Monday, May 7, 2018

The Day There was Poop on My Porch




If you do not enjoy reading stories pertaining to bodily fluids, this blog post is not for you.  I’m actually not crazy about stories pertaining to bodily fluids, but since having twin boys, they seem to be my lot in life.

Some of you may remember my bodily fluid laden posts about potty training some five or six months ago.  At the time, Ryan was taking to potty training like a champ while Joel showed little to no interest. Fast forward to now, and those crafty little guys have traded places.  Joel has been trained for months, and Ryan hasn’t been trained since mid January.

I have known I needed to re-double my efforts with Ryan for some time, but I simply haven’t had the energy.  After spending a good six weeks carefully training him and then his brother, I just didn’t feel like dealing with that kind of crap (pun intended) all over again.

But summer, along with the boys’ third birthday, has brought new motivation.  I chose Monday as our triumphant return to potty training boot camp.  I gathered the supplies Sunday night:  towels, wash cloths and baby wipes for clean up and plenty of extra shorts.  I set them all neatly on the counter downstairs and went to bed, hopeful that since Ryan had been trained once before, it would be relatively painless (and relatively mess-less) this time around.

In the morning I put Ryan in a pair of loose fitting shorts with no underwear (according to the potty training research I’ve done, it’s much more disconcerting to have an accident without underwear on, which supposedly leads to faster results).  I made a big deal about how we were all finished wearing diapers during the day, and both boys marched down the stairs chanting ‘NO MORE DIAPERS!!’ at the tops of their little lungs.

Ryan had a small accident before we left to take the girls to school.  He helped clean up the floor and then to his delight and Nicole’s horror, nakedly chased his sister around the living room while she yelled, “Eeew, don’t touch me!”

After dropping the girls off at school, I drove to McDonald’s for my daily iced tea.  If I had known how the rest of the morning was going to progress, I would have gotten something stronger…

The whole way home from McDonald’s Joel repeatedly asked, “I see bug?”  

Because with twin boys, apparently bugs are also my lot in life.  Even though it’s only May, it’s June bug season here in Missouri.  Which means our porch and garage are always littered with at least a few of the marble sized beetles lying on their backs, either dead or on their way to dead.  Ryan and Joel find this absolutely fascinating, and can spend good chunks of time running back and forth between the garage and porch, squatting and pointing and yelling, “I see bug!!”

I saw an opportunity to use their affinity for bugs and took it.  I told the boys that of course they could see the bugs, as long as Ryan went pee-pee in the potty first.  To my astonishment, it actually worked!  Ryan sat on the potty, peed, and yelled, “I did it!”

We both clapped, high fived, and celebrated with a peanut m&m, because I am the kind of parent who uses non-organic, sugary bribes.  Then we ran outside to look at the bugs.

I was so pleased with the way boot camp was progressing, and the boys were so pleased with the dying June bugs that I thought I’d call my parents for a chat.  I figured they’d probably want to congratulate me on my parenting prowess, and also they are the only ones who are reliably up by 7:30 am.

I had barely passed the ‘hello how are you’ portion of our phone call when I noticed Joel wiggling and Ryan holding the back of his pants.  I knew that there was a chance we were about to have two different problems, but when I asked both boys if they had to go potty, it was Joel that came running inside the house with me.

I figured I’d take care of Joel first, and then go back and get Ryan, hopefully before the sh*t hit the fan, or in this case the pavement.

I sat Joel on the potty with my phone still balanced between my shoulder and my ear.  In my haste to get back outside to Ryan, I failed to remind Joel to point down.  Pee arced past my line of vision and began dribbling down the wainscoting.  I determined that this was perhaps not the time to be congratulated on my parenting prowess and told my dad I’d call him later.

Because Ryan was outside on the porch by himself, I knew I’d have to clean up the mess later.  I hurried Joel back into his shorts, washed his hands, and ran to the front door to check on Ryan.

By the time I got past the childproof knob and wrenched the door open, Ryan was gone.  I looked left and right and called his name hopefully, but there was no answer.  Then I looked down and saw a moderately sized pile of poo on the front walk.

I deduced that one of two things had happened.  Either A, an enemy had stolen my child and to add insult to injury, had left a pile of crap on my sidewalk, or B (and this was the option I found more likely), Ryan had produced the turd and was so shocked and ashamed when it fell out of his shorts that he went running to the back yard to hide.

Not surprisingly, scenario B was correct.  Joel and I found Ryan camped out in the upper level of the playhouse, a sheepish grin on his face.

So the moral of this story is….

Actually I’m not sure this story has a moral.  Maybe its purpose is just to put your Monday into perspective.  Because maybe you had to get up early to go back to work, or maybe you got stuck in traffic.  Maybe you had to yell at your kids twenty-five times to put on their shoes to go to school and maybe you had to say the words, “Please stop licking your brother’s hair.”  But probably you don’t have pee dripping down your wainscoting and a moderately sized poo on your front walk.