A Day in the Life

February 28, 2007 on 2:38 pm | In Bett's, Funny Kid Stories | No Comments

Right now, I’m not sure I understand why people would choose not to have children. On Monday, Hannah locked herself in her room. That morning I heard her fiddling with the doorknob. She is not quite tall enough to reach it well enough to open it, so I knew she had climbed down from her bed, found the stool in their room, and dragged it across the floor to the door so she could better reach that and the light switch. I decided to surprise her and rip the door open the next time I heard the knob being fiddled with. I was the one surprised. She had managed to turn the lock, but had no idea that she had done so, or how to correct the problem. I tried to explain to her. I heard more fiddling. Then, “Mom, I want to be where you are. Can I get out now?”

I finally found one of n8’s tiny screwdrivers and unlocked it. Since then, she has not gotten down from her bed before I open the door to release her (at least to my knowledge), so the experience was extremely beneficial to me.
Last night before Hannah went to bed, she tightly encircled my neck with her little arms and kissed me on the check, randomly, with absolutely no coaching, just a pure expression of her feelings at that moment. That was a downpayment for me to be able to handle today, when she had an “accident.” She is nearly done potty training, excepting sleeping times, and accidents are getting more and more rare. Wet accidents still happen, but “solid” ones have not for several weeks (excepting little toots that ended up being less innocuous than mere gas).

Today she told me she had to go poopy, but from the “oops” expression on her face, and teary look in her eye, I sort of wondered if it was already too late. It was. She had gotten too occupied in play, and failed to tell me when she needed to go. I half-ran, carrying her to the bathroom. Ten minutes later, I had finally washed all the poopy off the toilet, the toilet seat, Hannah’s potty chair seat which perches on the toilet seat, the bathroom floor, her pants, her ankles, toes, bottom, and hands (she had begun clapping her hands to smoosh the poopy) before I re-emerged from the bathroom to dress the naked child (she had fled as soon as she could to resume her play). Walking down the hallway I noticed Eli hovering over a dark mass. I guess the reason that Hannah’s mess was so “small” was because the bulk of it had fallen down, out her pant leg on the way to the bathroom.

Eli got his bath too.

I am thankful for many things. At that moment, I was thankful that the only places I saw dark smudges of brown were Eli’s hands and bottom (he had sat in a patch). Blessedly, there was no brown smudge on his face, particularly near his mouth. He is moving out of the oral stage.
Though no one enjoys cleaning up fecal matter, especially not from a second set of pajamas, hands and fingernails, and bottom (yes, Eli had pooped too, though his was a contained mess), as well as bathtub, toilet, linoleum, washclothes, loofa, toys, and carpet, I still prefer this sort of “bad day” to what my life would be like if I were using either of my college degrees right now. I can freely express my feelings without damaging those of my co-workers (so far Hannah and Eli do not understand what “oh sh*t” means when it is spoken at a completely even and somewhat joyful tone). I do not have to attempt to act professional when computers crash and destroy all my work or customers or students or students’ parents lose their tempers and say very, very unkind and viscious things. Instead I can put my two-year-old who says very unkind and viscious things in her room or in some other way discipline her. Poopy messes can be cleaned up without too much trouble, made bareable by rubber gloves, but computers generally cannot become “uncrashed” and documents or presentations cannot easily be recovered.

In this world, though, my actions have greater consequences; who I am affects who my children will become, and so my weaknesses show up in my little princess and easy-going princeling. Even so, I think I would rather have this sort of life than the more boring one I would have chosen.