Can you smell something?

In my previous post I mentioned my daughter's dirty protests in the bath. I thought it might be enlightening, or at least crudely amusing to detail the role children's effluvia has played in my life since the birth of the Kids.

Many a gag has been done by a new dad about the weapons grade plutonium awfulness that is a baby's first crap. Truth is, its unpleasant, but its actually not that bad. Okay, it a occupies an area of chemistry somewhere between Guinness and Velcro and you'd rather tear gas yourself before smelling it again, but if you don't liberally cover yourself in it (and you won't have the urge to) its okay. Far worse is the moment you lift your naked child from your leg after a game of horsey to discover you really shouldn't have been wearing shorts. Or when your son accidentally fills his all-in-one rain suit.

You get used to changing nappies, or being wee-d on because it happens every day. As I've said previously, its the unexpected things that really test your character. A friend once told me that one day he came home from work to find his living room smelt of poo. He spent a good hour searching for it with no success. The next day he came home from work, same thing - only this time in the kitchen. Again he searched, again he failed to find it. This went on for several more days, with the smell moving from room to room and my friend moving steadily closer to an embolism. It turns out that his kids had ride along car, the seat of which acted as a lid for a cubby hole. Yep. You've guessed it. One of the kids had crapped in it, closed it up and they'd spent the best part of a week wheeling the smell around the house. They don't do leaflets on this kind of thing.

My own version of this was slightly different

"I done poo!"
"Well done! On the potty or toilet?"
"Sofa!"

She looked so pleased with herself, if I hadn't been sitting on it I might not have been angry. The Girl became obsessed with the word "poo" for some time.

"Poo!"
"Girl, stop saying poo!"
"Poo!"
"Stop it! Daddy, the Girl keeps saying poo!"
"Poo?"
"NOW YOU'RE DOING IT!"

Whereas the Boy is more concerned with how clean his bum is. A good thing you might say, and I'd be inclined to agree if it wasn't for the number of times I've been approached by him, trousers around his ankles, bent double, holding his bum cheeks and shuffling backwards yelling "IS MY BUM CLEAN?" at stupid o'clock in the morning. Being as ill-adept at social intercourse as his father he even dragged pensioners in supermarkets unwillingly into his confidence.

"Is that a cricket set your mummy has bought you?"
"Yeah, but I had a poo and forgot to wipe my bum."

Toilet training is a minefield and most of the time you have to accept their frustrations.

*Sigh* "I suppose I have to LIFT the toilet seat MYSELF"

Although sometimes that's easier said than done.

"If you've finished, I'll flush the loo."
*Flush*
"You didn't let me do a second poo!"
"Oh, sorry. Go on then."
"I don't NEED a second poo."

And yet somehow they can use something as mundane as excrement to make the most profound statements about their place in the world.

"I couldn't be a chicken. All that comes out of my bum is poo."

And I haven't even started on all the other noxious stuff that comes out of them. I'll save that for another time. Happy trails!