My friend once said that she and another friend of hers would exchange the statement, "poopies!" with each other upon any rendezvous they had. She explained it to me as being an exuberant greeting of endearment. Cocking my head to the side I thought: "How funny!" Now that I am a parent of two kids, this word has unfortunately become less of a catchy phrase and more of an everyday reality.
Poop is the main verbal course for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
"Did my four year old poop today?"
"Did we have any poopie accidents at preschool?"
"How many poopie diapers did little one have today?"
"Watch the baby, I have to make poopies!"
"Poop is spraying where!?!?!"
"Is that poop on your shirt, or have you been eating tar?"
There have been a few all-star moments that will forever go down in the books with our girls. The very first of which happened with my eldest daughter...
Let's not skip past the explosive diarrhea episode that came with Rota virus she caught at 6 months, shall we? THAT was UBER fun. I don't know which part was more fun, cleaning up the vomit every 5 minutes or the projectile diarrhea that came immediately after in the same timed increments. Once the dry heaving and gagging subsided, I had to then focus on the need to clean off the crap - which had sprayed against the changing table and wall like it was silly spray loaded into a paint gun. Oooh YEY! Literally experiencing crap hitting the fan is actually not as fun as you would think.
The loathsome scent of that alien gut looking turd will haunt my dreams to this day.
My eyes are twitching just thinking about it.
F*** you Rota virus.
Now we move on to my absolute favorite: POOPCASSO.
This was after baby #2 was born, and I believe there was a need for control brought on by a potential feeling of dismissal in the wake of the newborn. I was in the kitchen starting to feed the baby a new bottle when I had a moment of fear/clarity. Oh crap, big kid is abnormally quiet... WHAT'S WRONG!?!? I peered into the Living room to find that she had built herself a fort out of the couch cushions. Armed with almost every one of her miniature toys inside, she calmly advised me she was "just playing castle". With a sigh of relief, I started to make my way back to the kitchen... when an internal voice inside me told me to take a second look. *She did have a eerily calm expression on her face which followed me out of the room...* I thought. Upon moving the cushions I let out a gasp of sheer horror. There was a full exhibit of expressionist poop art smeared all over the side of the couch, all over the floor and under the couch. I of course did what any good parent would do, I started crying uncontrollably. Once the overflow of tears choked back by gagging subsided, I had to take control of the situation before it spread to infinite proportions. Immediately I sprung into action: put the not yet fed baby on the floor and let her roll around while I deal with Chernobyl. My plan was straight out of Silkwood, first quarantine my kid and then deal with the environmental aftermath post scrub down.
After washing her hands a bazillion times and then purell-ing them just as many, I gave her two baths and placed her in the corner of the room to stay until the code brown had been lifted. Two whole containers of Clorox bleach wipes, one full can of Lysol, and one more nervous breakdown later code brown was lifted. Feces was no longer a threat to my existence and I was feeling like things were A-OK with the world again. Just in time for little baby to have a poopie diaper and - as a result of the wait time for the code brown clean up - had a monstrous diaper rash for two weeks. MMmmm, delightful.
Many months later after the Poopcasso incident, I am feeling somewhat better about poop these days. Controlled accidents are left to the little infant now (for the most part). Of course there is the occasional whiff of air that is tainted with that all too familiar aroma, which on occasion can whirl me into a nervous frenzy sniffing butts until I cancel out the possibility of another poopcasso occurrance. This whiff - I assure myself - can be explained simply as big kid's reaction to having lactose intolerance.
"Poopies!" can return to being used - once again - as a term of endearment.