The One About Poop

Not for the faint of heart. Please visit some other more intellectually or spiritually elevated blog for today's reading, if you cannot stomach the earthy nature of this post. That includes even the ghost of Jonathan Swift. Thank you kindly.

Because Will drank a quantity of Jack's juice this morning, which was spiked with a little Miralax, which Jack needs and Will does not, there emanated from his bottom a quantity, consistency, and forcefulness of poop that caused John and me to marvel exceedingly. (And yes, the child still wears a diaper. That's for another post you can look forward to.) When we were done washing off his heels, penis, and knees, and when we had put his shirt, left sock, jeans, and changing pad in the laundry tub to soak, we reminisced fondly about the old days. . .

J: (soft, hushed, reverent voice) "Wow, he hasn't had a poop like that since he was a baby."
L: (enthusiastically)"It was a blowout! Remember those?"
(Pause.)
J: "Ah, yes . . . . those were the days, weren't they?"
(J and L hold hands and gaze into each other's eyes.)

And just the other day we were saying how great it is that we don't need to worry about Jack's poop any more. We don't even need to wipe his bottom. A few months ago we were having dinner guests, and during a comfortably quiet lull in the conversation, whilst we were sipping our pinot in the candlelight, Jack yelled "Wipe my bottom!" at a decibel level fit for a referee. We still need to check to make sure he has flushed, but in general we seem to be almost entirely absent from his pooping experience.

This return to the "blowout" of infancy takes me down memory lane. I remember the time Jack, at 11 months, pooped in an empty box shortly after his bath. Very handy. Then there was the time he squirmed and kicked violently in mid diaper change, flinging a medium size turd somewhere----where? How could we lose a turd? Oh, there it was, behind the bureau. They are so much easier to pick up when they've had two days to dry up, don't you know. When Jack was 16 months old, he pooped in his bathwater. When he saw the long brown coil that had come out of him he screamed in terror. We could not get that child to sit down in the bathtub for about eight months after that.

And then there was the time I found a large fresh one in the sandbox. "Gee," I thought to myself in a Pooh-like way, "I don't remember seeing a large mammal defecating in the sandbox in the last 10 minutes." Then I observed that the heaviness of Will's diaper had gotten the better of the Velcro fasteners, and the diaper had slipped mostly through his shorts, some of the contents having escaped.

One time in grad school we had a contest to see who had gotten the most disgusting substance on their dissertation, and the father of a baby got the prize. People who don't have children tend to find baby poop disgusting, but I don't any more. I almost kind of miss the yellow newborn kind . . . . Someone please stop me.

FIFTEEN-MINUTE PAUSE

I'm back. I'm so inspired by this post that I just told a bedtime story about Sir Poopie Poopsalot, a poop inside Will who begged to be set free in the toilet, to spin downward in that beautiful spiral, which all poops deserve, not to be squashed in a diaper and thrown in the trash! Dignity for poops everywhere!! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!! Gurgle . . . gurgle.
(Loud flushing sound)