Tag Archives: poop

Public Humiliation (and not just mine)

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7

One day when L was 22 or 23 months old he asked to poop on the potty. Positive that nothing would come of it, I said sure and popped him onto the toilet. To my utter amazement, he pooped and peed and asked for underpants. So began L’s potty training. We went to the store that day and bought some underpants.

To encourage his potty interest, I rewarded him with 1 m&m for pee and 2 for poop. We spent the next few days at home, drinking lots of juice, spending waaaaaaay more time than I liked in our tiny downstairs bathroom, and having m&ms.

The m&ms were a huge hit. He had never had any candy before and I think they blew his mind. For the next several months, I continued with the m&m rewards. L was only too happy to go to the bathroom back in those days! But that’s not the point of this story. Unintentionally, I ingrained in his mind a very strong association between m&ms and going potty. I don’t think it ever occurred to him that m&ms exist outside of that paradigm. Until, one day, I took him to a puppet show.

This was a huge mistake. The whole endeavor was a disaster and I should have known better. At 2, L was even less capable of sitting still or following a plot than he is now. The show was a marionette version of the story of Perseus. WTF was I thinking? We arrive and hit the potties first thing. On our way back to our seats we pass the concession stand; feeling generous and still naively excited for our outing, I bought L some chips. L is so excited to be in the theater. He’s barely big enough to hold the folding seat down, but he’s determined and he sits, waits, and munches on chips. This is going to be great!

Waiting has never been one of L’s strengths. Soon he’s restless and bored. He notices two girls, maybe 11 or 12 years old, sitting in the row in front of us, but 5 or 6 seats down to our right. They are eating m&ms. (Were you wondering how this was going to tie in?) A whole big bag of m&ms. L has never seen a large bag of m&ms, never seen m&ms aside from the 1 or 2 he’d get for going potty. He was amazed, fascinated and wanted to know everything. “Mommy! Look! Doze girls go potty?” “Shhh, L.”

I can’t stop what happens next. The lights begin to fade. L leans over the chair in front of him (yes, it’s occupied) to get the girls’ attention. “Girls! Hey! Girls! ‘Cuze me! You go poop on the potty?” This is loud. Everyone is looking, including the girls, who are mortified. I pull, I hush, I hold him on my lap. I try to make him (and everyone) pay attention to the show that’s beginning on stage. But L is determined to find out how one gets hold of a huge bag of m&ms. What exactly does he have to do on the potty to get that? He needs to know.

He continues to harass the poor, humiliated girls. “Was it big poops? Pee too?” It couldn’t get worse for these girls. I was able to distract him for a few minutes with the show, but he quickly realized that he didn’t know wtf was going on, and he was too young to even get wtf marionettes were. Somehow, naturally, all the other kids in the audience were watching quietly.

We stayed for maybe 20 minutes. Definitely 20 minutes too long. Every couple of minutes he lurched forward again to re-humiliate the girls by asking detailed questions about their bowel movements. Of course, no one had any idea why my son was so curious about any of this. This m&m association is just his own. Those poor girls.

I finally dragged him out of there while he screamed “BUT I WANT TO KNOW IF THEY POOPED!” I yelled at him the whole drive home. I promised I would never take him anywhere ever again. And we soon stopped the m&m reward system altogether.

I was reminded of this story today when a friend offered some m&ms to L. He’s now seen them here and there and the association has worn off. Stupidly, I will probably take L to another marionette show at some point in his life.

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Kitty is Depressed

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5

Generally, when I think of my role as a mother, I’m thinking of my relationship to L and S. But long before I had them, long before I was even married, waaaaay back in 1999, I adopted a 4-year-old cat from the local animal shelter and thus first became a “mom”. So, it follows that my WTF moments sometimes involve her. Today’s WTF moment is the fact that my cat is on Prozac.

No, L’s defiance and contrary streak haven’t been getting to the cat as well. It’s actually S who was my cat’s last straw. This second child, another insult to my cat’s position in the family, just put her over the edge.

It started as a mystery. When S was a couple of months old and I was putting her down on the floor on blankets or playmats, I noticed a strong pee smell in the area. I couldn’t find the source. Finally, I found a wet spot on a blanket left on the floor. I blamed L. I thought he was acting out as a reaction to the baby and that he peed on her blanket. I got mad. He apologized. I thought that was that.

The pee smell persisted and one day I caught my cat in the act. (Why didn’t L deny the charge?) I could not believe it. This was a cat that had no annoying habits. She never meowed, never woke us up, didn’t scratch, claw at things etc. She was the perfect cat. I brought her to the vet. Clean bill of health. Went home with the advice not to leave baby blankets on the floor.

To compress a months’ long saga into a short one, the pee apparently soaked through the blankets into the carpet and once the smell is there the cat keeps peeing there. I used every cleaning product and concoction known to man. It’s through the carpet to the padding and probably the wood underneath. My only solution will be to replace my carpeting. Bad cat.

Months went by and we lived like this. The cat peed. I got crazy mad. I cleaned to no avail. Finally, I had enough. I brought her to the vet. Went home with the advice to sequester my cat to a different, smaller, area of the house. So, that’s how the cat came to live only in my master bedroom and bathroom. She has almost no human contact during the day. After a month of this, I guess she had enough, and she began her campaign of biological warfare.

As T and I climbed into bed, the cat jumped up and pooped in the middle of the bed. Holy shit. Despite every urge to take her outside and throw her in the woods  right then and there, we decided that what she needed was more attention and affection.

The next two days saw the cat reintroduced to the rest of the house, and to human contact. She was pet, brushed and held. She was around people all day. Surely she’d be happy now? Well, that’s when she peed on the bed and started peeing on the couches. That brings me to today. I called the vet. Prozac is this cat’s last shot. I’ve been feeling horrible all day knowing that soon I might be making a decision to put the cat down. She’s 15 years old, poops and pees everywhere – this is not a cat I can live with, and not a cat that is adoptable. This is sad. Maybe we should both start the Prozac.

So, wish us luck. Hopefully the Prozac will work; otherwise I’ll be facing a terrible decision. :(

Control-Freak-Bitch

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9

She’s seen it all now. All my effort to pretend I had a nice family for nothing. Nana witnessed me drag a screaming L to the car this morning, pin him in his carseat and forcibly strap him down as he thrashed, cried, shrieked, kicked, hit and tried to bite me. She then saw me turn to my husband, her son, and yell at him about something or other. Then, after storming back inside to retrieve my crying baby in her carseat, I proceeded to yell at both T and Nana about how helpful they were being standing there watching all of this.

As I drove away, after my initial mean thoughts about how useless they were and how I had to do everything, I thought about what Nana must be thinking. How much I’ve changed since she first met me 10 years ago as a carefree, adventuring young 20-something traveling with my boyfriend, who I obviously adored, and did not berate or yell at. What changed me into this control-freak-bitch?

I think life would be so much easier if I could just clone myself a few times over. That way, all the errands would be run right, the dishwasher would be loaded correctly, the laundry folded, the kids put to bed in a timely, orderly fashion etc. Everything would be done right. Instead, I have to deal with these other people helping me, and doing things all wrong.

When it’s just T, things generally run pretty smoothly. I don’t really mind when I find another pair of PJs under the PJs I just took off the baby. I think it’s weird, but I don’t care. (This happened 2 days ago. After all this time having kids, WTF is he thinking? Wasn’t it hard to squeeze already footed-feet into the second pair of footie PJs?) We have a system for dividing the labor so we don’t really step on eachother’s toes too much. I load the dishwasher; he unloads. I do all the laundry, but he carries the heavy basket upstairs. He changes all lightbulbs; I clean the bathrooms. All in all, things work and we live in peace.

Adding another adult in the house has me beside myself. I don’t have as much control over everything as I like. This lack of control makes me feel uncomfortable. I know that having everything done my way is not a life or death situation. I even know that other people *could* do things better than I do them. (Nevermind, I don’t believe that for a second.) Why do I need everything done my way so badly? Why can’t I just relinquish some of this control?

I know it would make me happier if I just didn’t care. I’d be happier if I didn’t care that L wasn’t dressed before coming downstairs this morning, making getting him dressed a 1/2 hour ordeal involving tears and yelling and even a time out, rather than a 3 minute nothing if done first thing in his room. And why does it bother me so much that Nana wants to handwash everything instead of just putting it all in the dishwasher? She’s the one slaving over the sink, why does it drive me crazy? I’ll tell you why: because I am a control-freak-bitch.

I am sure I’m not the only one. Motherhood changes some of us into these people we sometimes don’t like. It’s insult added to injury. Not only do we not look like our younger selves, but our personalities are worse as well. It’s another one of those terrible stereotypes about women and wives. It’s the harpy wife who gives chores, nags, and isn’t pleased by the job done. I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want poor T to have to live with that person! But, am I turning into her? What kind of message does that send my kids about what a woman’s job is, and a man’s worth?

Isn’t it typical that even when I’m trying so hard to make everything go right for my kids, I’m still unhappy that I’m not doing a good enough job, because just by virtue of trying I’m teaching my kids something bad? Ugh, can’t it ever just be easy? Forget saving for college, I need to save up for my kids’ therapy.

I’m Having a Tantrum

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26

Warning: as I write this I am in the middle of a battle. I am currently angry. Everything I may say here is the stuff I think while in the throes of this shit. These are not the sane thoughts I may have a few hours from now. After bedtime, after a glass (likely more) of wine.

New parenting strategy sucks and fails. Instead of engaging L in the daily battle for him to poop, I decided to let him do whatever he wants. So, when he pooped a bit in his pants, but still refused to go the rest of the way on the toilet, I said “OK, we’re late to meet our friends, let’s go.” Then, at the playground, when he couldn’t run around with his friends, and he kept going to stand in a corner with his legs crossed in desperation, I let him know that at any time I could take him to the potty at the playground, or we could go home to go potty. He declined. We stayed at the park. Then, when we got home and found that he had pooped more in his pants, I sat him on the toilet. That brings us to now. I had to walk out of the bathroom because I was going to lose it. I was going to get in his face and scream at him that what he’s doing it so stupid. He is refusing to poop, STILL. He is also crying because his bottom is so sore from being filthy all this time. So, leaving my idiot 3-year-old to his own devices does not work. What else can I do? I don’t have the patience or kindness for this.

This is not a potty training thing. L has been potty trained for nearly a year and a half. This is a recent phenomenon that I didn’t originally handle well and it has now turned into a major issue. I give the kid Miralax daily to ensure he does not become constipated. He does, eventually, have at least one bm per day.

I’m at my wit’s end. I quit. I want to holler from the rooftop that I have a malfunctioning 3-year-old for sale.

There, I said it all. I called my child an idiot and you all witnessed it. This is my secret inner dialogue and maybe I really am the only mom who has it. Maybe you are now thinking that this really isn’t a blog you want to read after all, since I’m clearly the meanest mom ever. But this is just where I am right now. And maybe I’m not the only one. Maybe some morsel of this mommy-tantrum is familiar to someone else.

My son is in the other room crying. I am out of my depth. If I can’t handle a 3-year-old’s poop issues, how am I going to manage my kids’ problems when they’re older and the problems are bigger? Obviously I don’t have what it takes.

OK, deep breath. I don’t know if I can say kind things to L right now. But I can read him a book. Here I go.

My Son, #@$!&%

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11

I imagine life in other people’s homes as mostly pleasant. Sure there are normal toddler tantrums, there’s over-stimulation, hunger and over-tired outbursts, but I expect that most of the time, the people in the home are happy. This is not true in my home – we are not happy. We aren’t happy because we live with a crazy person.

From one moment to the next, over the smallest of infractions, L can go from the happiest child to a sulking, brooding, foot stomping, hitting, kicking, spitting, screaming, threat-slinging monster. (I thought that brooding was reserved for teenagers? Maybe I’m just getting it out of the way early? Wishful thinking, I’m sure.)

So far this morning L has told me that he loves me and thanked me for the new shirt I bought him yesterday. (Aw!) A short time later, he attacked me with his drumsticks, calling me “Bad Mommy” and telling me that he didn’t like me and didn’t have to listen. (#%$!) Soon after that he cuddled up to my leg to ask if he could help me.  (Aw!) A moment later he screamed at me not to look at him, demanding that he needs privacy. (@$%&*) WTF? How am I supposed to live with this kind of mood-shifter?

I’ve tried different tactics dealing with his bad behavior. I have given more time outs than you would believe. No effect. I have taken away offending toys (the ones he hits me with, throws, etc). No effect. (On one particularly bad day, I actually took away every single toy and book. I carried his whole toy box, very nearly killing myself, down to the basement telling him that I was going to give it all away to nice poor children. Once again, I’m waiting for my mom of the year award.) I have ignored him. This just leads to more and more outlandish behavior until it can no longer be ignored. What can I do? How can my sweet child say that he wants to throw me in the garbage? And where in the world did  he come up with “I’m going to shoot you with my gun!”? What kind of bad mother am I to have a child who says these things?

Just like in everything in life, different people excel at different things. I think I’m a good mom to a baby. I am not good at 3-year-old boy. I just don’t get him; I react too emotionally to his evil outbursts; I am almost never on the same page as him; I don’t like his games (mostly running and throwing himself at things and asking “isn’t that cool?”); I don’t like his interests (poop, worms, jumping off of dangerous things); I don’t have the same type of energy (constant). I’m hoping, that at some later age, we’ll sync up again. Until then, I’m considering renting him out. But, just like my damn cat who now pees on the carpet, who would want him? Do those safe haven places even take 3-year-olds?

And then, just when I’m ready to pack him in the car to drop him off at the local fire station, his natural instinct for self-preservation kicks in. He turns on the charm, dialing up to full blast, and says something like “Mommy, you’re my special girl.” And, like an idiot, I melt. All is forgiven. My sweet, snuggly, boy is back, his demons exorcised. For the moment.

It Not Easy

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7

August 2009: L is about 2.5 and still sleeping in a crib, in a pull-up. I’m 8 mos pregnant.

I come into his room after his nap to find him absolutely covered in poop. His arms to well above his elbows. His legs in entirety. The crib, the walls, everything. So gross. His explanation: “But me just trying to make waterfall with my poop. It not easy.” I have no idea what he was talking about or what he meant. But poop waterfalls have been officially outlawed in this house.

The Upside to Senility

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16

I’m looking forward to getting old, to a time when my memories of my kids’ younger years are clouded by nostalgia and become sepia toned. At that time, I will look at the pictures I took today and I’ll pull a memory out of thin air. One that feels real, matches the adorable photos, but is totally unrelated to what actually happened today. I will be the person telling others (my own kids perhaps!) to enjoy these years, because they grow up so quick. Snort!

So, back to reality. Let’s start with the photos. Adorable 3-year-old son seated at a sun-swathed picnic table. Green pastures dotted with cows behind him. On his face a huge grin, and a formidable chocolate ice cream goatee. That’s right, I took the kid out for ice cream. Kid heaven, right?

As always, with retrospect I recognize that the disaster that ensued was a result of my own mistakes. Instead of giving L a snack upon waking from his nap, I decided he could make it until we got ice cream. He was so excited! But, by the time we got there, his mood had deteriorated into hungry-3-year-old. If you’re not familiar with this, well, then you’re lucky. But if you are, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. A simple question like, “Do you want a cone or a cup?” sends the kid into a screaming tantrum. Feet stomping, face pouting, shouting demands to everyone (“Stop looking at me!!”).

I am mortified and apologize to everyone I see. I can feel the judgments in their minds. Of course he’s a spoiled brat, his mom is getting him ice cream while he behaves like THAT! and No kid of mine would get away with that kind of behavior! You get the point. One kind gentlemen took pity on me and offered to show L his “cool tractor” outside. Poor guy never saw it coming. L turned the full force of his fury on him screaming, “No! You get away from me! Don’t you talk to me! I don’t like you! I poop on your head!”

I know, I know, I should have taken him by the hand right then and there and left. But, that’s what I did earlier in the day when he behaved this way in gymnastics class. At some point, I actually have to follow through with a planned activity, don’t I? Also, this ice cream was a reward he earned. His jar of pom-poms was filled from his good behaviors all week. And I knew he was just hungry, which was my fault. So I got him the ice cream.

We go to the picnic table and he continues his tirade. He calls me a bad mom. That’s it. I yank the untouched ice cream out of his hand, take a bite, tell him its delicious, and head to the garbage can. This is really what he deserves. This is exactly what I should have done, but when I got to the garbage, I had a change of heart (stupid, stupid heart). I gave him back the ice cream with the threat that if he said one more obnoxious thing, I was going to throw it away. Empty threat. He knew it. I knew it.

His unpleasantness wore off about halfway through the ice cream, when enough food was in his stomach for it to send a signal to his brain to turn off the evil switch. This is when I got my pictures in. He had an enormous chocolate goatee and was so adorable (if you didn’t know him). When he finished eating we head back inside to wash his hands. Everyone inside swoons at his cuteness and he acts the part beautifully. I feel slightly redeemed. The redemption is fleeting.

In the bathroom, he tells me “I don’t have to poop.” This was unprompted, which means that he really has to go. Bad. I urge and plead with him to sit on the potty. No go. Finally I just force him. I pull down his pants and sit him up there. He thrashes, hitting, kicking, screaming. (Keep in mind, this whole time I have 7-month-old S in an ergo on my chest.) He refuses to poop. Defeated, we head out. As I’m paying for the pint of ice cream to take home, my L poops in his pants. This is SECONDS after leaving the bathroom.

Old age, come and get me! Let me pine for these days. Let me cry at L’s wedding and wish for just one second I could have my 3-year-old back. Let me tell my future daughter-in-law that my kids never behaved that way when she comes to visit with my rotten 3-year-old grand kids. I don’t care that I’ll be wrong. I want to love these days. I want to love this child. (Well, OK, I do love him, but I want to like him too! And not just when he’s sleeping.) This is why I take photos. The photos capture a moment that could have been, might have been, should have been, and one day, according to my failing mind, is what happened.
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