Poop for Life

Once you have kids, dealing with other people's poop will never stop being a part of your daily existence. Those of you who are childless but considering the possibility of being childful, consider yourselves warned.

Starting before the baby is born, you'll be dealing with his poop--although poop in utero has a fancy name: meconium. It is (usually) black and tarry, and stays that way for a couple of days after birth. Post-birth, it is very, very smelly.

Mr. Peevie and I developed a clever scale for measuring the relative disgustingness of our babies' poopie diapers. It was known as the Wipe Scale, as in "Whoa! This one's gonna be a six-wiper!" I believe that the scale only reached 12 baby wipes; if more wipes than that were needed, we'd just strip the baby and throw him into the tub, and double-bag the clothes with the diaper and burn the whole thing.

Sometimes the poo would squish so far up the baby's back that it would be seeping through the onesie. This almost always occurred when we were at a restaurant or when we had forgotten to reload the diaper bag with wipes. It was almost gross enough to make us regret ever having children.

Eventually, you'll have to deal with potty training, although you'll have to go to other websites for helpful advice on this front. My potty-training philosophy was, they'll do it when they're good and ready anyway, so why fight about it? I observed other parents taking their kids to the potty every half an hour, and it seemed to me that it was the parents who were trained, not the kids.

That's why my boys were almost four before they were out of diapers. I know, I know; you're shocked and appalled. But you know what? We rarely had a potty battle; and when they were ready to poop in the potty, they just did it. M. Peevie potty trained way earlier than the boys, partly because she was ready earlier and partly because our babysitter, Roseanne, decided she was ready.

It was much harder on my parents, the in-laws, well-meaning acquaintances, and total strangers to accept our method of non-potty training than it was on us.

But potty training is only part of the poop picture. Even after they've theoretically learned to deposit their dumps in the porcelain pot, there are still accidents; and by "accidents" I mean what looks like a literal shit-storm that paints the bathroom a lovely shade of cocoa.

And now that they're done with accidents, they eliminate turds as big as New Hampshire, and they call us into the bathroom to admire their bowel's handiwork. One time when C. Peevie was about four, he had done his excremental duty in the appropriate porcelain container; and he was extremely proud of himself. He was not only proud of his output, he was deviously proud of the pungent stench he had produced.

He called Mr. Peevie into the bathroom to admire his turd. Mr. Peevie obediently headed toward the bathroom, smelling the malodorous opus well before he got there. C. Peevie waved him into the bathroom and said, "Smell it hard, Daddy. Smell it hard."

I don't know what it is with kids these days, but mine produce such prodigious bowel outputs that we've given our plunger a fond name.

"Go tell Plungie it's time to get to work!" we say. "A. Peevie has outdone himself this time." Oh, I'm just kidding. But seriously, we should. Currently, two out of three toilets are clogged because of the size of my kids' ordure. I need to get the plumber on speed dial.

Another poo-related problem we deal with these days is that no one under the age of, say 40-something, flushes their own poop. It sits there, mouldering, until Mr. Peevie or I discover it, holler for the culprit to identify him- or herself, and then flush it ourselves when all three of them claim, "It wasn't me!"

In summary, I would just like to ask one question: Why am I always talking about poop on this blog? Is my life really that pathetic?

Sheesh.