Tonight, we had some friends over for dinner. Hubby had been working on a bolognese all afternoon, and we were all really excited. As usual with tomato-based sauces for dinner, we took the kids clothes off before they got their food. (Anyone else try to save laundry this way?)
When everyone was finishing up, we started taking dishes to the sink, cleaning up a bit, and sipping the last sips of our wine. I look over at J, still in his high chair. His hands are hidden behind him, and he says, “Poop!”
My friend Andrea and I look at each other. Did he just say “poop”? I get up, and realize his hands are behind him, in his diaper.Ā I look at his hands. There’s a questionable substance. In my head, I’m going back and forth: Meat from the sauce? Poop? I can’t tell. Should I smell it? Oh gosh, I don’t want to deal with it if it’s poop. Do I just dump him in the tub?Ā Out loud, I say, “Oh no. Please don’t be poop. Oh God… I think it’s poop! RYAN!”
You guys, praise the Lord for husbands who save the day. Hubby saves mine almost daily, but this takes the cake (at least this week). He scooped JĀ up and took care of the poop problem. What a guy.
Moral of the story: If I hadn’t taken his clothes off, he probably wouldn’t have been able to touch it. Blerg.
Anyone else have a recent poop story to share? I know we all have them sometimes. PLEASE tell me I’m not the only one!
I’ve got a funny little story for you. It happened during D’s first two days of life. It’s just a little bit of proof that nobody has it all together, and nobody knows exactly what to do with their newborn. We were still in the hospital, in fact, where things should be totally fine, because there are a hundred people around to help me care for my son. Right? Sure.
Hubby had just left to go get some lunch and install the infant car seat so that we could go home that evening. I was pretty excited to have a few minutes with no visitors, so that I could maybe catch some zzz’s before going home to the madhouse (which honestly I’m excited about, because obviously I miss my kids and I love the family and friends that will be going through our revolving door over the next days and weeks to meet baby D).
So I settled into the bed, with a hiccuping D, to try to snuggle him to sleep. We both had full bellies, so I figured we’d take great naps. D had other plans. He decided to poop. Totally fine. I know the kid needs to do that… especially to get the first few (extra yucky) poops out. I heard it happening, waited what was surely an appropriate amount of time for him to finish, then stood up to change him. I wanted to hurry because, duh, I wanted a nap.
I undressed him and took off his diaper gingerly, then started to wipe him off. As if I had hit a magic button, the kid starts to pee. He’s a tiny baby… how much pee can be in there, right? Well, he pees. Then he pees some more. Somehow, it’s as though a sprinkler has turned on. Pee on me, pee on his first outfit ever, pee on his face, pee on the four blankets in his little crib/changing table/cart. He was literally giving the room a shower. Finally, it subsided. I had to use an entire pack of wipes getting the pee off every inch of his body (and my arms) and had a whole bag full of laundry when we were done. He was beet red and screaming his head off, basically looking at me like, “Mom! How dare you let me pee all over myself like that!” I know, kid. I also wish I hadn’t let you do that. Especially because he got a little red rash across him that he hadn’t had before his epic pee. Must’ve irritated his sensitive skin. What a guy.
So if you’re ever having a third kid, and you’re like, “I’ve got diaper changes in the bag!” or “The hospital does everything for you while you’re there!” then beware. You just might be in store for a classic “I forgot newborns did that” moment. It’s tough to remember the exact joys of having a day-old baby until you’ve got one. Hello, sweet little fuzzy baby, who pees on everything.
Today, my daughter took a nap. Unremarkable, right? She took a nap. No big deal. But let me back up.
We’re in the throes of potty training. EK’s wearing big girl panties about half the time, and a pull-up or diaper the other half. She’s not sleeping in underwear yet, of course, so for today’s nap, Daddy didn’t find any diapers in her room (you know, because she’s only wearing them half the time, and we’ve only just moved her down to her new room), and put her in a pull-up. Most of the time, this wouldn’t present a problem; it holds pee fairly well and we change her directly after her nap every time. But today, when she woke up and came upstairs, she had a massively grossĀ pull-up, which had gotten on her pants a bit, so Daddy cleaned her up, and let her run pantsless while I went downstairs to retrieve the underwear. (And thenĀ he ran away to “help his dad with something.” Yeah right, Daddy. You must’ve known what was coming…)
When I got to her room, I noticed two things: 1. There were wipes all over her bed. 2. It smelled awful. These are two bad things, that when put together, are truly terrible. The massively dirty pull-up had also caused a problem in the bed, which EK had so graciously tried to clean up before she came upstairs. Mess. Was. Everywhere. Every single item on her bed needed to go straight into the washing machine on the “hot” cycle. Y’all, I am not kidding. My heart started beating faster as I tried to not smell anything.
I bundled the wipes up (including the ones spread all over a book, which is now soggy and half-ruined) and threw them in the trash can, and started stripping the bed. I carried several loads of pillows, sheets and the waterproof (thank God) mattress cover to the laundry room (thank God we have a laundry room now! Ahhh!) to start the process of cleaning up. I sprayed everything with stain remover, switched the laundry over (because of course, something was already in the washer AND in the dryer) and put in the first load. Y’all, how did it happen?!
I know how it happened.
My kids sleep like tornadoes. And when they finally do find a resting place for the majority of a sleeping session, it’s typically a strange one. For instance, EK likes to sprawl across all her pillows, instead of have her head on a pillow and her legs down. She sleeps up against the headboard of the bed 90% of the time. Hence poop on the pillows. (Sorry. You should’ve known there might be a gross detail or two.)
Back to the clean up…Ā Now my pantsless daughter is upstairs, so I call her downstairs, just to get her side of the story.
Me: Did you get poop on the book?
EK: No.
Me: Did you get poop on the pillows that are on the floor?
EK: No.
Me: Did you sit down before you came upstairs?
EK: …..
And now I’m freaking out about the BRAND NEW CARPET.
Trying to keep my cool, I remember she’s still pantsless. I start to help her with her underwear, and notice she doesn’t seem to have been cleaned up well. Then, I notice there’s a little poop on the inside of her shirt.Ā “Oh well,”Ā I think.Ā “Daddy must not have noticed it.”Ā So I take her shirt off, and now I see the poop on her back. I start to clean it off, and a thought pops in my head.Ā “If Daddy didn’t know all this had happened down here, I’m sure he didn’t wipe her hands off. HE DIDN’T WIPE HER HANDS OFF!”Ā And then, I start freaking out about how many things she’s touched since the initial accident, and where all the poop might be and how I’m going to find it/clean it off, and then I’m all,Ā “Screw it. It’s bath time.”Ā J just happens to be lurking around the corner, trying to decipher and smell and the ruckus, so I toss him in, too. Clean babies, right? Right. Babies who are never wearing pull-ups during naptimeĀ ever again. Ā
Ā There’s a word my daughter said for weeks before I truly understood its meaning. J and I both have humidifiers in our rooms, and she kept pointing to them, asking if she should turn on the “fire”. At first, I thought this was because you can see the mist/vapor coming out of it, and she was associating “smoke” with “fire”. I finally figured out that she was muttering a syllable before “fire” and it was really just an attempt to say “humidifier”. Mom fail.
Overheard in the kitchen this morning…
Hubby: What do you want to listen to?
EK: Rock and roll!
Hubby: Don’t have to ask me twice. (Puts on Pink Floyd.)
Me, seeing EK search through the junk drawer: What are you looking for?
EK: I gotta put some chappick on.!
(I’m sure everyone with a kid knows why I hide my chapstick – I don’t want spit on, rubbed into everything, and then turned up into the lid irrevocably.)
First thing in the morning, when EK climbs in the bed with us:
EK: (to Hubby) Wake up, silly boy!
Upon receiving some Lucky Charms I had bought for St. Patrick’s Day:
EK: I’m gonna eat all the ush-minnows (marshmallows) first!
And now, for my other toddler, who might not use many words yet, but can sure as heck do silly things…
That’s our living room floor –Ā covered in metallic Sharpie. EK never misused the art supplies unless she was tattooing herself. Our son, however, skipped art supplies and went for the same junk drawer mentioned above… and proceeded to give our Pollock-esque floor a little Picasso. Alas, it probably isn’t the last time. FYI though, nail polish remover got it off our vinyl floor!
What has your toddler said (or done) recently that’s worth a laugh?Does your kid do a little art on nontraditional materials?
This past weekend, my parents were up here from Georgia. Because of the renovations, there isn’t exactly a guest room, so we blew up a queen-sized air mattress, and they slept in the kitchen floor. I know – Ā crazy. Ā Anyway, the air mattress in the kitchen was a lovely plaything for the kiddos, and EK was making us laugh by calling all the pillows “puddles”. I’m not sure where the disconnect was, but no matter how many times I tried to correct her, it wouldn’t take. That may or may not have been because I was laughing so hard about her saying “puddles”.
We did have a little moment on Saturday when J and EK were playing on the air mattress – like we frequently do on Hubby’s and my bed, which is king-sized – where J was rolling and rolling, and rolled right off onto the floor. Now, this thing is sitting on the ground, so the floor was less than a foot away, so he wasn’t falling from several feet or anything. But, he must’ve hit his face first, before anything else took the weight off, because he ended up with a giant bruise (and scratch, somehow) on his cheek. I noticed today (fourĀ days later) that the lovely green and purple have spread up to his eye. I think it’s appropriate to do this: #motheroftheyear
My other favorite thing EK said was when she had woken up from her nap on Sunday, and my parents had left to go home. She knew they would leave while she was asleep, and she got a goodbye hug and kiss and everything, but this was the first thing she said when she woke up:
“Necie and G-Daddy gone to Georgia! I can’t find them! I need to chase them!”
Necie and G-Daddy are obviously what we call my parents. Once again, I will reiterate that she knew they were leaving. And also, I’m not sure we’ve really used the word “chase” before, so I’m not sure when she decided chasing them to Georgia would work, but she definitely wanted to go for it.
An aside:Ā My kids love my parents. They don’t see them as much as Hubby’s family members, so it’s a special treat when they’re here. They also get pretty spoiled, which as long as I’m not doing it, I don’t really mind. But there are definitely times that they get to do silly things (see picture above) that I’d not normally be okay with.
Anyone have a hilarious thing your toddler said this week that you’d like to share?!
So, I don’t know what actually, truly constitutes a “toddler”, by definition anyway, but there is no one that “toddles” as much as my little one year old guy, so I’m guessing that qualifies him as a toddler. So, in effect, I have two toddlers.
That’s a scary sentence. Let’s say it again, for effect:
I. Have. Two. Toddlers. Ā Yikes.
Double shower/teeth brushing. Typical.
This means that life can be crazy. As a quick story, this morning, Hubby was in the shower, I was getting J dressed, and EK had been playing with toys in the living room. The next thing I know, I don’t see or hear her, so I dare to peek out the front door. She’s on the sidewalk, with a nice lady who has pulled over to ask the little girl where her mommy is. It could not have been more than 120 seconds that she was outside, but still. I know, awful things could have happened. I’m thankful they didn’t. We have a chain on the top of the door that’s usually locked, and when we took the trash out after breakfast, we forgot to lock it back. Parenting 101, epically failed.
She is theĀ experienced toddler, who knows all about crying when she doesn’t get what she wants. She knows all about working the room. She knows all about needing to potty right after she’s gone to bed, and aboutĀ sneaking around the house really quietly in the morning in search of candy before Mommy manages to drag her exhausted self out of bed. Right now, our biggest fights are over nightgowns. She has two frilly little nightgowns she loves to wear, and if I let her, she’d wear them all day. Every once in a while, I break down and let her put it on for a nap, because as she reminds me, nightgowns are something you wear while you sleep. (Cue face palm because I should have said “sleeping AT NIGHT”.) If they are both in the laundry, then all bets for going to bed are off, because regular pajamas WILL NOT BE PUT ON HER BODY. So there.
One of the two favored nightgowns. Funny side note: she’s never watched Sophia the First.Photo from http://www.imgarcade.com
I also have one brand new toddler who, in addition to being extremely clumsy, is also very brave. Scaling furniture is less of a problem for him than simply walking from the car to the front door. Climbing the shelves in the kitchen is much easier than getting into his toddler-sized chair. He’s a little like the Tazmanian Devil, what with the messes that tend to follow him everywhere. He HATES the word “no” right now. If I have to tell him to stop doing something (smashing my laptop, carrying Daddy’s coffee around the room, etc) he immediately dissolves into wails. I think he just hears the word so often that he’s grown to hate it. I’m trying to figure out something else to say instead, but there’s just nothing as good as plain ol’ “no”.
My little guy, eating his eclectic meal and then spreading it all over creation.We managed to never have this problem with EK…
However, there are some pretty hilarious perks.
J says “thank you” to and for everything. He hands me something, and says it. He takes something from me, and says it. Picks something up off the floor, and says it. Puts a toy away, and says it. I guess I say it a lot? He also is doing this funny thing where he will eat almost anything, but only about 5 bites of it. His plate is very eclectic, because I know that bites 6-10 are wasted, so it’s got to be 5 bites of 5 different things. The things we do to ensure that our kids are eating enough…
I ask them to eat dinner when we’re at home, they holler and make a mess. Daddy takes them out to eat, and they look like angels all night.
EK is extremely good at communicating now, but every once in a while she gets stuck on something. She can’t quite get herself unbuckled from her car seat (I’m pretty sure I’m glad about it) but she can get one buckle undone, and then yells, “Somebody! HELP ME!” like I’m kidnapping her. I think it’s hilarious, but the passersby may think otherwise. She also loves the song from The Sound of Music “Do-Re-Mi” and whenever she sings it, she starts like this: “Do a deer, I call myself. Fa, a long long way to run. So, I need to pull a thread. La, I need to follow so. Ti, blah-blah-blah-blah bread! Sing sing back to do!” It’s basically the best. Whenever she starts singing it, Hubby and I just look at each other and try not to laugh until she’s finished. Her other key phrase is “Oh my gosh!” No explanation needed.
Keep the toddler on your lap for a snuggle whenever you can, because it isn’t often.Ā
What are some crazy antics of your toddlers? Anything they say that’s hilarious every time? Any silly habits or funny things they do?8
Due to our basement renovations, the Hsu house is extremely loud from time to time. It’s totally fine, and we knew it would be that way, and our contractors have graciously given us no less than 24 hours notice when we’re going to have a extra loud day. Today was one of the loud ones, so we got up, had breakfast, made a Target run, then came over to my in-laws’ house for nap times (my kids aren’t having the glorious double nap right now, so “nap times” can be anywhere from 2-5 hours). My in-laws are absolutely wonderful for letting us interrupt their days and their home by letting us come over, eat, watch tv, make messes and require quiet for naps. That being said, I’ll move on to the real point of this post.
I almost always use Pampers diapers. I thought about cloth diapering with J since we were “parenting pros” (HA HA HA) but Hubby nixed it. I wasn’t that sad. We’ve tried Huggies, Babies R Us brand, Costco/Kirkland brand, and a few others that are cheaper than Pampers. But in our experience, especially with bigger babies/toddlers, Pampers is the way to go. My in-laws keep a stock of diapers at their place, mostly cheaper ones since they’re sorta emergency diapers, used only for short periods of time and never for overnight, and I’m just super grateful that they’re there, because when I’m coming over with the kids, I don’t even bring a diaper bag. ((The photo above is Pampers (diaper bag crushed and all), Huggies, Kirkland/Costco, and Babies R Us, and all are size 4.))
Today, J went down for his nap first, right when we got there. Nothing was out of the ordinary… I put a fresh diaper on him, gave him his swaddle (my kids both sleep with one) and his bottle of warm milk, and he went right to sleep. He slept for three hours! HALLELUJAH! However, he had woken up with wet pants, because his Huggie (same size as the Pampers he always wears) had leaked. It wasn’t as if I left him for his nap and he drank several cups of water. He NEVER leaks at nap time. Sometimes at night, but never at a nap. So of course I changed his pants and went on about my business.
Right before J woke up, EK fell asleep, without drinking anything I might add, watchingĀ a movie (a special privilege since we’re at her grandmother’s house – she doesn’t do that at home) on the couch. As far as I know, she had a dry diaper on, because we’d just had an accident in the Pull-Up right asĀ the movie started. Ā Her diaper was a Kirkland brand (from Costco, size 4, which is her normal diaper size – yes, same size as J. Yes, that is a wonderful phenomenon.) She woke up in a puddle on the couch.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Two leaking naps, in two different brand diapers that aren’t our usual, and at someone else’s house, no less?! I felt terrible… Not only am I already doing my laundry over here (no laundry available at our place during the basement reno) but I’m causing more laundry and wrecking the couch. Or my kids are. Or we as a family are. Ugh. Good thing I have forgiving, wonderful in-laws who love me with my messy kids.
Moral of the story: I may never buy anything but Pampers ever again. Has anyone else have tried and true Pampers stories? Has anyone had good luck with the off-brand diapers?
Growling “like a dinosaur” instead of eating her lunch.
So, Iāve been trying to teach EK about manners. I know, my two and a half year old doesnāt know much about manners (says anyone whoās ever spent time with her). Sheās a little spastic, likes to run around instead of stay in her chair during meals, and thinks spitting, yelling, sounding like a fire truck, and pushing down her brother (who just learned to walk) are all acceptable things to do. We talk every day about being polite, making good choices, and being kind to others, and I can tell itās finally starting to sink in. She knows better than doing lots of the things we talk about. And thatās where we get stuck.
Recently, sheās been saying, āThatās funny!ā or āElla Kate so funny!ā after she does something mean or rude. So the other day, I countered with, āNo, thatās not funny. Thatās rude.ā If you could tell me how to take those words back, Iād pay you a million dollars.
I have literally heard that phrase several times a day since I said it the first – and only – time. Of all the things I say that she parrots, I canāt believe thatās the one. Sometimes, she does something truly funny, and we tell her so. And right on cue, she responds with, āNo! Thatās not funny! Thatās rude!ā
Talk about a lost meaning. A giant parenting fail that I committed, just as I was trying to teach manners. The best laid plans, right? Well, I canāt stop teaching her about manners because I had an epic fail. I canāt just let her run me over when I try to teach her right from wrong. One failed teachable moment doesnāt excuse me from ever teaching her anything again. It just makes me want to get it right even more. As a parent, itās my job to teach her to make good choices on her own, so that she can do it without me later. Itās a scarily important role, teaching those things. Itās tough. Iām sure when sheās a teenager, itāll be tougher still. But I canāt be discouraged by one fail, or five fails, or a thousand. That loud, endearingly crazy girl is going to get the right idea, if I can help guide her in spite of ourselves.
We’ve had another Parenting Fail at the Hsu House. This time, no one is sure who to blame. No one is even sure when it happened. There was no real damage done to child or property, but the lingering effect, now completely fixed, was found after the fact.
yes, that is a toilet bowl. Yes, it is chock full of toilet paper. The basement bathroom we rarely use isn’t a typical place for my daughter to hang out, but she managed to sneak in, unroll half a roll of toilet paper, and fill up the toilet. Most surprising thing? It flushed right down with no problem. Thankfully.
I’m having a hard time with the irony that we are potty training right now, and when I want her to get ON the potty, she acts like she’d rather eat chicken livers, but when left to her own devices, it seems she’d play in it all day. Sheesh.
Here’s the culprit, clearly doing hard time.
Anyone else’s kid keep trying to get to the toilet?!
Ā There’s a word my daughter said for weeks before I truly understood its meaning. J and I both have humidifiers in our rooms, and she kept pointing to them, asking if she should turn on the “fire”. At first, I thought this was because you can see the mist/vapor coming out of it, and she was associating “smoke” with “fire”. I finally figured out that she was muttering a syllable before “fire” and it was really just an attempt to say “humidifier”. Mom fail.
This past weekend, my parents were up here from Georgia. Because of the renovations, there isn’t exactly a guest room, so we blew up a queen-sized air mattress, and they slept in the kitchen floor. I know – Ā crazy. Ā Anyway, the air mattress in the kitchen was a lovely plaything for the kiddos, and EK was making us laugh by calling all the pillows “puddles”. I’m not sure where the disconnect was, but no matter how many times I tried to correct her, it wouldn’t take. That may or may not have been because I was laughing so hard about her saying “puddles”.
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