Two years ago I took a leave of absence from my full-time job
teaching 3rd grade. No more papers to grade, administrators to
impress, lessons to plan. I could—and often did—spend all day in my jammies (and
by “jammies” I mean “crappy old flannel pants and spit-up-covered t-shirt
because SOMEONE around here forgot to do laundry again. Oh wait, that was me.”)
My commute went from 18 miles each way to a slow crawl to the coffee pot each
morning. In a lot of ways, life became less hectic. But it took me just a few
weeks at home with a newborn and an almost-two-year-old to realize I had left
the Rat Race—and entered the Poop Race.
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| Ryan Gosling pix make it ok to blog about poop. |
I knew that being a stay-at-home mom would mean that I would
end up taking on most of the poop duty (heh heh, I said doody). At first I
embraced my role as Head Diaperer. I spent hours and hours researching cloth
diapers, and I organized all our diapering supplies in cute little baskets. I
had two boys in diapers at that time—and, as it turned out, would for almost
another whole year—so keeping track of diapers both clean and dirty took up a
decent amount of my waking hours.
(Probably no one needs to know that I have, on occasion,
dreamed about those cloth diapers at night—right?)
Anyway, fast forward two years and, yes, my kids are older,
but I’m still in the thick of the Poop Race. In fact, I realized not long ago
that I am the Primary Butt-Wiper for FOUR out of the six living creatures in
our house (4 human, 2 feline). Do the math and you may get worried—do my hubby
and I have one of THOSE relationships? No. No no no no no no no no no no. And
no. But me and one of my cats apparently do, because she is either too fat or
too lazy to take care of business herself and so I have been instructed by my possibly-crazy vet to go after her tushie
with a baby wipe once a day.
(Um, that has actually happened maybe three times in the
three months that have passed since he suggested it. It just almost never makes
it to the top of my priority list, for some reason. Things I would rather do
than wipe my cat’s ass: as many loads of laundry as I can possibly find in the
house, scrub the kitchen sink with bleach and a toothbrush, read Goodnight Moon 3985239854798 more
times—you get the picture.)
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| One more... |
And the thing about poop in our house is that it always
seems to happen in a when-it-rains-
it-pours kind of way—one enormous, awful Poop
Storm. Here’s how a typical day goes: At some point, my 2-year-old informs me
that he has a poopy diaper. This sets off some sort of physiological trigger in
my 4-year-old, who then races for the bathroom. Before I can even finish
changing William’s diaper, Matthew is yelling from the bathroom,
“Mooooooommmmmyyyy!! I poooooooooped!” Translation: “I will sit here screaming
about it until the neighbors call the cops or you come wipe me!” I finish up with
William, and head for Matthew. As I’m finishing up with him, one of my cats
saunters into the bathroom and heads for the litter box—he might as well have a
freakin’ newspaper tucked under his arm! That means that within minutes I’ll be
scooping HIS poop too if I don’t want all of us to live in a foul cloud of stink.
So. Much. Poop.
The good news is that we have avoided many of the more
awful-sounding poop problems that parents of young kids often face. Neither of
my children has so much as dabbled in the poop-as-art-on-the-wall movement, and
no one poops in the tub anymore. We have so far avoided the stomach flu
altogether in our house (though I probably just jinxed it, right?), and…
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| Special bonus George/Ryan double treat. You're welcome. |
And…
Crap. I can’t think of another example. I’m too caught up in
worrying that writing about how we’ve never had the stomach flu means we’re now
all going to get the stomach flu. And what that will mean for me in terms of
cleaning and laundry and my beloved cloth diapers.
Better go. Time to stock up on Clorox wipes and Pedialyte!
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