This is going to be about my sucky morning. A morning that included diarrhea sludge packed full of whole blueberries. I want to be up front about this from the start because I don't feel like holding back and this post probably isn't for people with weak stomachs. Or people currently eating. Especially if you're eating blueberries.
Don't say you weren't warned.
I woke up and checked my phone. I have a lot going on at the moment, too much really, and I was hoping that somehow the people I didn't get answers from during the day yesterday felt like giving me answers between midnight and 7am.
They didn't.
Read about the Colorado shooting.
Heard the garbage truck in the neighborhood. Cursed my husband in my head because I figured he didn't get the trash out. He didn't. I did it in my cut-off sweat shorts and tank. Hi neighbors! This is me bra-less before 8am!
Thought about the Colorado shooting as I got online to order my Batman tickets for tonight. Wondered, if the people in that theater, clearly Batman diehards as they were there for the midnight showing opening day, didn't get to see the movie, why should I? Contemplated ordering Step Up Revolution tickets instead but it doesn't release for another week. (Um, hello, have you seen the previews for Step Up Revolution? It looks fantastic. Judge all you want. I SO want to see it and so does Kevin. He may not take out the trash but he IS the man for me.)
Heard Toby calling me from his room as I was completing my order. I called back and told him to come out knowing full well he would not. There is a mysterious force around his door that prevents him from opening his door in the mornings even though at other times in the day he is fully capable of this opening-the-door task. I don't get it either.
In the 2.7 minutes it took me to complete my order and get to Toby he:
Stripped naked.
Diarrhead everywhere.
EVERYWHERE.
But not in his bed. That's how I know it happened after he called for me.
That's how I know that this catastrophe could have been prevented, but wasn't because of my stupid movie-ordering delay. We moms are NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE A LIFE, should we attempt it, the universe punishes us.
I don't make up the rules. I just clean the poop.
So I picked up Toby and put him in the tub.
And I decided to add in my 1,000 Gifts-inspired-thankfulness-journal that I was thankful I had at least come in 2.7 minutes and not 3.2 minutes because at least the poop wasn't really everywhere. Just everywhere on the carpet. He hadn't managed to pull out clothes to rub in it. He hadn't got his poopy hands into his book box. Clothes and books were spared. A gift, I'm telling ya.
It's all about perspective.
With Toby in the tub I just stared at the carpet for a little bit. I contemplated cleaning it vs. ripping it up.
Not kidding.
Had I been physically strong enough to move the furniture out without getting poop on it, that carpet would be gone right now.
After this bout of denial, I accepted the fact that I would have to start cleaning the carpet, so I cleaned up all the uh, large matter. (Dark green sludgy matter packed with perfect blueberry spheres!) Moms, don't you just love being able to identify specific foods in your kids poop? SO one of my favorite parts of the job.
NOT.
(Remember, NOT jokes? A friend of mine was just telling me how annoyed she was that someone had taught her kid the concept of the NOT joke. Kelly, that was for you.)
I then removed all the things that needed to go into washing machine, started a load, and tended to Toby in the tub.
Once Toby was clean I set him in front of the TV and started the real clean up.
TWO HOURS LATER (That's one episode of Sesame Street, one episode of Word World and one episode of I don't even remember. Yup, my kid got in 2 hrs of tv before lunch. Just call me Mother of the Year.) I accepted the fact that my plans to go to the beach were dead.
Beach plans dead, carpet still gross. Happy Friday to me!
I contemplated how I could rearrange the furniture. I texted Kevin telling him that this evening we would be deciding if A. we would replace Toby's carpet with a nice dark green carpet that wouldn't show stains, or B. we would be going the painted concrete route we went with in Blue's room after his defiant-peeing phase.
But we're kinda broke right now, so I googled new cleaning options.
HYDROGEN PEROXIDE!
It works.
Well, it works better than anything else I tried.
After my first bout of true progress, I decided I needed a break. Toby and I went for a walk. Then I thought... (going back to Batman Colorado fatalities) what if today were my last day? Did I really want to spend my last day attacking poop stains over and over and over again? So I filled the inflatable pool in the backyard for playtime.
Half an hour later, Toby pooped in the pool.
He was naked.
(Toby refuses to be clothed in our backyard anymore.)
No lined bathingsuit and/or no swim diaper = poop floating around the pool.
Of all the pervading themes to my dominate my years of motherhood, why did I end up with defecation?
As a teenager I fantasized about my someday-memoir. No lie. I imagined it would be about my basketball team's worth of kids, some adopted, some bio. How we'd come to be as a family, breaking color bounderies, embracing different cultures. The primary themes of the story would be overcoming obstacles and how multiple cultures melded into the new culture of our particular family. Oh the naive dreams of the young.
At 34 here is my memoir: I have three white kids. Two adopted. One bio. We celebrate my Russian born child's heritage in that we have a painting purchased in Moscow that hangs in our guest bath. When he first came home his stomach had a rough go with adjusting to, well, food. I cleaned up a lot of disgusting poop. We celebrate our Texas born adopted kid's heritage in that we made his middle name Tyler after the city where he was born. This son went through a poop-smearing phase in protest of his little brother's birth. He also went through a defiant peeing phase just because he wanted to see if he could put me in a loony bin. He failed. Barely, but he failed. The youngest, has Fragile X, and as soon as I introduced him to the concept of potty training decided he was a nudist and poops all over the place. Yup, I clean up poop all the time. The end.
Back to poop in the pool... As I struggled to dump out the too-full and therefore very heavy pool, I managed to step in a pile of carnivorous ants. Yup, angry red ants decided to make lunch out of my left leg, so I had to jump into the poop-filled water to get them off.
That's when I decided I was going to have to blog about this.
Because if I have to live it, then you should get to laugh at my expense, right? You get to say, at least that wasn't my morning, right?
(Otherwise, why blog?)
I killed the ants, I dumped out the poop water pool, but my left leg looks like it has a mysterious, one-limb-isolated case of chicken pox. Awesome!
Toby got put back in the tub, but this time in my bathroom. It's nice to change these things up a bit.
When I got him out, he threw one helluva fit. It lasted a long time. Sigh. I wanted to brush him to help calm him down, but I couldn't find his brush. Of course I couldn't! (It's a medical scrub brush for brushing his body - it can provide the sensory input a fragile x kid needs to reinstate his sense of well being. Or something like that)
Fit ran its course and I provided sensory input by compression and rubbing.
And then, Toby took a nap.
This boy hasn't taken a nap in his bed in... I can't tell you how long. I wouldn't have even tried except I had a friend coming over to give me a henna tattoo. So I tried. And well, I have a henna tattoo, and he's STILL napping.
My tatt:
The universe has changed its mind and decided to be kinder to me now. I think it's feeling guilty about the whole ants thing. I agree. That was OVER THE TOP.
AND my mom called and asked if I thought pears would be good in the white wine sangria she's making to go with dinner tonight. (I said yes.) THAT is my kind of phone call.
My mom's making me sangria. And dinner. And watching my kid so I can go to a movie with my husband. A movie hundreds of people didn't get to finish last night. I will NOT be taking that fact for granted.
So can I get all sappy now? And end this by saying, I am so, so thankful. Yes, I'm thankful for poop-free books and henna and sangria. Yes, I'm thankful that my day turned around, but even if it didn't, what I am mostly thankful for is that I was gifted with this day. That I, Kevin, and all my boys were gifted with this day when so many others were not.
btw, if the brushing really works for him:
a. the brushes are cheap; buy a gross.
b. if you can't find a brush, use something else: a baby hairbrush works well, a dry washcloth is rough enough, the head of a dish-scrub brush is a little rougher but similar enough for occasional use.
Posted by: Jenny | 07/25/2012 at 01:04 AM