Different Does Not = Wrong

So I was sitting in McDonalds with my kids one Saturday afternoon.  We decided to get some lunch and went inside to eat.  The kids like to sit next to the window so they can wave to people as they pull away from the drive thru.  Half the time the people are too distracted to notice, but every once in a while someone will look over and wave back.  This usually brings a huge smile to the face of my kids and the drive thru customer as well.  I love it, and think it is a nice thing to do, so I let them.  As we were sitting there, a woman stopped and asked me something about my phone.  I didn’t hear her at first, so I said excuse me.  She then repeated her question.  She had asked what kind of phone it was.  I told her it is a Samsung Galaxy S3.  That is when my daughter turned around to look at the woman.  I knew right away from the expression on her face that what she was about to say was not going to be good.  My daughter said aloud, “What is wrong with your teeth?”  The woman had two teeth in the front of her mouth that stuck out, and one was also slightly crooked.  I tried to keep talking while I was looking at my daughter in that BE QUIET kind of way, but then she said it again even louder, as she was not to be ignored.  The woman stopped talking to me and looked at her and said, “I don’t know.”  Even though she seemed as though the question did not bother her, and her answer did satisfy my daughter, it still made me feel really sad.  I don’t want my kids thinking that just because someone looks different, that something is wrong with them.  I explained this to them.  I told them you can’t tell how a person is just by looking at them.  When someone looks a little different, it is not nice to ask what is wrong with them.  Just because it is different, does not mean it is wrong.  When you say what is wrong with you, it can make a person feel really sad.  No one likes to hear that something is wrong with the way they look, especially when there is nothing they can do about it.  Hopefully this little talk will help to prevent some future embarrassing moments and hurt feelings.  I just wish we would have had this conversation before we saw the guy with the prosthetic leg at the post office.

Sick Of This Sh*t

Ah, now that potty training is completely over, I feel like I can talk about it without jinxing myself.  For the past few years I have been dealing with a lot of shit….Really a lot!  I mean this in the most literal sense.  Before having children, I had to deal with shit from time to time, but nothing can prepare you for the crap that comes along with being a parent.  Before kids, maybe my chihuahua wouldn’t be able to hold it all day, or my lab would not feel too good, but for the most part the only crap I had to deal with was my own.  Once my children were born though, my life turned to shit, times two.  My kids seemed to poop non-stop as babies.  My daughter even squirted poop on the photographer doing her first photo shoot.   I remember it so well because it also got all over this beautiful, soft, and very white blanket that was used in the shoot.  That lady probably deals with crap all the time, since she shoots a lot of babies….naked.
With twins, we went through a lot of diapers.  Sometimes if a poop was particularly stinky, I would bag the diaper, and head straight for the can outside.  I like to call these little bags, identity theft deterrents.  I can just picture someone looking for information in my garbage thinking…wow, what is in this, as they hold up a small bag.  At closer inspection they see it is triple bagged, and tightly sealed so no one could ever open.  This makes them think it has to be confidential information.  Now determined, the would-be- thief would have to poke through each bag, one by one with a fingernail.  Once they would make the last poke, they could finally rip open the bag and get a bunch of poop on themselves.  I can only imagine that this shit finger would never dig through my trash again.
I was so happy once my kids got through the diaper and pull up stage, and in to regular underwear.  It was like a graduation.  This graduation had some real downsides though.  Let’s just say, my son had plenty of accidents….if you want to call them that.  He would hold his bowels until they would give in on him, letting little pieces out one at a time and ruining countless pairs of underpants.  When you are the person who has to clean out the pants……you are shit out of luck.  I grew so tired of these messes.  Even though I cleaned out so many pooped up underwear, I still had to throw a lot of pairs away.  They would just be too much, or just the texture would be so stuck on there that I could tell it would be pointless to try.   The kids eventually even learned the term sharting, and what it meant….because they did it a lot.
 I don’t know how many times we tried explaining to our kids that when you feel like you need to go, you need to sit on the toilet.  Sometimes it takes a while.  I even told them the song “Push It” by Salt and Pepa was the poop song.  I would sing it while they were in the bathroom.  Sometimes they would think it was funny, but other times, my son would just get mad.  He does not like to wait around on the toilet for a terd.  I don’t know how many times I exclaimed, “I’m sick of this shit!”  I even joked that I needed to write a song about it.  I probably still could.  Since the kids like fish, another way we tried to get them to go was to tell them that once they pooped, we would flush it down and then it heads out to sea where the fish eat it.  This seemed like it was going to work, but all it did was get them excited to flush.
I am happy to say that, at this time, the only shit I have to deal with is mine.  Unfortunately, my lab is getting pretty old though, so I don’t think I will have too long of a break…… but for now, I’ll take it.