Potty Mouth

     After nearly a year of trial and error, success and failure, joyous celebration and befuddled frustration, we have finally ascended that seemingly insurmountable Mt. Everest of toddlerdom: potty training. Never in my still early, naïve career of parenthood could I have ever imagined that not pooping in your pants would be such a difficult goal to achieve.

     The success, however, is not yet complete and there are still episodes of tragic embarrassment that have to be endured. My wife and I have found, that through the apparently never ending exercises of toilet training, one thing has remained constant with our daughter and that is: EVERYTHING is more important than stopping to use the bathroom. One shining example that happened recently involved my wife as she and our daughter met a friend and her mother at a water park for an afternoon of attempted fun. This, mind you, was the first time our daughter had ever gone without a diaper in the water, so not only was this going to be one giant leap for toddler-kind, it was to be attempted at the risk of the proverbial Baby Ruth in the swimming pool.

     All was going well for the first half hour or so until our daughter yelled at the top of her lungs “I NEEDTA GO POTTY, MOMMY!” To which, my wife, with the reflexes of a Jedi Master, leapt across open water, grabbed our daughter and leapt back to solid ground without as much as getting her toes wet, then sprinted at light speed to the rest room to ensure our daughter made it to the toilet in time. Sliding into the bathroom like a cat running across a tile floor, my wife pounced into an open stall, and in one fluid movement stripped the wet swim suit off of our daughter and plopped her on the questionably sanitary toilet seat just in time to hear, “No, I don’t need to pee pee, I wanna go play.” Bewildered, but not defeated, my wife waited a few minutes with our daughter still perched on the toilet just to make sure the coast was clear. It apparently was, as to her account nothing happened but wiggling and begging to go back out and play.

     Back out they went. My daughter made a bee line for the water to play with her friend and my wife sat on the edge with her mom friend as they watched the two toddlers splashing before them. Not five minutes after our daughter re-entered the kiddie splash pool, my wife noticed her grabbing her butt as what appeared to be a tail was poking through the back of her swim suit. Armageddon had commenced. Time ground to a stop as adrenaline began coursing through my wife’s veins, elevating her senses to uncharted levels. Almost telekinetically, she reached out and grabbed our daughter as the protrusion in her tiny swimsuit grew in slow motion. Wincing while holding our daughter with arms fully extended, much like Wile E. Coyote would hold a cartoon bomb that was about to go abysmally wrong, my wife, again, ran full speed to the public restroom and found an open stall. Alas, it was too late; the deed was done. The inherent problem with one-piece bathing suits, my wife suddenly found, is that there really is no control over any potential contents whilst you are stripping said swim suit from a toddler. As my wife struggled to strip the wet swim suit from our squirming daughter, the single, perfectly shaped poop that had been deposited in the back of the swim suit flew out, landed on the floor, rolled under the stall and rested against the flip flop of the seemingly preoccupied lady sitting there. My wife and daughter simultaneously screamed in surprise, fear, and awe as they watched the horror unfold before them. My daughter whispered, “Mommy, the poop ran away,” as my wife scrambled to get a handful of toilet paper to retrieve the offense before the lady who was apparently sleeping in the next stall awoke to find that her foot was being attacked by a rogue poo. Swiftly, gingerly and protected by a pound of toilet paper, my wife was able to roll the stinker back away from the comatose lady’s flip flop, pick it and deposit it in her own toilet. It was done; the crisis had been overcome and the only evidence that would remain from the event would be the emotional trauma that would haunt my wife for the foreseeable future.

     As the events of the day had been just short of unbelievable and as it was getting late in the afternoon, my wife decided that it would be best if she and our daughter came home to wash away the combination of chlorine and unfortunate sewage that had accumulated during their fun get away. They came inside and I was briefed on the events that had unfolded as my wife started a bath for our daughter. As I could see that my wife was clearly stressed, I made my way to the kitchen to fetch a glass of wine for her. It was as I was on my way back to the bathroom with the wine that the screaming started. I stepped into the bathroom just as my wife started yelling, “GREAT! Now there’s a shit in the bathtub…I have had enough shit for today!”  Apparently a poop nugget had somehow unknowingly been lodged between our daughter’s butt cheeks and when she submerged into the bath, it broke free and popped to the surface like one of the yellow barrels from Jaws. I took over the haz-mat clean up and handed my wife her glass of wine as she walked out to have a few minutes for herself. My nearly three year old daughter’s eyes were wide with confusion as she questioned, “There’s a shit in the bathtub? Daddy, who shit in the bathtub?”

That blessed day of the last accident is right around the corner, I can smell it.