Everyone Talks About Poop! Right?

Boy, you can never spend enough time talking about poop, can you? Well, I can't. Because I clean up the poop of 3 living creatures (not including myself). My life is all about what goes into and what comes out of these creatures. Plus, now that Adam Monkey is almost 2, we have been spending a lot of time talking about poop and pee, where it comes from, and where you are supposed to do it.

I have NOT been looking forward to potty training. Adam first went pee pee in the potty when he was a mere 16 months old. He's been telling me when he's poopy for many months now, but with a newborn around I just haven't had the motivation to try to chase around a 2-yr old trying to get him to go on the potty and then cleaning up the messes that ensue when he can't quite make it. But he drags his potty chair out all the time and asks to sit on it. Then he asks for "poop book", which is "Everyone Poops". We have reserved it for potty time so that he has a positive association with potty time. I think he still believes the potty is a place where you sit while mommy reads to you.

He rarely actually does anything in the potty. Rather, he just enjoys the quality, one-on-one time, I think. Good tactic.

So the other day I made a major mis-step. Adam's poop was...um..."formed" as they say in pediatrician talk, which meant he was minorly constipated. Upon changing his diaper I said "oh, you have poop nuggets". He repeated it back to me and it was so funny coming out of the mouth of a 2-yr old that I couldn't help but laugh. Another wrong move. Laughing when your toddler does something is another way of telling them "Do it again!". So he did. All day and evening. He ran around the house yelling "poop nuggets! poop nuggets! I have poop nuggets!". I tried really, really, really hard not to laugh.

How deprived of social interaction am I that such a phrase makes me laugh so much? I can't wait until he masters more refined comedy and can start using sarcasm and parody.

Doesn't matter. I must learn to retain myself no matter how funny the phrase is. When we were in church the other day, during a realtively quiet moment, Adam pooped in his diaper. Immediately after he yelled "I POOPY!". Immediately I covered his mouth with my hand and ushered him out as fast as I could. My goal was to get out before he yelled "poop nuggets!". Which he did, but fortunately for me, he waited until we got into the bathroom. *Sigh*.

Moral of the story: Never say anything to your children you don't want them repeating in church. And never laugh when they do something that is as inappropriate as it is funny. No matter how hard up you are for a good laugh. Oh yeah, and get out more.

Calling in sick

Sorry. It's been a hairy week. First Adam got sick. Fevers, crying, non-stop consoling. It lasted for two days. The day he got better Natasha and I both got sick. I only cried a little, but she has been miserable and unable to eat or sleep for 4 days and has been crying unless you walk around with her. She's better today, but the whole week has been, I fear, a foreshadowing of what this fall and winter will be like...

Apropos of nothing, here are some pictures of my little monkeys.

Here is Adam right after he got home from the emergency room (they gave him stickers and bubbles, and Desi loves to eat bubbles)


Here is Natasha in one of the few hats that fits her tiny little head

I got a raise!

My monkeys talked it over and decided I needed a higher salary for my job, which has felt pretty hard the last few weeks. Adam decided he would chip in by coming up to me, on his own free will, throwing his arms around me and saying "I yuvs you, mommy!". My heart just melts. Of course, he did exclaim while getting his diaper changed "I yuvs Carol" (Carol is our next door neighbor girl, 6 yrs old, who comes over and plays with Adam). Still...it means the world to me.

Natasha decided she would start giggling and even belly laughing when I play with her. She has the cutest chuckle!

Right Tools for the Job

Last night's television viewing was a representation of extremes. Nothing else was on when I was feeding Natasha so I ended up watching Trading Spouses. I was excited to find a mother on there from Minnesota. I thought surely she would be the reasonable one. Interestingly, Trading Spouces was recruiting at the Mall of America one weekend when I was there. I didn't sign up, but now that I have two little babies it could have made for an interesting experience for the mother in my place.

Sadly, the Minnesota mother was extremely obsessive about cleanliness and order. And she was a major bitch, to boot. The house she was traded to was pretty dirty, but the family seemed extremely nice. I wish she could have lightened up a bit. Minnesota mom started each day with lists. Vacuumed her floors twice daily and nothing was ever out of place. Exactly the kind of person that would have a heart attack were she to visit my house.

Later that evening, DH stumbled onto a new series called "World's Dirtiest Jobs" or something like that. If you have not seen this show (or even if you have), I do not recommend watching it. Basically they follow people around who spend their day cleaning up poop. People poop. Bird poop. Dog poop. If it poops, someone cleans it up and WDJ will follow them around with cameras.

It occurred to me that WDJ could do an episode on a stay-at-home mom with two kids in diapers, and a dog that poops like a buffalo. My day really is all about cleaning up poop (and pee, and spitup, read my post on Blood, Sweat, and Tears).

After a night watching tv like that it's no wonder I woke up inspired to clean. Inspired, but not very motivated. Looking around a house where the dishes need to be done, 2 days of laundry waiting to be sorted through, trash to be taken out, floors cleaned, crayon on the walls, it's really hard to get motivated. I don't care how much coffee you drink. The only time I can generally get motivated to clean the house is when there is an alternate, more boring task waiting to be done and I can simultaneously clean and practice the art of avoidance.

I decided to go ahead and try to tackle the crayon on the wall first. I had a box of unopened Mr. Clean Magic Erasers waiting for me. Let me tell ya, those things actually work! I did manage to get a little too into the job actually rubbing for so long and hard that I managed to remove some paint. I tend to go crazy on jobs that involve elbow grease. Same with weeding. I will neglect my garden for weeks at a time only to get started one night and weed like a maniac until midnight not even stopping to think about what I'm doing or stepping back for a moment to make sure I'm not getting out of control. I'll run into the house from exhaustion only to find the 80 foot pile of weeds the next morning wondering what the hell I was thinking the night before.

I have to say, I was hesitant to try the magic erasers. I felt like it was a gimmick, just one more thing the new product development and marketing team at 3M could dream up to extract money from bored stay-at-home moms and obsessed Minnesota Moms who appear on Trading Spouces. But they win. I'll keep buying them at $90.00 a sponge, or whatever I paid.

Now that I have succumb to their marketing ploys and gave into the magic eraser I am afraid I might go even farther. Maybe the eraser is like some gateway drug for cleaning products. I need to move into harder things like disposable toilet brushes and disposable dusting cloths just to get the same fix.

And when did EVERYTHING start becoming disposable? When I grew up, your toilet brush sat next to the toilet. Granted, you stayed as far away as possible from it as you could, but it did the trick. So did the cloth diaper and furniture spray you used to dust. Ditto the regular old rag and baking soda to clean your tub. Today, there isn't a cleaning product you can dream up that doesn't come in a dispense-one-at-a-time tub and can be thrown away.

Here's a glimpse of a few products. I'm sure each of you owns at least TWO items listed here.

The beloved eraser. Capable of destroying pen marks, pencil marks, and even crayon markings.


Disposable duster. Although I'm not sure why you need a duster to be disposable.


Another one I don't completely get. You wash your tub with a disposable cloth at the end of a stick.



I'm giving in. The toilet brush is rather disgusting. The sponge at the end is disposable, of course. The stick, you get to keep.



And let us not forget Swiffer, who invented this whole genre of cleaning products.



Here's one I have never thought of. Disposable dish rags WITH dish soap!


And here's one you can't get yet! Quick! Put your deposit down and be the first on your block to have one!


I can't decide if I love or hate this new disposability. Does the thrifty, environmental side prevail and I can continue to make do with an old rag, or does the side obsessed with cleanliness (we've all seen the Dateline special where they tell you how many bazillion kinds of bacteria live in your kitchen sponge) prevail?

I guess for me, the answer is neither. The lazy mom who hates cleaning and has a toddler that can mess things up faster than she can clean them is usually the one that wins. Maybe I'll track that Minnesota Mom from Trading Spouces down and invite her over. An obsessive compulsive like that couldn't NOT clean, right? I just hope she can remember which sticks go to which cleaning products!