Maya hates chocolate. Every time I eat chocolate, it makes her tummy hurt. She’s gassy. She cries. She toots for hours. I am getting to the point where I either have to give up chocolate or bottle-feed.
Hmmmmmm. Very difficult decision.
My house is, again, to the point where I wouldn’t want a health inspector to stop by. It’s Monday, so I planned on cleaning - I mean, why waste a good weekend cleaning? - but of course Maya cried all day and I spent my time jiggling, burping, feeding, walking, rocking, jiggling, burping…
Finally at 4 o’clock she fell asleep momentarily and I decided to rush to the supermarket. Problem is, I hate going out looking horrible, or worse, for my kids to look unkempt. I looked at Ben. He was wearing yesterday’s clothes. So was Maya. So I sent Ben to take a shower and Maya and I went into our shower.
Ben asked to take a squirt gun into the shower and I said, sure, fine. So he did. But then he kept making excuses to come out of the shower. He wanted to fill the squirt gun. The cap was on too tight. So finally I uttered these words: “If you get out of that shower again, you are going to be in big trouble!”
Ben is an obedient child. He got into the shower and didn’t come out. I came in to wash his hair and he asked if I would pick up the “thing” over there. What thing? I ask. A bug? No, the thing. That brown thing. On the drain. I don’t see anything, I say. The brown thing! He points to a bit of brown hanging onto the drain cover. That thing? What is it? He thinks for a moment. Chocolate, he says. Chocolate? Yeah, he says. Remember the other day I was eating chocolate in the shower? No, I reply. Well, can you pick it up? No, I say. I’m holding the baby and washing your hair. I have no extra hands.
I notice Ben is totally freaked out by this “chocolate” and I start to get suspicious. He gets out of the shower and I decide I will pick it up, after all. So I get some toilet paper, pick it up, sniff, smell nothing, and throw it in the toilet. It’s sort of soft and gooey, but then again, it was warm water. But then I’m thinking…it was the wrong consistency. Not like chocolate. More like…fudge.
Ben, is that poop? I ask.
It’s chocolate.
Is it poop?
Yeah, it’s poop.
It’s poop?! (I try to recall: did my fingers touch it?)
Yeah, it’s poop.
You pooped in the shower?
You told me not to get out again and I had to go.
Ben, that doesn’t mean you can’t go potty! You can always go potty! You pooped in the shower!
Yeah.
My. Four-year-old son. Pooped. In the shower. Noooooo!!!!!
Even obedience has its downside. Ben was dutifully re-washed (in a different shower), Ajax with bleach came to the shower’s rescue and we changed Ben’s sheets. Needless to say, I never expected my 4-year-old to obey me to the letter, up to and including pooping in the shower. I didn’t yell at him, of course, and I think he was relieved to confess. The chocolate story was getting hard to hold up, since I control the chocolate in this household. But he did lay down for a nap. It was a little traumatic for him.
I guess the moral of the story for me is to avoid chocolate…of all kinds.
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