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.

Potty-taping and other innovations

This is my first Post of the Week, as hosted by the wonderful Notes from Home (thank you Ella, a lovely idea).

I've been smiling ever since reading I am the perfect mother, learn from me by the marvelous Northern Mum with Southern Children. It is an expert discussion on how to 'coordinate at a senior (almost impossible) level' of motherhood by taping children to potties and surreptitiously bottle-feeding them lemonade - two activities that synergize nicely as it happens.

Although I may never hope to coordinate at such a senior level as this (maternally ambitious - yes- but a promotion to mother of three might prove fatal in my case), I felt so inspired by these tips, that I immediately tottered off to polish up my motherhood CV and lobby The Boss for a raise.

In other news, Mañana Mama made an appearance on the BMB blog over the weekend, which has left all the staff here at Chaos HQ feeling more giddy than Steve Martin in The Jerk when he gets his name in the phone book:



Now if you'll excuse me now, I'm off to work on my potty-training skills. First I need to buy some tape and lemonade...

Toilet humour by way of apology

Potty training is the hellish process by which toddlers exact revenge on their parents for future ills. Somehow the Geneva Convention fails to mention potties. Perhaps as with childbirth, the frequency of this right of passage makes it seem somehow normal and okay. As a potty training survivor, I can confirm that it is not. That period in my life is a blur. I still don't like to talk about it...much. 

During my dark days in the potty training trenches, the trusty Auntie D lent me a lovely pull-the-tabs potty training book. The kind of delicate book that survives in a household with nice orderly children, not monsterdogs who use mauling to show affection. It didn't take long for some alterations to occur (see below). 

'And as a reward you can keep your other arm.' 

'Mum, I think I pushed too hard.'

Cat flees wreckage; limbs continue to drop at an alarming rate. 

I'm not even sure WHAT Ana ripped out in that last picture—whatever it was, it has long since dissappeared, likely eaten by its attacker. 

Auntie D: we officially apologise for maiming your book. However, since we had a floating head and arm handy, coupled with a sleep-deprived sense of depravity, we humbly submit the following potty story re-imaginings in compensation. 

Cat watches in abject horror. The storyline has taken a grim turn. 

Grotesque genetic experimentation gone potty.  

No. It is a human head. Cat pukes hairball in terror. 

Though I don't have a picture of it, one image sticks in my mind from the potty training days. On a dark stormy night when Ana was supposed to be tucked safely in bed upstairs, Papa and I suddenly heard her shrieking for help through the floorboards. We dashed to the rescue, ready to defend our precious girl from night pirates, monsters, ogres, demons, or whatever, armed with nothing but our bare hands and ritious anger. We smashed open her bedroom door, and there was Ana: crashing about her room with her potty stuck fast on her head, like an irate Pooh Bear caught in a honey pot. She'd snuck out of bed to try it on like a hat—just like all the good potty books all suggest.  Papa eased the hat off and calmed her down. We both tried not to laugh too much. 

Mutant flees mutilated book. Oh the humanity.  

Things have really improved since then. But we are due another dose of potty training in a bit over a year. So as they say to St Jude: pray for us.