October 11, 2005

Once again I find myself in a public bathroom with my daughter. No big deal right? ‘Cause we all take our kids to the bathroom when we’re out shopping. BUT I’m sure most people don’t have the “deep” conversations that I seem to encounter with Madison AND they always happen when the bathroom is CROWDED. With people. Lots of people.



So last Saturday, the whole family is out shopping at one of the big malls here. We’re just about done and getting ready to head home….GOD why couldn’t we have left just 2 minutes earlier? Daughter tells me she has to go to the bathroom. I said, Come on, you just pee’d like 10 mins ago, you can wait until we get home. She then tells me, she doesnt have to pee, she has to poop. GREAT.



We get to the bathroom and I’m thinking, let’s get this done fast and get out. Let’s not talk. Let’s stare at the walls and have zero conversation. Hmmm, well that doesn’t happen with Maddy. She’s just not the silent type. Particularly out in public. In the bathroom.



I see her thinking and slightly straining. OH GOD. Here it comes (no pun intended). Maddy says, in a rather loud voice, “Why won’t it come out”? I smile at her. And my mind starts whirling. What won’t come out? The booger from your nose? The stain on your shirt? The gum in your hair? No, none of the above. I am silent. My plan is to ignore her. Not really a good plan with Madison.



“Mom, why won’t the poop come out”? I know my eyes rolled several times as I hear the snicker snickers from outside the stall. In my deranged, stalker/pyscho mom whisper, I say, “I don’t know. Why not finish this at home”? Wrong thing to say. “Mom, I have to get the poop out here, I can’t wait to get it out at home because it’s already on it’s way”.

Okay, I hear laughing now and it’s not coming from my pie hole. Okay Maddy, let’s finish this up. I’m starting to sweat now. Are the stall walls closing in on me? I’m pretty sure they are now. A minute ticks by….I hear a plop, then another. Thank Sweet Jesus. It’s done. Let’s get the hell out of here. Wait. Wait.



There’s more chatter about to sprout from her sweet, heart shaped lips. She gets up off the toilet and turns around and looks in the toilet. OMG. “Mom, where is the big piece of poop? I see the little one but I know a big piece came out and I felt the water splash on my butt from the big piece but it’s not there. Where did it go? Did it go down that hole in the toilet by itself? Is that possible? Mom, mom, mom, where is my big piece of poop? I felt it come out. Where did it go”?



Is it wrong to want to flush your child’s head in the toilet (minus the poop of course)? I again was praying for the damn bathroom floor to open up and swallow me whole. Apparently noone upstairs is listening. I quickly wiped her butt, pulled up her pants and in a crazed, looney whisper, said, “Let’s not discuss the poop ever again. Please”.

As we exit the stall, I see some looks coming our way, some snickers, always the damn snickers. As I was helping Maddy wash her hands, I was hoping a fat, singing clown would walk in and start vomiting, because then they’d forget about the poop conversation. They would definately be telling their friends about the obese, puking clown and not the five year old girl who wanted to know where her big piece of poop went.

October 10, 2005

Maddy was 3 years old at the time of this conversation. And let me tell you, she’s a beautiful child and she’ll talk the ear off of you if you let her.



She’s been talking since she was 18 months old…I mean really talking. Strangers used to stop me out in public and ask me how old she was because they were shocked at how well she spoke. Too well at times.



We were at the grocery store one day (she was about 21 months old at the time) and we were walking by the checkouts. And it was BUSY. Lots of people around. She pointed to the upper floor of the grocery store and said, “That’s where the bathrooms are, right mommy?”. Yes honey, that’s where they are. “Mommy, DO YOU HAVE TO POOP?”. Ummmm, no I don’t Maddy (I’m saying this in the standard clenched teeth, pycho mom whisper, you know the one I mean). “Yes you do mommy, you said you have to poop”. No, no I didn’t say any such thing. Oh and she’s practically yelling these questions at me. Just for fun. Just wanting to make sure EVERYONE in the goddamn store hears her. Then she laughs. She thought it was hysterical that she was embarrassing mommy about body functions in the grocery store. And for the record, no I didn’t have to poop…made no mention of that. She just dreamed that all up on her own.


Fast forward to a few months ago at the mall. She’s 4 1/2. We’re in the public bathroom. The BUSY, CROWDED public bathroom. She’s peeing. The stalls are full. As we’re in our stall, she says, “So does everyone have fur on their privates”? WHAT?????????? Where does this child come up with this stuff?



Ummmmm, well….what do I say? I can hear the snickers all around. I’m starting to wish that old familiar scene where the floor opens up and it swallows you whole, happens. I’m begging in my mind for that scenerio to take place. But it does not. SHIT. Okay so Miss I’mGoingToAskMyMotherTheMostEmbarrassingQuestionsPossible Thang is waiting for an answer. If I don’t spit something out soon, well, she’ll ask it again. Oh and I’m sure Suzy Q and Betsy Loo in the adjoining stalls are also waiting for an answer. So I say, “Well Maddy, when you get older, like a teenager, you will get…..hair on your privates”. Whew. Thank God, I’m in the clear. BUT alas, I’m not.



She then says, “Well mommy, when you peed, I didn’t see any fur on your privates, how come”?



Sweet Jesus, where is that bolt of lightening when you want to be struck down? So now, there are more snickers. Great. My fur status is known to the strangers in the freakin public bathroom. Time is ticking by soooooo slowly. Where is the end of the world when you want it? Holy. So I say, well sometimes adults shave their hair. I’m saying this as quietly as one can in an echo-ey, grand canyon-ey accoustics style bathroom, which by the way, isn’t all that quiet. Nope, sure isn’t.



So now Suzy Q and Betsy Loo are intrigued. I can tell they are still in the stalls on either side of me…waiting for the next round. They’re not wiping or flushing yet ’cause they want to hear it all. Beeyotches.



Okay, so I’m thinking, that’s it right? No more questions from Miss 20QuestionsPlusOneMore. WRONG. “Mommy, how come daddy has fur on his privates then”? OMG. Just kill me now, someone, please. Okay so I’m thinking, this sounds BAD. Little girl saying she knows about her mother’s lack of fur and her father’s for sure fur (there’s not much, just for the record, wanted to clarify that so noone thought he had a jungle there.) But anyone with small children knows that at some point, they’re going to see you come out of the shower or getting dressed….all purely innocent.



Anyway, I’m beyond the fact that it sounds bad and just wondering, how to answer that question. Suzy Q and Nosey Parker are STILL in the adjoining stalls. “Well sweetie, sometimes people don’t shave it all, they like to leave some”. HOLY SHIT. I can’t believe I’m having a pubic hair conversation with my 4 year old. In a public bathroom. With strangers. LISTENING. So she then says, “Well my privates are bald right now and I dont know if I’ll shave or not”. Well that’s great honey. You’ve got a few years to decide on whether you want fur or no fur. No rush.

Every mom has a poop story. Well most moms that I know anyway. I sure have one.


Ryan was about 22 months old. He was a pretty easy kid to train and all that mommy or daddy had to do was wipe his little ass when he pooped. No biggie.


Well on this particular day, I was on the phone, doing a survey that Statistics Canada had been doing with me over the course of a few months. We were finishing up the last leg of the survey. Ryan was happily driving around in his little Cozy Coupe Car….you know the one, the bright orange Little Tykes car with the yellow roof, the ones you see in every yard in the burbs. Anyhow, back then, back in ‘98, I didn’t have a cordless phone (or a computer for that matter) so I was stuck to the kitchen while doing my survey. So what right?


My back was to Ryan and he was puttering around the kitchen. A few mins later, he says he has to pee. Okay, go pee I whisper while trying to answer questions on the phone. I can hear him in there, everything seems fine. I turn back towards the counter and continue happily answering questions. I hear Ryan get back in his car, driving all around…..the kitchen, hallway and livingroom are his toddler highway. About 10 mins later I finish up on the phone and turn around to see what Ryan is doing. This is where the HORROR begins.


I remember it in slow motion at this point. I see him standing beside his car…..what’s the horror in that you ask? Well now, where there was only white tile 10 mins previous, is now tire tracks. BROWN TIRE TRACKS. My mind is spinning, conjuring up ideas, stupid ones but ideas nonetheless. It’s pudding. Ryan snuck into the fridge and got out a chocolate pudding and then spilled it on the white floor and drove through it. Wait, we dont have any chocolate pudding. It’s melted chocolate chips. Ryan got a pot out, turned on the stove, put chocolate chips in the pot and melted them and then put them on the white tile and then drove through them. Riiiiiiiiight. That’s plausible. Okay, at this point I’m out of idiotic ideas and realize, with mounting fear, that it’s, well, SHIT.


I take a good look at Ryan at this moment and realize he’s bare assed and his legs are streaked with brown. I think I just stood there for a moment, wondering who you call in this kind of situation. The police? Fire department? Next door neighbor? Toxic Spills people? Hubby? Wait…..NONE OF THE ABOVE because noone in their right mind would come and help. So I put on my SuperShitterMomToTheRescueSuperHero costume and get ready to get dirty. I scoop Ryan up and take him to the bathroom. OMG. There’s been a shit murder in there! The floor is covered with BROWN STUFF, the toilet, the sink. This is the moment where I had to decide, am I in it for the long haul or do I want to just pack my bags and head to Florida to swim with the dolphins?


Apparently I decided to stay (what was I thinking???????). Okay, so I run a bath for ShitToddler and get him cleaned up. I asked him, what in God’s name happened? Did his butt explode, a kind of shit volcano so to speak? Nope, nothing like that he assured me. He just decided that day to wipe his own butt. The day that his poo wasn’t like little rabbit turds, basically a clean wipe, not much mess, instead, the day it was like mashed shitcakes, kinda soft but with a bit of texture. JUST MY LUCK.


So I clean the little turdmister up, tuck him safely in his room with his blankie and a book and go back to the crime scene. I can’t believe there’s that much shit from one little attempted asswiping. It was everywhere in the bathroom…..the images still give me nightmares at times. I survived the bathroom masacre and head out to the kitchen. The shit tracks are everywhere. So I get out my handy dandy shit mop and get that room sparkling again.


I was feeling pretty good at that point. THEN it hit me….he’d also been driving in the livingroom. THE CARPETTED livingroom. OMG. I’m going to have a shit heart attack, I just know it. I slowly walk towards the room, knowing that I’m going to see shit tracks embedded into the pale gray carpet. That’s gonna look SOOOOO good. I walk in and yes, I had a shit heart attack, just like I predicted, like what? Two, three sentences ago? So I have to get out the big guns….big bucket filled with the hottest shit killing water I can humanly stick my hands into, soap, cleaner…..cleaner that is so toxic that if you suck on the carpet you’ll have stomache cramps for years to come. But it had to be done.


Two hours later, the carpet was wet but clean of the little shit tracks. We couldn’t walk in there for a day or two and my hands were raw from scrubbing but we decided to keep Ryan anyway. He was just soooo damn cute, that we just couldn’t give him to the roaming gypsy’s that were camping out in the woods down the road. He’s now 9 1/2 and still cute as hell. He’s definately a keeper!

October 2, 2005

It’s funny, how as your children get older, you find out stuff. It makes me think of the things that my sister and brother and I used to do and how we kept some stuff to ourselves, never telling our parents until years later….’cause then it’s funny. We KNOW we can’t possibly get into trouble. I’m at that stage with my own kids. Well at least my oldest two.




We’re at the supper table a couple of weeks ago and Sean and Matthew are talking about something that happened when they were about 12 and 13.



We lived out in the country, surronded by woods, lots of land and up on the hill stood my husband’s grandfather’s old house. It wasn’t lived in anymore, but still stood, filled with furniture, old clothes, papers, toys….remnants of a time and era gone by.



The boys are up there, with their oldest cousin, rooting around in the old house, searching for treasure. Not sure what they hoped to find but it must have been fun, going through the old house, up in the attic, searching the rooms, looking through old boxes, hoping to find something of value or at the very least, find something mysterious. Boys love a good mystery. But then mother nature calls and someone has to poop. That someone is Matt. Figures. That kid can poop like nobody’s business! Anyway, I digress. So Matt says to Sean and their cousin, “I have to poop”. Well, honestly, he COULD have walked down the driveway to our home and used our running, civilized, indoor plumbing. BUT hell, that would disrupt the “mood” of treasure hunting in an old dilapitated house.



Soooo, the 3 boys are standing there, wondering what the hell they can do about this (they’re telling me this story, and I’m thinking to myself, the 3 of you really thought about this, together? I mean, if someone tells me they have to shit, I’m thinking, well just shit, I’m certainly not helping you with that. Anyhooooo….So they all look towards the bathroom in the old house. Well I mean, there technically is a toilet in there, so it technically IS a bathroom. Just that there’s no water……and, well, no toilet paper. But hey, Matt is like 12 1/2, so who cares where he shits right? He sure doesn’t. I mean his ass was going to be on a toilet, so, well, ummm, ok.


So he shits. In the old toilet. The toilet with no running water. No water period. Okay, well the deed is done. The other 2 boys are standing just outside the door. Waiting I guess. Big event. So Matt says, “Ummm, there’s no toilet paper”. Gee, ya think? It’s an old, abandoned house (Grampy moved out awhile back), so, exactly, there isn’t going to be any toilet paper. Bloody hell, what do to now?



I’m thinking at this point, Matt is having an internal dialogue about what to do. Not exactly….he’s ASKING the other boys what he should do. They’re really no help and say, “I don’t know”. So Matt, being the creative genius that he is, looks around while his ass is sitting on the waterless, now shitful toilet (is that a word? Tough, it is now.) and spies something. I can practically envision the lightbulb going on over his blonde head! The curtains. There are still curtains hanging in the bathroom that is void of water and toilet paper. Oh my gawd!


So he does what any person would do….wipes his ass with the curtains. And then does what any person would do afterwards…..HANGS THEM BACK UP. WHAT????????



So they continue on their merry way, picking through the rubble, the boxes, the old dresser drawers in search of their boy fantasy treasures. They apparently went back the next day to do more searching and playing and laughed their asses off at the bathroom curtains blowing in the breeze, that now had a lovely brown streak zig zagging across them. I just know I’m going to have more of these stories told to me by my kids. This story made me laugh, really hard! And it made me think back to all the good times we had as a family and all of the good times still to come. I wonder what they’ll tell me next? LOL!