Having a toddler is disgusting. Maybe you could blow what I say off if I were a reasonably neat and clean person to begin with. But I'm a nasty, notorious slob. I decided basic acts of hygiene like bathing and shaving were horrible, electable chores a long time ago, didn't accept that I really should wash my face/brush my teeth/take out my contacts every single night until I was well into my twenties. And my housekeeping skills...well...thank goodness Anonyhub values a clean floor, otherwise sweeping and mopping might be an annual event. So I'm not averse to slovenly messes.
And yet I can say this, and say it without reservation: living with a toddler is disgusting.
I live with someone who shits in her pants. Who has no qualms about popping things into her mouth that she found on the floor, or in a hardened mass in her high chair seat. She thinks nothing of peeing in her bathwater and then trying to drink it. In fact, she thinks it's quite amusing.
Here's my freshest tale of woe: with all of the snow and cold in Chicago recently, Anonybabe and I have been home bound a lot on the weekends. It makes a soul want to get out and do things really really bad. So Anonybabe and I had been doing a lot of farting around the house for a couple of days, and she didn't really want to go outside any more than I do. I think she has a snow phobia after watching Frosty the Snowman a few months back, but that's another story. The one activity that seemed to hold it's appeal for her was a trip to the toy store. So we bundled up, ran to catch the bus, motored down to our local (green, organic!?) hot dog place where Anonybabe proceeded to refuse to eat and then wolf down her peanut butter sandwich, demand a hot dog, scarfed half of her apple sauce while using the other half of it for finger painting the table, refused ice cream while crying (?! though it will become clear why she did this later). I slowly and tentatively ate her kiddy ice cream cup, convinced that as soon as I was through she would scream for ice cream.
She didn't, and we headed to the library where she happily ran around pulling books off of the book shelves and squealing with delight when I found some Arthur the Aardvark books. "Ah-tur...wight...TO-wee" she repeated when I announced we were checking out "Arthur Writes a Story". I'd smelled a horrible smell several times while we were cruising the stacks, since she had a onesie on I could only assume she had a messy shit we needed to clean up before moving along so I took her to the family bathroom. She cried and resisted, and I peeled off her many layers only to find a nominally wet diaper. It was only killer gas.
So I got her re bundled and we got in the mile long check-out line. The eastern European couple behind us laughed while Anonybabe wiggled and asked to climb the stairs and yelled "No No NO, Mama" when I tried to move her forward from the bench where she was flipping through books. "No, No, No!" the couple behind me laughed and smiled at me and chatted away in Polish, perhaps, while I sweated and tried not to drop our coats and books and pulled out our library card and attempted to keep my mouthy 21 month-0ld from wandering too far up the stairs or away from the line.
I was both crabby and determined to play with toys, dammit by the time we got to the toy store - a quaint, individually owned place that is tightly packed with lots of old-fashioned and new fangled stuff, sans any flashing lights. We peeled off our coats and hats and I asked a sales person if we could set my bag and our coats behind the counter so I wouldn't have to carry them and monitor Anonybabe. He started to say no until the owner stopped him and said "of course we can" and took them with a smile. I was grateful to her but worried that I'd made a potential enemy of this salesman who looked as hot and bored and cramped as I felt...especially when I didn't plan on buying anything.
Anonybabe toddled about like she owned the place and I sat wishing she would be quieter. We played with the puppets for a while, where she demanded that I hold each one and have it talk to her. She proceeded to take a sippy cup from a display and put it in her mouth. Then when we moved on to a table they had set up with some toys and Anonybabe took delight in running the truck toys over on to the floor, toddling away and ignoring me when I tried to give her a lecture about picking up her mess. By this time she smelled terrible again. But there's no changing table in this place and I hoped that the smell wasn't carrying too far beyond us. I was determined that we were going to stay a little while before leaving. I tried to keep Anonybabe from pulling a few more things off the shelves, then directed her to the Thomas the Tank Engine table. She was delighted and played around it happily while I tried to ignore the smell emanating from her pants and promised myself that as soon as I had just a teensy more energy for it, I was going to ask for our coats and train us back home.
I'd long tipped the balance into assholery for subjecting other patrons to her smell when I finally asked for our coats and bag. When I carried her to the front of the store to put on her coat I discovered why. She'd had a diarrhea blow-out and the yellowy shit had shot up and above the waistband of her diapers, seeped through her onesie and her two shirts. There was nothing for it but to put on her white coat over the shit stains, put her in the carrying wrap, hold her close and pick our way over the snowy sidewalks to the train for the 15 minute commute home.
When we got on I tried to stand as far away from people as possible, and with the cold I don't think the smell started to gain traction until right before we got off. You know how you smell shit on a train and you look around for the homeless person. We were the propagator.
Anonybabe fell asleep as we were approaching our block but started to bawl when I tried to lay her on the changing table. I'd already gotten shit on the inside of my coat, so I laid her on it instead and proceeded to peel off layer after shitty layer of clothes, hers and mine. She woke up for real when I started wrestling off her tights and I was able to sit her up so I could just cut off her onesie without having to pull all of that shit over her head, face and hair. All this time I'd been making a putrid pile of clothes on the changing table. I took us, both naked, into the bathroom where I showered us down, flecks of roughage swirling down the drain.
The whole experience was disgusting and humiliating. I was the person with the feisty, crabby, belligerent toddler. I was the person whose attempts to guide and discipline sounded flat and lame. I was the person who smelled strongly of shit.
3 comments:
I have to stop back reading here b/c it is noon and I haven't showered yet. (Note that this is because I work from home, not because I'm lazy, heh.) BUT this is a lovely tale of motherhood! I too am the perfect mother when it's not challenging and quite relate to at least every other post.
And my kid? He's relatively perfect. Except that he's 5 and he's still in pull ups. (Groan.)
We've been to doctors and had x rays and so far the diagnosis is "constipation." BUT GOD HELP ME I'VE CHANGED DIAPERS FOR 5 YEARS NOW AND IN A REALLY SHORT WHILE I'M GONNA HAVE ANOTHER BABY!
Oh Carissa. I am crossing myself for both of us on that one.
Last year I was flying to Pittsburgh with Anonybabe and a guy in line behind me commented on my diaper bag. We started chatting and he said he had 5 kids, from age 15 on down, with one in the oven, and that there had always been at least 1 person in his household in diapers since the birth of his first. He had been carrying a diaper bag for FIFTEEN STRAIGHT YEARS. I didn't know what to say, he delivered this information the same way he would have if he'd told me he'd watched his mother die in his arms. Beaten. Sad. More than a little hopeless.
Conventional wisdom says they won't be in diapers _forever_, everybody potty trains at _some_ point, but that is cold comfort when you are elbow deep in somebody else's feces...again!
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