Poop Chronicles IV
Hi ya’ll, finally back from holiday traveling. When I got to mom’s house I found out there was no longer internet access. Blog blackout. I survived.
I saw six of my seven siblings, including one Army-brother whom I haven’t seen in three years because he’s been off Germany and Iraq. I’ll have to post something on family-time insanity (just because I know the brothers will read this and expect me to embarass them, and I hate to disappoint)
Meanwhile, the punks are puking (on two different wool rugs) and my bags need to be unpacked, so here’s a little nugget I wrote a little over a year ago (hum, looks like June 2004, shortly before I started this blog) and I just ran across it. It fitted well with Princess-Leahmom’s stressed-out-mother guestpost, and I laughed.
A Continuing Series:
Poop Chronicles I, II, III
This is one of those if-it-were-fiction-I’d-call-it-exaggeration stories.
So I woke up this morning, my first mistake. Breakfast was uneventful. Sigh.
I took the punks (some people have kids, I have punks) to Target to get their pictures taken for their grandmas. Punk #2 decided she would scream a lot, throw popcorn, spread toys everywhere, escape the photo studio and disappear down the electronics isle and put her mother in mortal fear of child-abductors and terrorists. And that was the good part.
“Buttercup will you sit on this bench for just one second?”
“No,” as she smiles sweetly, then runs, hits the wall, bounces off the floor, cries.
One minute later.
“Buttercup will you kiss the baby?”
“No,” as she pushes the baby, grabs a big flower and starts hitting the photographer with it.
I finally put her in the red cart, thinking this would contain her. I turned my back for a few moments, my second mistake.
In the space of thirty seconds, she managed to get my purse open, find my lipstick, get the lid off, and paint her ENTIRE face bright grezzy red. And I do mean ENTIRE face. Every last inch of skin. Also painting her shirt, my purse, and everything in my purse, RED. The entire tube of lipstick, gone. Chunks of greezzy red paint on everything.
Of course I forgot the wipes.
I used the photo studio’s facial tissue to SCRAPE (”wipe” doesn’t do it justice) thick chunks of lipstick off her face.
Time to quit, pack up, go home.
So it’s lunch time. I put bowls of apple sauce on the table, then I got distracted because baby Brick started to cry. Third Mistake. When I got back to the kitchen, there was apple sauce everywhere. On the walls, the windows, the table, the chairs, in her hair, all over her clothes. I assume she also ate some. . . or not. I took off her clothes, washed her, wrapped her in a towel.
I left to grab a diaper, Forth Mistake, and when I got back she was standing over a puddle of pee in my carpet. The very carpet that dh shampooed this weekend (this was part of my mother’s day gift).
Meanwhile Punk #1 has taken off all her clothes, opened the front door, and is yelling “Hi, what’s your name?” at passers-by (in the buff), and Hero has escaped and is barking at terrified small children as they ride by on their bikes.
I catch the dog, apologize to terrified children’s pregnant mother, notice that the snap dragons need water, locate and herd my naked children back into house. Then I soaked up the urine (out of my used-to-be-brand-y-clean-carpet) and put punks down for a nap. Sigh.
But the nap turned out to be mistake number Five. Meanwhile, no nap for me:
Clean apple sauce (find a trail of it in my carpet),
clean lipstick off credit cards,
decide to buy new purse (boo hoo),
eat fudge stripe cookies,
do breakfast/lunch dishes,
feed dog,
feed baby (and read a few pages of Wyrd Sisters).
A couple of hours of frantic catch-up later I hear punk#2 singing. I open Buttercup’s door and am assaulted by the smell of poo, there she is, Baby Picasso the mighty shit master. Her hands, the sheets, the bars of the crib, the walls. Covered in acidy squishy chunky feces.
I looked at her with my ’serious’ face, and I said, “No, No. No playing in your poo.”
And she started to cry big crocodile tears, and rubbing her poop hands into her eyes. Love that. She was so heart broken, she held her arms out, wanted a snuggle from her mommy. Covered in Poo.
I threw her in the tub, called my mommy and cried.
Today I am grateful for running hot water and plentiful soap, and a glorious vision of a future free of other people’s bodily fluids.
I in no way envy you. Or rather, I in no way envy your 2004 self.
Comment by Kim Siever — January 3, 2006 @ 5:17 pm
FMH giving us more of the same ol’ … (hehe)
Comment by danithew — January 3, 2006 @ 6:47 pm
Amidst all my moving boxes and piles of junk in my house, I was able to take a moment and laugh. Out loud. It was obviously needed, since my son said “laugh again mommy, laugh again”. Thanks so much for the well needed break!!
Comment by MarissaS — January 3, 2006 @ 7:30 pm
Oh GEEZ! Hell day.
I suppose you possibly weren’t inviting sharing of other stories, but here I go ANYWAY. Er, I shouldn’t say GO, in this thread . . .
My daughter at about 2 years old or so? Or maybe it was 18 months, I can’t remember, my brain cells are on sabbatical. She, at about a year old or a little bit after, became SUCH an escape artist from her footed sleepers. Even with a safety pin through the zipper pull and top of sleeper, and even with that in place plus putting them on her backwards. How did she keep climing out through the head hole?
First time I discovered she was doing this, I went in to get her from nap, and she had fallen back asleep, naked, curled up in fetal position on her side. She was SO cute! But wet, and so was the whole area.
A few times later, it was finger-painting all over the crib, wall, etc. EWWW. We got rid of that crib about a week later. We had washed it, but it just so happened she had fallen out trying to climb out and landed straight down on her head, so we needed to get a toddler bed anyway.
I SO sympathize with you, and I only had one to deal with. Well, then there was the time I found her curled up asleep atop a high stack of boxes, and the subsequent “heart attack” I felt like I was having!
Oh, and then, at about as soon as she could sit up, there was her crying one day to us running in there, and she had gotton her foot out through the bars, bent around one Jenny-Lind style crib slat, and her foot back IN to the crip, and the front part of her foot lodged back outside the crib against the far side of the adjoining slat. She was stuck, but good! And she kept on doing this for about a year . . . . I took a few pictures, as I thought it was kind of funny . . .
Comment by Sarebear — January 3, 2006 @ 9:53 pm
EEp! I can spell aLOT better than that!
Comment by Sarebear — January 3, 2006 @ 9:54 pm
Is there a future free from bodily fluids? I’m sorry, I just can’t imagine it.
Comment by kristen j — January 3, 2006 @ 10:47 pm
I had a seminary teacher once who said the only time he doubts the existence of God is when he ponders matters involving bodily functions and bodily fluids. It’s a valid point.
Comment by Wendy — January 3, 2006 @ 10:53 pm
Bwahhhhh ha ha ha hahahahahaha HA HAHAHAHA HA HA… ahhhh….*sigh*…. he he he he…snicker. he….ha.
Some days children are so wonderful!
Comment by tracy m — January 4, 2006 @ 1:08 am
I have so much compassion…..twin boy did the “picasso” paintings for about a 3 month period of time. I was so frustrated and disgusted. Both twins would get out their jammies and diapers, but he was the only one (thank goodness) that is the artsy type.
We tried putting their jammies on them backwards, but they would just help each other get out of them. I didn’t safety pin them…I was too scared they’d figure how to open it (twins have a knack of working together and figuring out almost anything) and poke themselves….maybe that would’ve been a blessing because they would have learned not to do it, LOL.
I finally started duck-taping their diapers….that worked for a while until darling little twin son realized he didn’t need it off to get to the paint!!!!
I was at my wits end…..so I finally started duck taping their shirts and pants together, like 3 times around and that actually worked…for a while. I went in during nap time to check on them and he’s in her crib trying to help her rip the duck tape off!
I talked to my pediatrician (a great one that I loved, who had twins himself….and then we movedand had to find a new doctor….and you know what happened with that, LOL) and having experience with this himself, he told me to duck tape their clothes, and hope and pray it ended quickly.
So again, I laugh because I’ve been there, done that…and I am so sorry, LOL. At the very least we have some very good blackmail material during their teen years…LOL
Comment by PrincessLeah_Mom — January 4, 2006 @ 11:49 am
Oh, Lisa, you are SO my hero. Lipstick is almost worse than poop. It doesn’t stink, but boy does it stain! At least poop comes out with plain old water and soap. Well, sometimes.
Comment by Heather O. — January 4, 2006 @ 1:46 pm
Hey, someone else who knows who Terry Pratchett is! I’m not alone! ^_^
Comment by Sister T — January 4, 2006 @ 1:59 pm
fmhLisa:
Are you a Terry Pratchett fan? The reference to Wyrd Sisters seems to say so.
Comment by Jesse — January 4, 2006 @ 2:06 pm
Our twins when 2 years old plasted the wall paper and doorways with lippy (lipstick bleeds into paint and needs many coats to cover it successfully) of a house we were renting at the time. It took days of hard work and money to fix. But now it’s a funny memory and family story which we can now enbellish to make ever funnier.
We had New Years resolutions as Sacrament theme last Sunday. Anyone care to start the ball rolling on this sunject? I never make them. but I do make resolutions from time time as I think I need to (maybe more often on my birthdays or generally during reflective moments, or if I see someone do something good and special, which I should also be doing.)
Comment by Cliff Broome — January 4, 2006 @ 2:22 pm
I posted a picture of my daughter’s leg out & in & back out predicament here. This thread motivated me to go look through some baby pictures of her, and remember some of the funny things she did, and some of the not-so-funny!
Looking at baby pics is dangerous . . . . tugs at the womb!
Comment by Sarebear — January 4, 2006 @ 3:58 pm
When I wrote it down all that time ago, it had no outlet, I think everyone needs a blog just so these stories can get a poor-baby or two.
I’m writing this comment with two very whiney toddlers on my lap. I think that takes a unique kind of talent. But I can’t believe what a better place this is than it was just 18 months ago. Wow, that was hard, how did I do that?
Prachet. I’d like to be a fan, but my library doesn’t have a lot of the books, and I’m too poor to buy them. And I haven’t pulled my sh** together long enough to put a few more on interlibrary loan. Plus, there’s the pile of Christmas books I get to read first. But that said, I’ve really loved the four or so I have read. Which should I read next?
Comment by fMhLisa — January 4, 2006 @ 5:50 pm
fmhLisa:
Pratchett is fabulous if you want just complete silliness/escapism. He’s the kind of writer that makes me laugh out loud and I think I’ve read all but about two or three of his forty some books. He started out just making fun of the fantasy genre, but evolved into satire of all kinds of aspects of British/American culture. Most of his books you can blow through in a day or two.
Really, I’ve enjoyed basically everything he’s written, but I’d suggest any of his works that star Granny Weatherwax, or if you want titles of some with female heros or main characters:
The Wee Free Men
A Hat Full of Sky
Witches Abroad
Lords and Ladies
Equal Rites
Monstrous Regiment
You might also find Good Omens, which is about the Serpent and the Angel with the flaming sword from the garden of Eden, who, over the years, have become friends and also rather enamoured of the world as it is, with no desire to see it destroyed in any final battle and thus collude to see to it that the Antichrist is raised as a more or less normal child so that armageddon can’t take place. Just as a taste of his humor, the Angel gave his flaming sword to Adam and Eve because he felt sorry for them and thought the thing might come in handy as they tried to make it out in the lone and dreary world.
And I have to thank you for mentioning his name, because I note, in looking at his site, that there are two new books out that I have not yet read. Will have to put them on reserve.
Comment by LisaB — January 4, 2006 @ 9:00 pm
Previous comment was from me (Jesse), not LisaB, who would never waste her time on such silly stuff.
To get her to read a fiction book, I have to start reading it out loud to her and then quit at an interesting point so she *has* to pick it up and finish it herself. Otherwise, it’s just mountains of non-fiction.
Comment by LisaB — January 4, 2006 @ 9:06 pm