaneously. Feed peas. Poop out immediately.

So I guess my plan of ‘feed dinner, immediately take a bath after’ probably was not the most well thought out plan I’ve had in recent weeks. Other plans that are equally bad? Eating hard boiled eggs bought at 7-11 for breakfast, forget to wash hands and lick fingers that are covered in dry formula and accidentally walk through puddle that is actually ‘garbage water’ (as in that liquid that leaks out of a dumpster).

Naked bottom holding with long distance walking is for sure up with these other special plans. And also, total potential Olympic fodder for future games.

Anyways, blah blah blah she pooped in my hand. Then we both took a bath and I sanitized my hand.

Parenting: a constant learning curve.

xoxo am

 

Bits

How do you name a penis?

Tricky question, eh?

Thursday night, as we started our bath-time washing procedure, we encountered ‘the area’ a few minutes in. Boy Territory is something I tread a little gingerly, as I am not that familiar with it. Apart from the obvious familiarity of being married to a man.

I am teaching V to scrub-a-dub himself and so I shout out random (boy) parts while I foam-pump soap into his palms and watch with delight while he hurries to find and cover them with suds (I am assuming that something is being cleaned just with soap touching it).

So of course we hit the usual…

Arms!

Fingers!

Toes!

Tummy!

And then I shout things like “Scrub scrub scrub!” And “Wash wash wash!”

And at some point those hands wandered down ‘There’ and a damp face makes a mischevious little grin at me.

And then? I shouted “Wash your….. weewee!!”

What WHAT?

It’s OK. I feel your shock. I was in a pinch and that’s what came out. And as soon as it left my mouth, I turned red. Even though there was no-one else around to see or hear what I just said, apart from Vince…. who was currently clutching those ‘bits’ and saying “Weeeeeee we. WeeeWeeeeeee! WeWe!”

Crap.

What did I just create.

And crap. What do you call those bits?!

I mean, I call them ‘bits’. To the general public that is. Not that it’s something that I am generally announcing to people. But when I am, that’s how I announce them.

Edward?! Where are you?! I need you for these situations! So get off your Fantasy football calculator thingy and come upstairs and clean your son’s penis!

… is what I would like to shout, but don’t. I just hold it all in. Like the proud British-Canadian that I am…

Well, tonight we had tub-time again. And Edward was in Philly and therefore was not around for assistance. But no matter, V got there before I could and started scrubbing away at various parts to much applauding, finally getting to the ‘bits and then looking up at me before he did anything.

Vince!! Wash your ‘peepee’!”

Ok, at least this was slightly better than ‘weewee’. Geez.

I really have no idea where to go with this one. I am thinking I might just stick to ‘bits’ and that suits my sensibilities just fine.

Any suggestions?

xoxo a.m.

Fever, again

Mummy? Change me. NOW.

As I type this, my eyes are closed. There is a glass of Merlot in front of me. Julia and Julie is playing on the Blue Ray. V is sleeping. I just finished sauteing some scallops for my salad.

Key phase in above ramble? ‘V is sleeping’

3 days of super sick baby, Mummy has now reached an insane level of ‘over it’.

Except, Mummy can’t be. Not like Mummy is when Daddy gets sick. Nope, with Little Booboo, Mummy is always on.

Wednesday morning was a low fever, Wednesday evening it was 100 degrees. Thursday early morning it was 101. I stayed home that day with the sick Little Man. It was awful. Fevers scare the crap out of me.

Thursday was a ‘Motrin’ day. And a ‘Tylenol’ day. And a “Mummy, I need a cuddle’ day. And that is how I always know my V isn’t feeling well, when he searches out Mummy’s lap and snuggles down.

Thursday afternoon was 102 and Friday morning was 103.2.

POINT TWO! POINT FRIGGIN’ TWO!

Jesus Christ, how can anyone’s heart take this sort of thing?

And then I had to go to work.

And M took him to the Doctor. Bad sinus infection and a molar coming in. How Dr E even managed to get into his mouth to look, I have no idea. I can barely get a toothbrush in there. One time I had to remove something(s) (paper, pennies, dog kibble, pieces of wood, dirt from the floor etc) and I swear he almost severed my finger. Baby teeth are sharp things.

So apparently those 2 things are enough to raise ones body temperature.

Sooooo… amoxicillin, Motrin with alternating doses of Tylenol, decongestant cough/nasal drops, Singulair tablets AND Pulmacort nebulizer treatments.

Last night, while I was dosing the Little Man, I couldn’t believe how many things I was administering to him. Basically 5 (or 6 depending on how the day is going)  different things. Seems like an awful lot for one small body.

Something which was rather apparent to me this morning. Let me fill you in on last night.

Last night, post-bath, as I went to diaper and pj the Little Man I discovered there WERE NO DIAPERS upstairs in his bedroom. Which actually meant that there were no diapers in the upstairs. Which meant there were no diapers in the house. Carrying a naked baby downstairs, I rifled through the diaper bag and found 2.

Oh thank god. One for tonight and one for the morning. And then M would be up (from his double shift) and I could do a run to the drug store and it would all be ok.

So this morning, at 7:30, it was not. My morning started with some hard-core grunting. Oh say it ain’t so. Say it ain’t so!! But the smell said otherwise. Of course, being that the last diaper in the house had just been put on a small bum, it only made sense to use it. Apparently immediately.

Oh sick child of mine, we now have an endless supply of diapers and you can fill them to your hearts content. Which you will. I know you too well.

Socks

My living room times a million

Finger up nose.

Pants around ankles.

Toothbrush in eyeball.

Socks on floor.

I think this sums up the week nicely.

1) Finger constantly up nose. Not my finger. And not my nose. All day. Every day.

2) V is currently 17 months. I refuse to buy him any pants small than 2t or 24 months. There is just no point. So last weekend I bought him some jeans, Levi carpenter pants (adorable). They only stay on if he is wearing shoes. Shoes seem to block those pants quick descent to the floor. I have to roll the cuffs up and that helps prop the jeans up on top of his sneakers. Nice.

3) In my efforts to promote good hygiene to my toddler, I’ve been gently promoting the toothbrush. Mostly as something just to hold and put in the mouth. Some brushing movements are made and I figure it’s a start.

Tonight, in his thorough excitement about his new toothbrush, he punched me in the eye with it. It hurt. I hope there is no bruising… Holy mother does than boy have an arm on him!

4) I might lose my mind about these damn socks. Can someone (besides me) pick them up?! All. Over. My. House.

Before V, there were M socks everywhere. Drove me nuts. Post-double shift socks were scattered everywhere. The dog finds them delicious. Still does. And V has inherited this from his father. Socks come off the instant they are put on. In the car. In the house. In the yard. On the sidewalk. Mid-poop. Mid-poop clean-up.

Poop-socks? Good times.

Click here to learn some valuable tips about socks… and how to wear them. Properly.

Nugget

(of poop)

There they were, waiting for me on the changing table as I carried my squeaky clean V from the tub back to his bedroom…

*sigh*

Not only nuggets, but an open dirty diaper.

….flashback to a few hours earlier….

On my way home, I called M for a quick chat.

“How was your day?”, I asked as I gunned it down the expressway.

“Oh. It’s been better”, he replied in a wry tone.

“Oh?”

“I am in the middle of doing something horrible……”

Not picking up on the wry tone, my mind headed in the worst directions possible… mortgage payments, things to do with money, hot water tank leak, smoke detectors going off, awful things to do with the house…

“V gave me a present”.

This is parent code for ‘loaded up the pants’, ‘made a brownie’, ‘dropped the kids off at the pool’ or any number of other expressions (that I am sure your husband/brother/male member of the family will be happy to share with you, while they snicker that is…)

Oh men, so dramatic. You’d think it was the end of the world.

It must have been though, if I was to find remnants of it an hour later. Apparently it was epic. And there was screaming and thrashing involved during changing time. Good stuff.

….flash-forward to present….

I was sure. So sure. That life was not going to throw feces at me tonight. All signs pointed to a ‘dodge’, especially considering the previous conversation with M.

I picked that poop up, deposited it elsewhere and snuggled that Little Man within an inch of his poop-filled life….

Mumma loves the baby.

Normal life

A wee excerpt from my normal life…

Taking the elevator from the top floor in Ikea, down to the bottom with my cousin. Oh, how do we love Ikea. So many things to think and plan about, meatballs to eat, lighting fixtures to drool over. It is a beautiful place for the female members of my family.

Let’s backtrack a little…. rewind back to the food court on the top floor, about 10 minutes earlier… focus in on our lovely Ikea meal we were having. Well, that C and I were having, as V was clearly not interested in having any part of it. This was  illustrated by the carrots and cheese that he spat out. Spat out with force, I might add. He got some serious distance. Where did this random ‘skill’ come from? No idea…(signs are pointing towards his father though…)

So, as we fought with the meal tray, dropped carrots all over the place, spat out some meatball, smeared things all over our very small 18 month-sized shirt….all of this heavy action was followed by a stealth-poop.

And by stealth-poop, I mean that there were none of the usual warning signs. No grunting, no red face, no nuttin’……

Just an unfortunate smell…. one that crept up on me. It took C a while to notice… and that is because she does not have a poop-machine at home and so doesn’t recognize the early aromas-slash-signs….

But when it hit her…. oh man. It really hit her.

By then we were already on our way to the ‘family’ change-room.

But. It was locked. Damn it!! My son’s poop-bottom is more important than yours!

So I headed into the main washroom which thankfully had a changing-station.

Oh, that poor ladies-room. It was quickly defiled the instant that my son’s pants came off. That movement was punctuated by C’s exclamation of  ‘Motherf’er! Jame. That. Is. Awful.”

It might have been, but honestly, my nostrils are immune to stank like that. And my eyeballs don’t even notice anymore.

The other ladies that exited stalls and washed their hands smiled at my commentary regarding Little Man’s stinky pants. His very stinky pants. And how nice that the changing table was situated so that his dirty little bottom faced the mirrors and was reflected down the washroom.

As I wiped, cleaned, wiped and wiped some more, ladies filed in and out. There were giggles. Some of them might have come from my cousin.

As I reached into my diaper bag and pulled out a stank-diaper bag (you know, one of those ‘green’ bags that you stuff your stink into when you are out in public so the trash doesn’t stink awfully?) and got ready to deposit the ‘deposit’ into it, my cousin exclaimed at its cleverness. Really, it is very clever.

Such a nice way to tidy up after a stinky bum.

The lady washing her hands at the sink chimed in “I use plastic bags to clean up my cat’s litter box. They are so handy.”

C: “But I bet yours aren’t Arm and Hammer”.

Bathroom Lady: “No. You are right. I just use regular plastic bags”. *laugh*

Jaime: “My bags come with a handy container to hook on your hand-bag”.

C: “Quite handy when you are at Ikea”

BL: “I don’t bring my cats with me to Ikea”.

*Silence*

And then we left the bathroom and headed down to the ground floor…

Just another normal day….

Shower

Me, earlier during my epic Monday shower....

Its been a while since I posted about poop.

Happily , our household has been free of poop-related incidences. For a while there they were happening a little too frequently for my taste.

Don’t fret my dears…. I am here with a brand-new one for your reading pleasure!!

Mondays can be long days. This Monday felt extra long. Hectic work, plus M’s teacher ‘back-to-school’ week, plus a sudden disappearance of our regular daycare resulting in Pop-Pop and V spending a lot of time together. PLUS an earlier rising time, minus my glorious 8 weeks of sleeping in until 6:30 (practically unheard of!). Plus the fact that it is Monday.

This resulted in me feeling like I forgot to have a shower by the end of the day. Isn’t that just the worst feeling ever? The humidity doesn’t help either. So as I am driving the Expressway home I am contemplating a dilemma…shower or Gym, shower or Gym, steamy long hot shower with coconut body wash and clean hair or Gym.

The shower won. It was delicious…. out I came, clean hair, body delicately scented like coconut and so so so very clean.

That shower put me in the best mood. M and V came home from picking up dinner stuff and Little Man was scooped up into my arms, snuggled within an inch of his life and then fed some yummy dinner. Tonight’s meal: Oven Gold Boars Head turkey, Organic cheddar cheese, sauteed zucchini and mushrooms and sweet potato french fries. Fresh watermelon for dessert.

Post dinner, off we headed to the bedroom for a strip-down and a plunk in the tub. Who knew that my leisurely evening was about to come to an end!

I played games with V as I stripped him down to his diaper on the changing table. An aroma arose from the groinal region that immediately exited the room and headed for the kitchen to assault M’s nostrils. “Jame!! What’s that smell?!?! It’s awful!!” he shouted from the other room.

“M! V’s got a present for you!! But you have to come in here to get it!” I shouted back…. he did not fall for that old trick… neither would I.

I opened that diaper and encountered the foulest thing ever seen in a  diaper in the history of Mankind. Also the foulest smelling thing. Foul.

Not to V though!! He shrieked with delight and happily stuffed both hands down that diaper and went straight for the bits. Which were covered. That’s how awful this diaper was. It was a full-on “Strap your child to the changing table and use both hands” kind of clean up.

Oh. My. God. His hands were covered in poo and he was laughing hysterically. He was having the best time ever!! I, on the other hand, was freaking out. And screaming things like “NANANANANANANA! V!!!!!! Nonononono! Oh my god, oh god…. oh holy god….etc etc”.

M, was happily (pretend) oblivious in the kitchen. He states he heard nothing. Bastard.

Anyways, off we went at arms length to the tub. The one time I didn’t want to cradle that little bum while I walk him naked as a jaybird (him, not me) over to the tub and dunk him in. I did not want to touch that part of his body.

What follows was fastest bath in the history of the human race. It might have even been faster than the previous fastest bath (that one that followed the infamous ‘poop in tub’ incident).

Bedtime followed at an even faster pace!

xoxo a.m.

Not Poop

I am really going to make an effort to not talk about poop as often as I see seem to find myself doing it lately. There is at least one more story that I could add to the growing list of bowel-movement related posts. Since that was my topic of choice last night, I thought I would spare you the details and focus on something else…

V learned something new this evening! Well, it was the first time I have seen it, so it’s new to me. M will probably say that he’s been doing it for years (slight exaggeration)… but it was the first time I have actively seen him do it.

He has mastered the art of taking things out of other things and off of things as well. As in, out of the toy box and onto the floor. And out of the wagon and onto the floor. Oh, and off of the book shelf and onto the floor. Oh, I almost forgot, AND off of his highchair tray and onto the floor.

You see the pattern? The floor is heavily featured.

Tonight I watched him as he methodically put things into things. He has a little basketball-like net in his bath-tub and I watched him as he carefully filled it up with items. Then removed them and threw them on the floor (I mean tub). And then picked them up and put them in again. This went on and on for ages.

It was the most interesting thing to watch. And I really could just watch him play forever. It is captivating. He kept trying to stack round objects on top of each other and then would grunt with frustration when they fell off. Finally he caught on and stacked some flat things in there first, piled round things into the flat things and then topped them off with some more round things. Genius!!!!!

And then he pulled them all out and threw them into the tub.

And then repeated the whole process over again.

I actually could see him learning, it really was amazing. He problem-solved. Unbelievable. He repeated himself over and over (just like his Mama….I knew there was a little bit of me in there somewhere!)

Genius!

Sunday

Another Sunday night poop story….. I know that you are very excited. I can feel it.

Poop is a ‘regular’ event over here. A fantastical event at least once a week that usually leads to extra cleaning on my part……

Today started with M offering to change a dirty diaper. What you say?? What kind of crazy thing is this?? What kind of parallel world are we living in? Men offering to change diapers without being provoked? Lord only knows what this is about, but I happily accept any and all offers…

So offer accepted, off they went to the changing table to sort things out.

We have to give V something to occupy himself while he is getting changed. Otherwise, he will flip himself over onto his tummy and smear poo everywhere. This we know from lots of experience… LOTS of experience.

Daddy handed V a book to look at while he unstrapped that nasty diaper.

Oh, that poor poor book….

That book was grabbed with such enthusiasm, waved all around and then suddenly (and without any warning) was abruptly shoved down the front of his diaper (suddenly and abruptly, in case you didn’t get that) A diaper that was quite well filled.

A surprised loud laugh is what brought me into the room. M turned to me, laughing, and handed me a book.

The book.

The book that was covered in poop.

‘Oh, thank you! My favorite thing!”

A book that I chose to not clean and, instead, deposit in the garbage.

The West Coast in me screaming out that I could have salvaged it instead of throwing it out. But, lets face it, it was not salvageable. There is no way that I would have been able to clean that book up and look at it other than the book that V poop-smeared.

I am sure that the smell would have clung. Or I would have imagined the smell clinging to it. And my fingers as I was holding it. And to V’s hands and face, as that’s where books usually go. I do not want to be the poop family. Really.

And so, it was hand-carried (finger-tips only) to the garbage and dutifully deposited into our trash.

Sorry book. I can no-longer accept you in our household once you have been smeared. Your memory as one of V’s first books will live on in our minds…..

You will forever be remembered as “The book covered in poop”. We will never forget you…. and neither will V’s future girlfriends…

Wet

Things to not do.

Do not, in your new motherhood-cockiness, undress your 13 month-old in his crib and let him play naked for a few minutes while the tub is filling.

It will lead to disaster, believe me.

I know you know where this is leading, so I won’t bore you with too many details.

V is always ecstatic to be naked. He likes to roll around his crib naked, lolling around on his back with his legs up in the air….. giggling the whole time. Inevitably those chubby little fingers find their way down to ‘the bits’. More giggling ensues… followed by a lot of stretching, pulling and tugging. And giggling

So I left him to his playing and giggling and went to go and check the tub. When I came back, he was standing up, one hand on the (gnawed within an inch of it’s life) crib rail and another clutched around his best friends. With a pleased and relaxed look on his face.

I had a sneaking suspicion as to what had happen. A suspicion that was quickly confirmed as my fingers encountered a warm puddle in the sheets.

*Sigh*

Never a dull moment over here!

M took V swiftly out of the crib and ran him over to the filled tub….. and as he ran, he turned and shouted over his shoulder “I can’t believe you thought that would be a good idea! Jame….. seriously. Changing table equals water-proof…”.

What was I thinking? I guess I was thinking that we hadn’t had any accidents yet, so I thought things were under control. Silly me.

I think at least one of these instances has to happen every week, otherwise M and I will grow too complacent. However, to be honest, they rarely seem to happen to him. Just me.

My life will be filled with pee and poop for the next several years. Eventually I will tire of posting….. not yet….but sometime soon.

It is still rather funny to me…