Deja poo

From a sociological perspective, the short world is fascinating. You wouldn't suspect it from stock phrases like 'googalibababa', but short people are verbal hawks who are always watching for prey.

My research indicates that a favourite pass-time of short people is the old a 'accidental' profanity game. The scoring goes like this: one point for a flustered mum, two points for an embarrassed babysitter, and ten points for a tut-tutting room of smug observers (whose children will NEVER speak like that).

A prime example is the time (or one of the times) I stubbed my toe, shouted a word that rhymes with  'git', leading Ana to go off like a car alarm 'GIT! GIT! GIT!' thereby making her day.

Ana went through a very active patch of Pediatric Outburst Syndrome. She used to discuss male chickens in the context of clocks, and git in conjunction with torso-cover. She also liked to point out 'HUGE POOS!' usually when there weren't any around. The phrase, as you might expect of such a household as this, was introduced by her mama, spoken in a moment of anger at the neighbourhood's poo-hose cat.

Speaking of huge poos, in my younger and more impressionable days, I was once naive enough to let a naked baby run around the sitting room for several minutes. You see, midwives and health visitors have this joke they like to play on new mothers: they say in very earnest tones, that the best way to avoid nappy rash is to let a baby run around in her birthday suit for brief spells each day. In an infamous incident that has come to be known in this house as 'Poop Slide Gate', I discovered the punchline to this joke.

I left my smiling angel on the carpet of the sitting room and walked to the kitchen for two minutes. When I returned, I smelled the punchline. Then I spotted a big pile of punchline on the carpet. There were cute little baby footprints leading in a trail, like Gretal and her breadcrumbs, all around the living room, up the stairs of our plastic slide (on loan from the toy library), then a swerving streak of punchline all the way down. The baby at the bottom of the slide was covered in punchline, and deep in concentration, body-painting. Needless to say, I am more wary of visiting health advice these days.

Pants. 

Relative peace, in poo terms, returned to this house after Ana potty trained. But Ali is turning into a chatterbox, and has noticed that everyone in this house visits the toilet except for her.* She is very leery of being left out, so she likes to toddle along on toilet visits and, in the manner of a beagle shouting at the moon, unleash an ode to 'pooooooooooooooooo'. And she is starting to take an interest in mispronounced clocks too. Ali, like her sister before her, is getting to be a skilled practitioner of the accidental profanity game.

This post was written for the year's most illustrious event, the Carnival of Poo, hosted by the talented Ella of Notes from Home fame.

*Actually that's a lie: Ali frequently visits the toilet. I know when she has done so, because she kindly leaves evidence of her visit floating duck-like in the toilet bowl: toys, shoes, and hairbrushes, entire civilisations.