Parenting is gross. Really, unimaginably gross

Once, when my sister was a little tiny thing -- three or four, maybe -- she swallowed a button. When my mother called the pediatrician, he told her it was no problem, that all she had to do was make sure the button came back out again.

"But how do I do that? asked my mother. Ha.

I distinctly remember the few days it took for them to locate the button. My sister had to crap into a basin and then, wearing surgical gloves and using disposable chopsticks, they inspected her shit.

At the time this seemed to me the most foul, God-awful revolting thing a person could be called upon to do.

And then I had kids and I realized yes, it is foul and God-awful-revolting and also the sort of thing you have to do ALL THE FREAKING TIME.

I have not had to inspect anyone's shit in a basin yet though I have no doubt, with a toddler on my hands, that that day will come. I now realize that rummaging for buttons in your child's crap is just ONE of the many duties a parent is called upon to do. There is a whole CATEGORY of Shit-Related Parenting Tasks. Not just the constant diaper changing, obviously, and the diarrhea cleaning. Far worse than those merely gross responsibilities, are the emotionally-taxing shit-related ones, like, for instance. administering a suppository. Good God, what a lark. Had I had any hard alcohol lying around in the house, I would have surely availed myself of it that memorable night -- and probably given some to the baby, too.

Shit's just the tip of the gross iceberg. Vomit comes next. I had no earthly idea before i had kids just how frequently children hurl. When you are adult, you might toss your cookies one every few years, during the sporadic flu, or night spent binge-drinking, what have you. But children vomit at the drop of a damn hat. Half the time they're not even sick, they just threw up FOR NO FUCKING REASON. Also, they have unforgivable aim. Out of the approximately five hundred times my kids have thrown up, about two or three of those times was actually in a toilet or trash can. I know, I know, they can't control it, and look, I don't fault them. When they throw up, I'm all "Oh you poor thing, my darling, blah blah blah," But secretly I am thinking WHERE IS THE MAGIC GENIE THAT IS GOING TO HELP ME DEAL WITH THIS VOMITORIUM?

Once you add in the Snot and the Tooth Pulling and the Lice - dear God, the Lice!! -- to say nothing of pinworms and tapeworms and all the other unimaginably revolting stuff these kids get and carry and pass -- well, I'll just say that if I had any idea of how gross parenting would be, I'd have had a full-on panic attack. I would've still done it, but I would have hyperventilated, for a long time.

As usual with parenting, it's better you don't know what's coming. Maybe I should have mentioned that in the beginning so that those of you who don't yet have kids, or are expecting could have skipped this one. Sorry to be the bearer of gross news. Now, go get a paper bag and breathe into it.

Such seasoned parents

Approximately two to three times a day, the same thing happens in our house. Terza starts to cry, just a little at first, then louder and louder, with more and more intensity, as if she's really trying to send us a message. And we, good though very stupid parents that we are, attempt to console her.

"What's the matter honey? What is it? Is your belly bothering you? Do you need to burp? Are you hungry? Are you hot? Are you going through a growth spurt? Is it developmental? Oh baby, what IS it? What could possibly be making you cry?"

Sniff.

"Damn, something smells bad. Is that you, David? What the hell is making that smell? And why won't this baby stop crying? And why is the back of her onesie wet?"

Sound of diaper tabs being pulled off.

"Oh."

I don't know how it is possible that after three children and after three months of raising this one child, it still does not occur to us that the reason the baby might be crying is that she is dirty.

The baby has got to be sitting there, wallowing in her own feces thinking, "For fuck's sake! I've been born into a family of morons. This is Baby 101 here. CTDS. Check The Diaper, Stupid. CHECK THE DIAPER!"

We'll get it eventually.

Poopapalooza

One of the kids favorite things to do is gawk at the contents of the baby's diaper. It never ceases to amaze them how supernatural her poop is. The meconium really freaked them the hell out.

"What IS that?" Primo gasped, "Why is it BLACK?And GOOEY?"

He seemed unsure that his new sister belonged to the human race after witnessing was was coming out of her rear.

Then it turned yellow. Which was even more horrifying.

"Is that POOP?" asked Sec.

"Is that normal?" asked Primo.

And of course, the consistency of it has them awestruck. And its ability to get EVERYWHERE. Infant poop can not be contained. It is vast. It contains multitudes. And for some freaking reason, no matter how well you put on the diaper or what position the baby's in, it always leaks out the upper back area. One of the great mysteries of the world.

After the first two weeks though, the kids ceased to be scared of the poop and are now just fascinated by it. So whenever there's a dirty diaper in our house, the call "SHE DID A POOP!" rings out and children rush over from all corners to see what the damage is. The best is when the kids have a friend over and then its just plain rubber necking.

"You've GOT to see the bay's poop!" Primo advertises, "Its yellow!!!!!"

Taking pleasure in the little things.

Shit Storm

As I mentioned a few days ago, Sec has been ending up in bed with us somewhere around the 3am mark every night. It’s dismaying but neither David or I have the energy to break her of the habit, especially since it will involve lots of screaming which his sure to wake Primo and two awake children at 3am is much, much worse than one. So we’ve been grinning and bearing it for the time being but last night taking Sec into bed resulted in an actual, literal shit storm.

David tossed the kid next to me in his usual fashion and Sec moaned, “Diaper!” in her usual fashion. Though she’s pretty well potty trained during the day, the kid pisses like a racehorse in her diaper at night. By the middle of the night, that diaper weighs about 20 pounds. So I’ve taken to ripping it off of her when she rolls into bed with us in the wee hours. Since it is pitch dark, I do this without looking, usually with one hand, in a remarkably ungraceful, inefficient way that allows as much of me to remain on my pillow as possible. So last night, Sec says Diaper, and I roll over, undo the tabs and pull the diaper off of her without even pulling down her pants. It is only then that I smell it – that old, familiar, revolting stench that I, a mother of two children two years apart, know so very well. At first, I am in denial. Maybe I have to take the garbage out. Maybe its coming from outside? But the diaper is still in my hand and it is clear the foul pestilential stink is coming from the diaper.

“Oh shit,” I say, “SHIT!”

“Jesus Christ Nicole!” David shouts, sitting up in bed, “What did you do?”

“I just took the diaper off her like I always do,” I stammered.

“Didn’t you CHECK first to make sure it wasn’t full of SHIT???”

The great thing about me and David is we do really well under pressure.

“There’s shit EVERYWHERE!” he shouts.

“No shit,” I say, “Its all over MY HAND!!!!”

Lights on.
Shit all over our bed.
I scour my hands like Lady Macbeth.
Wet wipes out.
Sec cleaned.
Sec put on the floor, thankfully, still asleep, clearly relieved after her midnight evacuation.
Bed stripped.
Clean sheets located
Bed made.
Back in bed.

I use Lamaze breathing to avoid passing out from the lingering stink.

And then my daughter, that ornery little sucker who wouldn’t give you a kiss if your life depended on it, pulls my head over to hers and gives me the most magical, enchanting tiny little toddler kiss on my cheek. I positively swoon.

Just when you’re at your breaking point, they throw you a bone. And thank God for that.

The Aftermath of Quiet Time

I know it is good for Seconda and good for me, in theory, but I don’t know if I have the strength to persevere with “Quiet Time” any longer.

For starters, “Quiet Time” is almost never actually quiet, It involves a lot of protesting, whining and crying, all of which is done quite loudly.

On the rare occasion when it is quiet, then I’ve got real trouble on my hands. This was the case the other day

when my daughter stayed in her room without complaining for about a half hour. Then she yelled, “I HAVE TO DO PEEPEE!” and although she is always in her diaper, because I’m too lazy to potty train her, I decided that NOT allowing her to follow through with her own initiative was really egregious, so I told her she could go to the bathroom.

I continued to check my email, figuring she’d call me if she needed me.

Then I heard Primo yell, “MOMMY!!! SECONDA”S EATING HER POOP!!!!”

That got my attention all right.

“DON”T MOVE!” I yelled, rushing over.

Sure enough, on the floor of the bathroom was a very poopy diaper, just lying there, wide open.

And my daughter had smudges of brown around her mouth.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!” I bellowed.

Yet, deep down I had a feeling – call it maternal loyalty -- that even though she was two, and even though she was the wildest, most unruly taboo-breaker of them all, -- my daughter had not eaten her poop. Call me crazy, I just couldn’t believe it. Even Seconda has limits, I thought. She may be a monster, but she’s no animal.

After I cleaned her up and disposed of the dirty diaper, I went into her room to investigate. Then I decided my daughter was an animal, though hopefully not the shit-eating variety. It was like the Sack of Rome in there. It really looked as though a pack of robbers had trashed the place – clothes strewn everywhere, little table and chairs overturned, books ripped to bits and large streaks of Desitin smeared all over Primo’s blanket and toy chest.

Still, no trace of poop, thankfully. And then in the corner, in a tiny little crevice between the dresser and the wall I spotted what I instantly recognized as Seconda’s new secret hiding place. There was a pile of Primo’s precious Monster Little Big Heads, some feathers she ripped off his dream-catcher, a tennis ball and a completely-eaten tube of Mac lipstick.

Brown Mac lipstick.

“HALLEJUIA!” I yelled, “She didn’t eat her poop! She just ate my lipstick!!!!!!”

And there you have it, folks – parenting at its most glamorous.

A Veritable Shitstorm

As you will recall from my recent post, my daughter is no longer napping. Last week when I posted about this development, the unfortunate consequences of this were three in number, namely that she

1. Goes on a ripping rampage of any stray papers left in her, or my adjoining, bedroom
2. Has robbed me of the two hours of relative peace and work time that my sanity depends on
3. Has been an absolute, unrivalled, misbehavin’ mess of a child after the hour of 3pm. It works like this: As soon as I give up on the day’s nap, after about two hours of listening to her yell and destroy things, I release her from her “quiet time.” She smiles broadly and is blissfully happy at her tremendous victory for about five minutes. Then she yawns. And she instantly turns into the spawn of – I won’t say the devil – but one of his close relations. She is totally, completely unmanageable. She stomps up to 10 year-old boys and smacks them in their bellies (that’s as far as she can reach) for no reason whatsoever. Babies literally skitter away from her in terror. She is the menace of Park Slope.

And for a while, I thought these three downsides were about all I was going to have to deal with, in terms of the no-napping fall-out. Naïve, naïve. There is of course, awful consequence number 4 to be grappled with and it is that during the time my daughter should be napping, she:

4. Paints her body with fecal matter.

Her own, I mean. I guess that makes it a little better. I don’t know – the gross factor is so obscenely high, it’s really hard to judge. What I am trying to say is my daughter likes to take a dump in her diaper and smear it everywhere.

This has happened twice. I think you will agree that that is two times too many.

Cleaning up after a newborn who’s had a major butt blowout is one thing. Cleaning up after your two year-old who is using her bowel movements as some kind of guerilla warfare tactic is another thing altogether.

And she’s cleverly quiet about it too so I don’t hear anything and don’t come around to inquire. I mean, I should be alarmed by the silence but we parents know full well that when 30 minutes of peace falls into your lap, you are not going to question it.

And that is why my house is in the midst of an actual shitstorm.

Simply Scatological

Since I’m surrendering fully to the unapologetic glory of TMI, I offer you today this whopper.

The other day, I was holed up in my office (read: whatever room the children are not in) working on deadline, with my grandmother “in charge” of the kids. Since our house is the size of a shoebox, with walls about as thick, I could hear every syllable of the detailed monologue my grandmother was delivering about my daughter’s dirty diaper.

“Jesu mio! Seconda, are you dirty? Uffa! You dirty! You very dirty! Che puzzo! Lemme change you diaper.”

I heard her rip off the diaper tabs, followed by a gasp.

“Dio mio! What a LOAD! Oh my God! Don’t move, baby. I gotta get da wipes. OK, don’t you move. Don’t move.”

Oh, come on, Nonnie, that’s a rookie move, I thought. You know better than to leave the kid unattended with a half-open dirty diaper

.

A minute later, I heard a piercing shriek.

“NO! NO! NO!” my grandmother yelled, “DON”T TOUCH THAT!”

With unsuppressed glee, I heard my daughter laugh, then exclaim: “I’m all MUDDY!”

It is in moments like these that it’s easy to believe we came from monkeys.