Poo-mageddon

You often hear that there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes.  If you are a parent, there’s a third. Poo. Lots of poo. Poo-based blockbusters with never-ending sequels (Lethal Poo, Poo-tanic, Poo Hard, Poo Harder, etc). 

Four kids mean that we’ve seen our fair share of poo, including the latest ‘release’ last Saturday.  After a round of parental high-fiving, having gotten all the kids into bed by 7pm, we collapsed on our sofa after a typically exhausting, relentless day.  Our mistake was forgetting to turn on the twin’s baby monitor…

We first heard the noises about an hour later.  And they weren’t coming from the twin’s bedroom.  No, they were coming from our adjoining bedroom.  Noises in our bedroom could only mean one thing – at least one reprobate had escaped!

Mrs Chaos made it to the bedroom before I did.  She found Chewy in our bedroom grinning and buck-naked from the waist down.  The reason she could see him is that he’d turned on ALL of the lights in our bedroom.  (The force is strong with this one.) The light also illuminated the carnage that was our bed – imagine what Jackson Pollock would have produced if he’d been limited to toothpaste, toilet paper and poo.  Oh so much poo.  And did I mention that we’d just put clean sheets on our bed.  I love clean sheets.

And the bed wasn’t Chewy’s only canvas.  Oh no.  Why limit yourself to one canvas when you have a full bedroom in which to express yourself?

Pollock, I mean Chewy, was continuing to grin like he’d just won a gold medal at the Olympics.  And he was now helpfully yelling ‘poo-poo, poo-poo’, and pointing out the fact that he’d ‘helpfully’ deposited the poo smeared diaper in our trash can.  Before you start thinking how smart our little t*%d is, let me point out that he’d turned the diaper inside out before throwing it in the trash.

But the horror hadn’t finished.  I watched Mrs Chaos shed a silent tear while picking up her poo smeared electric toothbrush.  We’re choosing to tell ourselves that Chewy brushed his teeth prior to cleaning ‘down under’.  Having said that, Bad Dad Confession: I’ve been avoiding Chewy’s kisses for the last few days.

Not satisfied with smearing poo everywhere, Chewy had also managed to locate his elder siblings’ best artwork.  We keep the artwork beside our bed.  Chewy had gently laid the artwork out on the floor before peeing all over them.  Looks like we’ve got an art critic on our hands. Although he clearly needs a lesson on constructive criticism.

So what’s the point of this post other than reunite you with your own happy memories or foreshadow those to come?  Well, it got us thinking about how to contain kids when they can climb into and out of their cots.

We’ve had a number of ‘suggestions’ from friends, each getting progressively more extreme:

• Sleeping bags
• Straight-jackets
• Duct tape
• Bars/barbed wire

Needless to say, we’re still looking for suggestions. I am not going to tell you our current method, in case anyone reports us. But would welcome any ideas, as we have discovered any idea has a shelf life of a couple of weeks before the escape artists twins crack it.

We’re also thinking its probably time to start potty training. We’ve used Gina Ford’s Potty Training in One Week book with our first two (the only book of hers that we’ve followed), and found the experience straight forward.

The other point of posts like this is that whilst these experiences are not enjoyable at the time, they are part of life.  And once some water has passed under the bridge, it becomes easier to look back and smile.  I’ve got an older friend – whose kids are grown up – who never stops telling me that I need to take time while our kids are young to ‘stop and smell the roses’.  Unfortunately, the smells are not always of roses …