Potty Language

I love, apparently, to talk about poop.

Not that I get all giddy and gleeful like: "Poop!  Oh, poop! I can talk about it! Yay!" but in that I do it so often.  Not do poop, that is - talk about poop.  (Seriously, this post isn't THAT gross.)  I must find some sort of foul enjoyment in the discussions because they permeate my conversational repertoire.  The situation has gotten so bad that I can't even tell if other moms are like me, or if I just engage them in doo-themed discussions because I am such an avid poopophile.

It's beginning to worry me.

I can recall being younger, sitting at my grandmother's kitchen table listening to her describe a bowel movement to my mother as if she were talking about a recent rainstorm that produced the most brilliant rainbow.  I was appalled.  I swore that I would never ever talk about # 2 (go ahead, say it like Austin Powers... you know you want to) to the extent (ahem, or at all!) the way she did.

(In my defense, I am certainly NOT at the point of discussing any of this as it relates to the things I do in the ladies' room.)

Just last night, not only did I laugh to the point of tears at a "poo-dicament" involving Jordan and a bathtub, but I went a step further and posted about on Facebook.  (Not friends with me on Facebook?  You're missing out... er, maybe not.) See, she has this tendency to drop a deuce in the tub after dinner. Well, she has the last few nights, anyway.  And it's usually as I'm rinsing shampoo out of Addie's hair, so Jordan announces she's done her deed by screaming and crying in a horrified way (the turds scare her... do I even say it?  ..they scare the crap out of her.  There. I did it.  Forgive me.) as the product floats away, disintegrating quickly and making for a nasty clean-up job.  Yesterday, when I realized what was going on, I hollered, "Just, help!  Poop!  Poop in the waaaa-ter!" and he came running, to find me fishing squirmy, slimy toddlers out of the tub and passing them to him to towel off before they realize what's going on or have time to try to dive back into the bath (as they're prone to doing).  As Jordan got passed off, I said, "Please, get a dipe on Miss TubDump! I don't know if she's done!"  Well, the nickname kinda stuck for the rest of the evening, so I couldn't stop laughing, even as I scooped, bare-handed, the poo from the tub, wiped the floor, the tub, the toys, with bleach (for the third time in a row this week).  I couldn't get her terrified facial expression out of my face... like the toddler equivalent of staring at Jaws.  I couldn't stop laughing.  I mean, what's WRONG with me?

And I heard recently that Twitter conversations are getting logged in the Library of Congress and archived now.  What if they do that with Facebook feeds?  Will my kids be able to look up these status updates years from now, and use them to torture one another (that is, if I haven't already tortured them with it personally...)?

Yikes.

But it doesn't stop there.  The other day, one of the girls waited until AFTER the bath to leave a little surprise for me.  I had to chase one girl down (who has a habit of piddling when the cold air hits her wet skin) to diaper her and ran back to find her sister with a diaper in my hand when I noticed a particularly bad smell in their bedroom.  Thinking it was just a fart, I grabbed the naked tot and realized she had "fart" smeared all over her backside, feet and legs.  And then I found the pile.  Or three.  So I wiped the child down, diapered her, put both girls in the crib to keep them away from the mess and took a picture of the biscuit with my cell phone.

Yeah, I'm that gross. Love me anyway.

Then, when Justin was walking into our bedroom about 20 minutes later and roared with shock at the log that one of the girls had "baby-trapped" the doorway with, I lost it.  I was nearly sobbing with laughter.

Now, am I seriously that insane?  Or am I laughing because it's better to sob with laughter than to just plain sob?  Or am I really a 6th grade boy trapped in a 28-year-old woman's body?

I use cloth diapers.  That necessitates scraping the solid waste from the diaper into the toilet, flushing it, and laundering the diaper.  What do I use for that job?  Why, a plastic picnic spoon, kept in a plastic cup in the kids' bathroom (on a high shelf... after I found Jack drinking out of the cup and Jordan chewing on the spoon a few months ago, I learned that higher is always better [this is a statement of distance from the ground, people, not a life-style endorsement]).  What do I call the contraption?  My sPOOn.  Yeah, it's labeled on the cup... I even pronounce it like that.  "sssssPOOnnnn"

We use poop themed nicknames occasionally... "Daisy Duke", "Miss TubDump", "Pooo-rincess", "Deuce Nukem" and so on.  Different kinds of bowel movements get their own category from "stealth poop" if it doesn't smell so you get set to change a urine diaper and are surprised with a more complicated job, "faux poo" if you're prepared for a dirty diaper and there's nothing to be seen, and then into the more descriptive names that I'll spare you.

But ("butt"? ba-dum-chhhh) I have to wonder - is this motherhood?  Is this how I know I'm a mom first and a mom forever?  Have I degenerated from my super-educated, want-to-save-the-world-and-effect-positive-change-through-academic-achievement-self of old into a fugazi, mundane, even disgusting drain on society with nothing meaningful to contribute?  Have I become "Idiocracy"?  Am I "doomed" to a life of bad puns, embarrassing discussions and sounding like I've got an IQ of about 60?

Or does this pass?

I suppose all things doo.

Ask Jordan.