Really, this is pretty gross. If you don’t have small kids, or you’re set twitching by an opening line like “I use non-disposable feminine hygiene products,” this is your chance to click away.
Okay.
I use non-disposable feminine hygiene products. Gladrags, in fact. They’re great. I soak them in a bowl of water before I wash them. I put this bowl up out of reach of small children.
Or so I thought.
Yesterday, I walked into the bathroom to see the sodden pads on the floor, and two-year-old paidhi boy drinking from my soaking bowl. It was empty by the time I got ahold of it. Now, he could have emptied the bowl and refilled it, he knows how to use the sink and that’s a favorite trick of his. But still.
So, I think, nothing can possibly be that yucky today. Then five-year old Paidhi Girl says, “I think I’m going to throw up.”
“Okay,” I say, “go stand over the toilet.” Before I can join her in the bathroom, she comes back out saying she doesn’t feel like throwing up anymore. “Oh, good!” I tell her. She promptly tosses her cookies on the hallway floor. Literally–I discovered that she and Paidhi Boy had managed to snag a bag of Chips Ahoy off the shelf and spent a contented five minutes behind the big living room chair devouring the entire contents of said bag, leading to this rather messy result. She was distressed at having lost it in the hallway. “That’s okay,” I tell her, “but go stand over the toilet now.”
“No, it’s okay, I’m done now.”
She wasn’t.
Well, I think, it can’t get any worse than that. Paidhi Boy is working on the whole concept of using the potty, which requires lots of mopping up mistakes, but I’m used to that by now. I’ve even gotten used to anticipating his overwhelming desire to pee on sheets of paper. (He lays them out very carefully, and lets fly. I can usually tell when he’s setting one up.) But today, I discovered that he likes to sing. He sang, and sang, and sang, squatting on the living room floor. Yes, you can see what’s coming, although I didn’t. “How nice,” I think, “he’s singing.” Nonsense words, random pitches. I go out of the room to do something else. I come back.
“You pooped on the floor! Please poop in the potty!” I tell him, pointing to the training potty mere feet away.
“Poop!” he says happily. “Poop! Yay!” And wanders off to the bathroom, where, singing again, he climbs up on the closed toilet and pees on the lid.
So, as bedtime mercifully approaches, I think I’m nearly out of the woods, when I realize that I have failed to catch yet another accident. The little bottom is messy. He was singing just a few minutes ago! I know there’s something, somewhere.
But I can’t find it. It’s not in the living room, I’ve looked in every corner of the dining room. The bathroom seems clean, the bedrooms, the hallway–I swear, I’ve looked everywhere.
I know it’s out there. Waiting. Waiting for me to pick up a laundry basket so I can’t see exactly where I’m putting my feet.
Eeewww, gross.
