Tales From The Toilet

Today has been a pukey, poopy day. Kendall has the flu.

Ugh. UGH.

Flu B, as confirmed this morning at the walk-in clinic. So far, he’s the only one who’s showing signs of it, but I’m just waiting for us all to start dropping (while also hoping so hard that doesn’t happen because NOT THIS WEEKEND).

Related, kinda? We have been trying to buy a new car for a week. The only thing stopping us is we can’t find time to get to the dealership and sign on the dotted line. So many first world problems making me want to cry into my peppermint mocha.

The blur of our day, made up of puking and and scrubbing and cursing makers of bright blue colored children’s medicine, came to a pause when Leyna got home from preschool. I just got Kendall out of the bath in our bathroom, and she insisted I let her in.

Hold on… let me go get a gallon of bleach to sanitize this place.

I poured the water and the bubbles, and heard Lowell getting fussy in the other room.

Oh… right. I have to feed that one at some point.

So I kept the doors open to the bathroom and got settled on our bed. Just as I latched Lowell on, I started to hear Leyna talking to herself, which is entirely normal for a toddler taking a bath solo. Or for a toddler doing anything. I didn’t pay much attention until I heard, “Ohhhhh no. Oh no. No, tummy! No! MOMMY I HAVE TO GO POOPY I HAVE TO GO RIGHT NOW!”

I unlatched my sweet 3rd-born (He Who Is Neglected Often) and ran to drag her out of the tub and over to the toilet, all in about 10 seconds. We made it just in time. She leapt off the seat 20 seconds later. She insisted she was done. “No more poopies!” were her exact words. LIKE A FOOL, I believed her.

So I placed her back in the bathtub, returned to the bed where my baby, luckily, was still laying there, having not learned how to roll over in that short minute and a half. I put him back on a boob.

“Mommy! MOMMY MY TUMMY THERE IS MORE POOPIES!” she shouted approximately 2.5 seconds later.

I put Lowell back on the bed as he stretched my nipple with him, clamping down with a face that seemed to say, “R U KIDDING ME?”

I made the same mad dash from bathtub to toilet, dripping toddler held in front of me.

She squeezed her tummy. It seemed to be mostly gas. Then she said something… grunted something. It sounded like, “I have MONSTER poopies!”

I silently died from funny inside, while trying to stay looking concerned and motherly on the outside. “You have monster poopies?” I asked to confirm.

Her eyes widened and she threw herself off the toilet. “I HAVE MONSTER POOPIES?!”

She looked back, terrified.

“What? NO! I thought that’s what you just told me, Leyna. No! No, monster poopies,” I reassured her as I tried to wrestle her back toward the toilet. << epic fail on the “calm” voice

It was all I could do to get her back on it. She’s probably afraid of it now. Forever. Still no clue what she said except that it had nothing to do with monster poop.

********

2 hours later, Leyna’s in her jammies, all ready for bed. I see Kendall hobble into his bathroom as I begin reading a book to Leyna.

I check on him, and he tells me he needs to throw up.

UGH.

So I sit there with him, rub his back, try not to look or smell. Try to just not even mentally be there in that moment and hoping he doesn’t notice I have tried to stop breathing through my nose.

Poor fella. He is retching over the toilet, willing himself to throw up, and having no luck. He’s miserable.

Finally, I tell him, “Well…. buddy, you want to try to make yourself throw up?”

He looks at me with approving eyes.

“Okay, you just gotta stick your fingers back in your thro-” and before I can even finish the sentence he does just that.

The results were instantaneous. Projectile vomit like I have never seen in my life, all over the bathroom wall. 95% did not land anywhere near the toilet bowl.

His reaction was equally instantaneous. “WHOA. That. Was. An. EXPLOSION!!!” He was truly in awe.

“I was not expecting that!” he told me. “That was pretty awesome,” he gloated.

BOYS!

I patted him on the back, wiped his face off, changed his clothes, then closed the door to the bathroom behind us, and left that scene for his dad to clean up because NO MORE! I’m done.

Goodnight moon, goodnight puke, goodnight bathroom and the red balloon… or something. I’ve had wine.

Obviously.