Skip to main content

I shit you not

Some of you may recall me talking about a relatively new friend who lives up the street and who who hurt my feelings last summer when she told me my son was too rough to play with her son. We took a yearlong play-break but have recently reconciled (mostly). My son adores her son, and we just returned from the boy's birthday party. And any hard feelings I've been harboring this past year are quickly dissipating. Because my son just shit on their playset.

That's right, sports fans. Due to an unforeseen conglomeration of novice-parent choices (I'm chalking it up to half a can of mandarin oranges for breakfast, three organic tangerine juice boxes and a bowl full of blueberries at the party, and a worthless pull-up diaper), Sweet Boy had a brief-yet-powerful bout of diarrhea while playing. And before he or I knew what was happening, there was a big ol' puddle of watery poo at the top of the birthday boy's fancy slide and a couple of kids yelling "ewww!" Yikes. I'll be forever haunted by the look of confusion and horror on my son's face when he looked down at the grossness running down his leg.

To her credit, though, the hostess cleaned it all up with her younger child in the sling on her hip and a smile on her face as I whisked Sweet Boy home to clean him up...and decide if either of us were too mortified to show our faces again. Sweet Boy insisted that the call of the cupcakes was much stronger than the embarrassment, and I didn't want him to feel like he was being punished for a potty mishap outside his control, so we did return. And although I was a pariah to the other mothers, the hostess was completely congenial and acted as if nothing had happened. Which I am extremely grateful for because it spared Sweet Boy's already fragile potty ego.

So maybe we can be friends after all. Who knew all it would take was a poop mishap?

Comments

  1. Is it wrong that I'm giggling a little? Not because of what happened to you and your little man but because of your amusing way of conveying the story.

    I can only guess that your hostess has endured a similarly embarrassing situation. Parenthood seems to be the great equalizer. For any parent who hasn't been mortified by something his/her child has done purposefully or by accident, it is only a matter of time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ottomania!

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about ottomans. A ridiculous amount of time, actually, given the number of other things I truly should focus my thoughts on. I find, though, that when the world outside gets scary (and scary is a truly relative term these days) I turn to online shopping for things I don't really need. Actually, it's more like online browsing; I rarely purchase. I spend hours searching for, oh, erasable colored gel pens or standing desks or all-natural curly-hair gel or the perfect black sweater. (Yes, these are things I've fixated on over this winter; I still haven't clicked "buy" nor settled on any of them.) This week, it's ottomans. By the way, my girl  BrenĂ©  Brown would call this behavior numbing . I'm okay with that. Because online browsing is way less detrimental (so far) than chain smoking, which is what I'd really like to do when the world is scary. It's a way to escape, to daydream, to focus on things tha

What all parents should do

When accepting one of her Emmy awards a couple weeks ago, Tina Fey thanked her parents for "somehow raising me to have confidence that is disproportionate with my looks and abilities. Well done. That is what all parents should do." I couldn't agree more, Tina -- about the job of parents, not your looks or abilities. (For the record, I think Tina Fey is one of the most brilliant women out there, and lovely to boot.) I was also raised by parents who gave me confidence well beyond my looks and abilities -- even though they didn't have much confidence in their own looks or abilities -- and I am constantly grateful. In hindsight, I realize my mother struggled with terrible self-esteem, but she somehow projected all her hopes and dreams onto me. She told me every day that I was smart and beautiful and could do anything; she never missed an opportunity to tell me she was proud of me. (And the worst punishment in the world was to hear her say "I'm disappointed in you