put down your sandwich before reading...

I'm taking a bit of a reprieve from Tennyson's potty training.

I was trying to be all "nice mommy" and have endless patience and tell him happily that no, poop doesn't go in your gitchies, poop goes in the potty. No Tennyson, you did not poop in the potty. That was a fart. Your poop is in your pants."

Then today (and maybe a little yesterday) it was more like this:
Kid. You. Cannot. Poop. Your. PANTS. That is DISGUSTING!

I wasn't exactly yelling, but my tone was all but friendly and patient. It's been a week. He has not pooped once in the potty. He'll tell me, as the crap rolls down his pant leg and drops onto the floor, that he needs the potty. Is it just me, or is it a little late by then? It's a LITTLE LATE!

To save my own sanity I've decided to take a break and try again in a couple of weeks. I may change my mind and try again tomorrow, who knows.

Anyway, do you want to get to the heart of this post? I don't think you really do. You think you do, because reading about everyone else's lives and frustrations as hacked out onto a keyboard is great fun, but when I get through the post you'll decide that no, you didn't really need to read it.

Let me set the scene. I'm happily playing sudoku at the dining room table. Jordan is watching tv in the living room, Mitchell is napping, and Tennyson is riding his tricycle in circles on the deck. Before you call CFS, my dining room over looks the deck and has windows that go from corner to corner on all three sides so I can see the kids at all times. If you want to call CFS I'm sure you can find lots of other things, but he wasn't technically unsupervised in the backyard. And the deck? No, there's no railing, but it's less than a foot off the ground, so if he hypothetically rode his tricycle off the deck once or twice (every few days) it's not like he has that far to go. And in this hypothetical scenario he is would be getting way better at knowing the limits of the deck.

Anyway.

Jordan = tv, Mitchie = napping, Me = sudoku while supervising son, Tennyson = biking on the deck. I think we're all caught up now.

Tennyson comes in the door and announces that there is poop on his bike.
I groan inwardly. There can't be poop on his bike. He's wearing a diaper. Diapers provide certain assurances. I look out the window. It's pretty obvious that there's a big lump of poop smushed onto his bike seat. More groaning - this time, not so inwardly. I look at my still-diapered son. It's easy to look, because I (like all good mothers) let him sneak out the backdoor in his diaper and his t-shirt.

Seriously, put down the phone - it's warmish in the sun!

His diaper looks suspiciously like it may have let a log slip out one of the leg holes. Probably from all the maneuvering on the bike seat with a diaper full off poop and no pants.

Don't you just love poop stories?

It gets better (or worse, you decide).

I take a deep breath, take my little son by his little hand and lead him off to his bedroom for a clean up. I lay him on the change pad on the floor and inspect his legs. I'm so thankful that he hasn't managed to smear it all down his legs and in between his toes. Things are looking up, a little bit on a plastic bike seat is nothing in the grand scheme of mothering three little kids. Until . . .

It gets better (or worse) still.

I'm scrubbing the poop out of his crevices (you'd think boys didn't have crevices, but poo could find crevices anywhere) when Tennyson holds up his hands and says "poop on my fingers." Huh? "Poop on my fingers." Huh? Because I certainly didn't hear that right. "Poop on my fingers." After three you have to believe him.

"There's poop on your fingers?" I take his little hands and look them over. They certainly don't look poopy. Very dirty maybe, but definitely not poopy.

Just to make sure, I did the sniff test. And almost died. There had definitely been some finger-poo contact.
"Tennyson, you don't touch poop! Poop is yucky!" I pride myself on remaining calm here. It probably had something to do with still being relieved that there wasn't poop all over him. Washing his hands - no big deal.
Until...

Now it just gets worse.
Seriously, put down the sandwich.

As I'm getting his new, clean, poop-free diaper on, Tennyson fills me in just a little more...
"I ate the poop." Huh? "I ate the poop." Huh? "You ate the poop?" "Yeah! Poop yucky."
"Tennyson! You don't eat poop! That's yucky! You never eat poop!"

Why are kids so gross? I tried to figure out a best-case-scenario - Maybe he didn't actually eat eat, maybe he just licked his finger... Licked his finger? Who are we kidding, that doesn't make it better! Poo/bike seat contact? No biggie. Poo/finger contact? Not ideal, but doable. Poo/tongue/teeth/mouth I kiss all day? Blech!