Kids are so gross!

As soon as the oldest turned two, he started to love to be "maked". All daily tasks were now being performed sans clothing. Eating lunch, dancing to The Wiggles, collecting rocks... it didn't matter. He also started showing us all of the signs that he was ready to graduate from diapers. Hooray! we thought, as we proudly took our first-born son to Toys R Us to pick out a new potty. Look at us! Our son is potty training!! A year later and a year wiser, we have now decided that our littlest one will stay in diapers until he is old enough to move out of the house. There is NOTHING fun about potty training.

So having never done this before and completely unsure of what to expect, we brought home a brand new frog potty, stripped The Boy (as he has been fondly referred to as since birth) down to nothing, and hoped for the best. Surprising enough, the best was what we got! He was so proud of his new skill that he would sit on that thing and force something out about every five minutes. O.M.G. Could this be true? we thought. Did our brilliant child just potty train himself in one day?!?!!? And so it went, for about 3 days- this little "maked" boy would run in and use his potty and we would clap and dance and sing as if he had just won an Oscar. And then the novelty wore off.

At this time, the baby was about 6 months old, and was sitting up but not quite crawling. It was summer and we spent most of our time outside. We were out in the front yard and I put the baby down on our front sidewalk so I could run in for 2 seconds to get his exersaucer so he wouldn't have to sit on the ground. When I came out, The Boy was digging in the mulch and the baby was happily sitting exactly where I had left him, only this time, he had a mouthful of something, and a handful of something else about to go in. What could he possibly have in his mouth? He was not close enough to the mulch to have grabbed a piece, and no one had any snacks. Holy crap! (no pun intended) "CJ... did you poo-poo on the ground?" "Um, yup" was the little response I got, as he didn't even look up at me. Wow... the baby ate his brother's poop. (which is worse here- that he ate it, or that he was completely happy and was about to put another fistful in his mouth? hmmm- debatable.)

As I'm pretty sure any mother would, I jumped in to freak-out mode and rushed him inside to the sink. As I tried to force water into his mouth, I realized that it was still full. Before I could give myself a chance to actually think about what I was about to do, I made a hook with my finger, and scooped the rest out. As I tried my best to hold my breath and stifle my gags at the same time, I reached in again and again, scraping against the cheeks, and dislodging the pieces that were stuck up in the roof of his mouth. And just as the action was dying down, my nanny pulled up. "hejustateatonofpoopandidon'tknowwhattodoshouldicallthedoctor?poisoncontrol?911?" I frantically wailed, before she had both feet out of the car. And this woman, this wonderful woman who was teaching me how to manage my new life with two babies, no job, no down time, and a husband who worked crazy hours, just stood there and laughed at me. "There's no poison in poop!" she said. "Kids are just gross. They all do gross things! My daughter brushed her teeth with it once!"

I calmed down and gathered my sense back. Of course it wasn't poisonous, I knew that. Duh. Whoa, brushed her teeth with it, huh? I guess a little sampling on the front lawn was no big deal after all. And I looked over to find the little guy just sitting there, as fat and happy as ever. Like nothing had ever happened.

The more I told my story to people, the more people started telling their stories to me. Apparently, poop-eating is a common thing. As is touching it, reaching in to a diaper to show it off, and smearing it on the walls. I'm thinking of writing a coffee table book of everyone's disgusting tales of poo-poo. Even writing it now grosses me out. Yup. Kids are SO gross!