Poop, Pee, and a Port-a-Potty: A Parent’s Life

Frequently, in child rearing, just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does.

Take the day my son pooped on my foot.

We’ve been doing a gentle form of potty training in our house, the kind that does not require us to abandon the four-month-old for an entire weekend spent running around after our naked son with his potty in our hands.  Instead, we cajole him into hanging around the house naked for an hour or two at times when we can be bothered to ask, “Do you need to sit on the potty?” at five-minute intervals.

This was one of those mornings when he was happily naked.  Happily, that is, until he noticed the package of pull-ups I rather unwisely bought a couple of months ago.  I thought they were a plausible step toward potty training until Mike pointed out in rather strident terms that they do not work so conveniently when there is poop involved.

Based on this information, I tried to dissuade Jake from his fixation on the pull-ups by promising him he could wear one once he had pooped on the potty.

“I want a pull-up!”  Jake responded.

“When you poop on the potty,” I repeated patiently.

“I DO WANT A PULL-UP!” Jake insisted in that way of his that reflects his conviction that if you say “no” you must not understand what it is he is saying.

“When you poop on the potty,” I said in a firm, motherly tone designed to mask a fury of impatience with a two-year-old’s reasoning skills.  And I walked out of the bathroom.

The tantrum that followed bordered on the epic.

After a few minutes that felt like years of abandoning my poor, beknighted, sobbing child, I sat on the floor next to him and asked him if he wanted a hug.  Drawing ragged breaths around the thumb in his mouth, my beautiful, pants-less boy snuggled close in my lap.

Unbeknownst to me, this was the moment he pooped on my foot.

Just One of Those Oh-So-Abundant Days

It took more than a little while for me to figure out where the poop smell was coming from.

We were playing in the living room, all pull-up trauma forgotten, when my bloodhound-sharp Mommy nose picked up the scent of a dirty diaper.

“Did you poop?” I asked Jake.  When I noticed that he was not in fact wearing a diaper, a tickle of panic circled up my spine.

“Yes,” Jake informed me.

“Where?” I asked in one of those this-is-what-being-a-mother-is-really-about moments.

“On the couch,” Jake said.

We have, I regret to say, a dark brown leather couch, roughly the color of poop.  Add several piles of old newspapers, an array of Dr. Seuss books, and a few baby toys, and you can see the difficulty I was facing.

Motherhood, however, has a way of stripping us of our dignity, and there was poop to be found.  And so I crawled around the couch sniffing furiously.

“I don’t smell anything,” I said, puzzled when I probably should have been kind of grossed out.

I checked the bathroom.  I followed Jake’s path from there to the living room.  Nothing apparent to either eyes or nose.

“Jake says he pooped, but I can’t find it,” I informed Mike when he came downstairs.

Mike, ever the father, shrugged.  “I guess it’ll turn up,” he said.

This is life in our house.

Following Mike’s advice, I took Lily onto the front porch to wave good-bye to her father and brother as they left for school and work, to play, and to generally ignore the fact that her brother’s poop lay somewhere in the house.  After ten or fifteen minutes, Lily decided it was time for her nursing and nap, so we settled down in the big, wicker armchair from whence I project my vision of hillbilly-ness nursing my baby as I wave to passersby.

It was a tad chilly that morning, so I tucked my feet up under me and settled Lily down for nursing.  It was then that the poop smell returned.

No slouch in the sleuthing department, I directed my gaze at my exposed ankle.  On which could still be seen a dried smear of, yes, poop.

You might think I jumped up right then and scrubbed my ankle raw in the downstairs bathroom sink.  If you think so, you don’t know that I am the mother who once sat through an entire showing of Superbad covered in my son’s vomit because I hadn’t been to a movie in a really long time and I really, really wanted to see this one even after Jake threw up on me during the opening credits.

No, Lily had to be fed and rocked to sleep, and besides, the poop was already dried.  And it came from my son, which is a whole lot less disconcerting than if I had, say, stepped in one of the dogs’ poop.

Once I got Lily settled down to sleep, I headed for the bedroom to change into my yoga clothes.  Because there’s only so much free time during Lily’s morning nap, and I wasn’t about to give up my yoga practice for a little dried poop on my ankle.  If you are having trouble believing this, please reference Superbad story above.

At any rate, I did not get a chance to practice yoga with a two-year-old’s poop on my ankle.  Because there, in the middle of our nearly brand new, all natural, king sized, latex mattress dressed in Crate and Barrel sheets was an enormous puddle of pee.

You will excuse me for first thinking this was Jake’s work as well.  Except that it was awfully big for a little boy.  And, come to think of it, Jake hadn’t been upstairs all morning, and certainly not without a diaper on.

There could be only one culprit.  The dog.

Not the dog who had received the blame for the puddle of pee on this same mattress when it rested in Jake’s room awaiting the bed frame we needed to move it to its proper home in ours.  No, this puddle could have come only from the 85-pound bloodhound mix whom I had caught sleeping in the middle of our bed on more than one occasion.  The one who, in a perfect imitation of a teenager, shuffles around without ever really lifting her feet off the floor, lies around on the green armchair in front of the television all day, and never gets out of bed before 11.

Now I understood how she managed to go so long without heading to the yard for a morning pee.

There is a certain sense of dizziness that occurs when you want to yell and scream at the dog who has peed on your brand new mattress but you also very much do not want to wake your baby sleeping in the next room.  I managed something raspy and, apparently, very, very scary.  The dog scampered away from me, tail between her legs, and was booted unceremoniously out of the house without my ever feeling entirely certain that she knew what she had done wrong.

Now I faced the task of figuring out how to clean dog pee out of the middle of a king-sized bed.

Thankfully, new Crate and Barrel sheets do a pretty good job of water repelling, so at least half of the pee lay puddled on top of the duvet to be soaked up with a pile of rags.  The duvet cover, of course, could be laundered.  So, I noted with relief, could the down comforter.

Like an archeologist, I continued digging down through the layers.  The pee had soaked through the duvet to the fitted sheet beneath.  And, I discovered after removing the fitted sheet, through that to the wool batting that encases the latex mattress.  This batting, I found the first time I had to clean dog pee off my mattress, is not removable, puzzling zipper suggesting otherwise notwithstanding.

It turns out, I am relieved to report, Shikai organic shampoo does a pretty great job of cleaning dog pee out of a wool batting mattress case.  And makes it smell a whole lot better.

Feeling pretty pleased with my organic shampoo triumph over the dog’s call of nature, I finally unrolled my yoga mat, settled myself on it, and felt myself being watched.

I’d like to say I turned to look at Lily’s gorgeous, open smile and beamed right back at her, yoga forgotten in the face of my even greater priority.  But I didn’t.  Instead, I pretended not to see her.  I had, after all, just spent half an hour cleaning dog pee off of my bed and was understandably a little bit cranky.

Acting as if I simply hadn’t noticed that Lily was awake, I avoided her gaze and worked on a really loud ujjayi breath, reasoning that it must have rocked her to sleep in utero and hence might do the same here.

My reasoning, it seems, was not sound.  Lydia complained mightily, as she had every right to do, until I finally lifted her from the swing that is supposed to keep her asleep for a couple of hours, not the mere half hour she had managed this morning as I cleaned up dog pee.

“Fine,” I said in a bright voice meant to mask the harsh words she couldn’t understand.  “But I AM taking a shower because I have to wash your brother’s POOP off of my foot.”

Funny how much I sounded just like him at that moment.

But Wait — There’s More!

I truly thought the story ended with my showering.  Or possibly several days later when the duvet was finally dry enough to put back on the bed.  And it might have if the bazillion stresses that must be attended to in the three hours or so I have free on Lily’s daycare days hadn’t interfered with my writing.

Instead, before I could write about my day, I found myself heading into another weekend, poised at the top of the chute, like a passenger on the log ride at Magic Mountain that I used to love so dearly.  You look forward to it on the jerky, slow climb up, sit suspended in giddy anticipation at the top, and then scream your lungs out on the way down, finding exhilaration only when it is over.  This is pretty much what weekends with two children under the age of three is like.

Happily, Saturday night offered up a Shindig on the Green, a nearly weekly outdoor summer bluegrass festival in downtown Asheville.  You get to spread out a picnic blanket and eat outside, something for which I had an inexplicable affinity even before it meant I didn’t have to worry about my children bothering the other diners.  Children are not only allowed but encouraged to run wild.  And, this being Asheville, we inevitably end up bumping into someone we know and feeling like we have a social life.

It was truly a lovely evening, with all the attractions securely in place.  And then, as Mike was chatting with a neighbor, Jake took a break from running after the neighbor’s six-year-old son to inform us that he had to go to the potty.

It bears explaining that Shindig is outdoors on a large grass field.  It is not indoors in a facility with accompanying indoor plumbing.  It is not adjacent to a municipal building where someone will let you indoors to use said plumbing.  Furthermore, it is free, so there are no funds to pay for indoor plumbing.

There are port-a-potties.

I said something along these lines to Jake.

“He wants to go potty,” Mike said, raising his eyebrows in a way that quite clearly said, “We are in the midst of potty training and can not turn down a request to go to the potty, especially when I am busy talking to someone and you are the one who will have to take him.”

Defeated, I handed Lily over to Mike, grabbed Jake’s hand, and ran with him to the port-a-potties.

I had assumed they were new and clean and special port-a-potties like the ones some friends rented for their outdoor wedding once.  I had assumed wrong.

I opened the door to a humid rush of warm, heavy air.  Bent down as I was to hold Jake back, I had a clear line of sight to the potty opening.  And it was not pretty.

“Okay,” I said, letting the door swing shut and taking a breath of fresh air in the hopes that it would clear my head and give me a clue as to how to handle this situation.  “Let’s take off your diaper.”

Down went the pants and off went the diaper.  Squaring my shoulders and affecting an air of normality lest I scare Jake off his potty training, I opened the door again.

The opening stared at me once more, ominously offering up what lay just below the spot where my son’s precious bottom was supposed to sit.  The opening, I noted uneasily, was way, way too big for Jake to sit on it properly.  Nightmarish visions began to paw the earth, ready to stampede into my consciousness.

Then I had a perfectly brilliant Parent Solution.  Jake, I thought, could stand up and straddle the potty opening.  Much, much safer than sitting or touching anything.  And I’d have a good, firm grip on him.

I explained my plan to him.  And performed the fatal flaw in my execution:  I removed only one of his legs from his shorts, leaving the other around his other leg.

It all happened so fast.  I opened the door again, lifted Jake up, turned toward the potty, and watched in horror as his shorts slipped off his leg and fell straight down into the gruesome opening.

Without pausing for a moment, I swung Jake back around and out onto the grass once again.  “Let’s put on your diaper,” I said, my voice shaking.  For a moment I considered whether Mike would call me wasteful for leaving the shorts in the port-a-potty.  But I really didn’t care.

Tears trembled at the edge of hysterical laughter as I followed my boy in his Bronx Bombers basketball tee-shirt, diaper, white socks, and low top tennis shoes back to where Mike was still chatting with the neighbor.

Mike gave me a quizzical look.

“His pants fell in the port-a-potty,” I snorted.

“They fell in the port-a-potty?” our neighbor asked.  He tried to await my confirmation before laughing at me.

I looked at Mike, trying to decide whether I was allowed to laugh too or ought to go ahead and cry.  I tried to explain how it had happened.  I tried to make it seem like something that could have happened to anyone.

“What are we supposed to do now?” Mike asked.

I looked at Jake, running pants-less after his friend without a hint of self-consciousness.  “He doesn’t seem to mind,” I said.  Even if I hadn’t just dropped his shorts down the port-a-potty, I’m that kind of mother.

“He looks like a hillbilly,” Mike declared, in an unusual display of concern about what other people might think.  “We have to take him home.”

I looked again at my son having a ball and played for time.  “I should go say hello to Laurie,” I said, referring to the neighbor’s wife.

By the time I found her, her husband had already told her the story.  She gleefully related it to a friend to whom I had just been introduced.  And, as if to reward me for being willing to have my foibles displayed to a stranger, she offered up an extra pair of her six-year-old’s pants she had in her bag.

Even after we rolled the waistband over about four times, Jake tripped on the legs.  And he was so hyped up that he had a tantrum and we had to go home anyhow, so the pants bought him only about fifteen extra minutes.  And I have yet to return them because I am planning to make zucchini bread with the bounty we have harvested from our garden and received in our weekly CSA box and I thought it would be nice to return the pants with a thank-you loaf of zucchini bread.

But soon I will return them.  And the identical pair of shorts I found on sale online as soon as we got home from Shindig should arrive any day.  But I fear simply disposing of the evidence will not be enough for me forget the helpless feeling of dropping my son’s pants in the port-a-potty.

So What’s the Lesson?

What is the lesson to be learned here?  Aside from the obvious:  Remove your son’s pants entirely before lifting him up to pee in the port-a-potty.

Something more has been tickling at me in the days since my scatalogical escapades, some signs from the Universe that I was not — as a paranoid person might believe — being punished for something very bad I had apparently done without knowing it.

First, there was Jake’s first parent-teacher conference a few hours after I washed his poop off my foot.  I learned that he is as sweet at school as he is at home.  That he is a calming presence in a class full of two-year-olds.  And that I am very, very proud of him.  Okay, I knew that last part.  But what I did learn is that his teachers think we must be pretty good parents to have produced such a great kid.

Then there was the loveliness — the fun — of spending the weekend with my kids.  I let go of the idea that weekends are for sleeping in or for reading the Sunday New York Times or for going to a movie or for in any other way treating myself.  Weekends, for my foreseeable future, are about taking care of my kids.

And when I approach them with this understanding, taking care of my kids is fun.  We go to City Market on Saturday morning and eat pastries and pet dogs.  We socialize with neighbors and listen to bluegrass at Shindig on the Green.  We spend Sunday at the pool with Jake’s friends.  I don’t even complain when Lily is up at six a.m. on Sunday morning; instead, I recall the days when I liked being up at six a.m. and took her for a walk in the still of a cool morning with joggers and streets empty of cars.

And what I realized is that it’s pretty easy to be a good parent.  Right now, at this moment, with a two-year-old prone to two-year-old tantrums and a four-month-old who likes to nurse every hour or so when she is bored and a house that is a mess and wedding presents long overdue to be shipped sitting so long in the dining room that I don’t see them any more and a crisper drawer crammed full of zucchini my son won’t eat and cabbage I can’t eat because it gives Lily gas and then she wants to nurse even more frequently — right now, I can be a good parent because I realize that being a parent is fun.  If you let it be.  If, for example, you choose to laugh rather than cry when you drop your son’s pants in the port-a-potty.

So rather than cry over the poop on my foot and the dog pee in the bed and the fact that both of these things happened on the day that Lily decided not to take much of a morning nap and, further, was banished from daycare until 2:30 because of an innoculation-induced fever the day before (“twenty-four hours fever free!” the caregivers chant, somewhat loopy, I’ll bet, from having to say it so often) — rather than cry, I have decided to embrace it all.  To proudly tell all my friends that I dropped Jake’s pants down the port-a-potty.  To fess right up to the fact that I spent an entire morning with dried boy poop on my foot.

To love that motherhood makes me slightly gross and more than a little bit crazy and if not oblivious then healthily unconcerned with what other people think of me.

All this, when I barely even had the chance to unroll my yoga mat.

Walking Yoga

In honor of the fact that Lily and the dog and Jake’s poop prevented me from a yoga practice and that weekends with the kids always prevent a practice, and in recognition of just how awesomely peace-infusing my early morning walk with Lily was on Sunday, I offer here the chance for you to give up your yoga for one day and take a walk instead.

I’m not talking about a walk-to-the-bagel-shop-and-eat-breakfast walk.  Nor do I mean a power-walk that you pretend is just as good as running because, really, you could do a six-mile run just like you used to fifteen years ago when you were a type-A+ lawyer if you really wanted to.

I mean a walk where you get out of bed before the day has settled into heat and sunlight and motion.  Where you get the chance to be one of those people up when others are still settled and sleeping.

I mean the kind of walk where you head in a new direction, choose a street you’ve never traveled down before.  And you just enjoy it.  No sense of destination, no bigger purpose.  Just walking and smelling the morning air and feeling new and special in your own skin.

Tagged as: port-a-potty, potty training, yoga and motherhood