Poop And Circumstance

First, many thanks to those of you who left kind words yesterday. The essay is about Dusty and Ruby, her friend who, along with her entire family, was murdered on New Year�s Day. It was something I needed to write and it was almost impossible to edit it, though I did. Sad, sad, sad.

Ruby is still in Dusty�s thoughts. As we were making a list of invitees to her birthday party, she whined, �I really want to invite Ruby...� and the thought trailed off. There was no point in either of us finishing the sentence with �...but I can�t because she�s dead.�

She also wrote on her chalk board recently a strange kind of score card. It read:

Dusty � 6
Ruby � 4

As Dusty gets older, Ruby stays eternally four.

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In less depressing news, I have found myself cleaning up a lot of poo from the carpet lately. RS536, I�m sure you can sympathize. Perhaps your cat and Red can just be locked up together so they can enjoy their Funky Poo Dances alone where no others can be injured by them.

Over the past few weeks, Red has been experiencing intermittent, um, shall we say �very loose poo�? I really do not like the �d� word and try to avoid its use at all times. I have not been able to trace the VLP source to anything. She doesn�t have a virus. She has had no loss of appetite (quite the opposite). She's no crankier than normal. But maybe it�s that yogurt I let her have every once in awhile? Maybe she's inherited my lactose intolerance? Teething, perhaps?

While the grandparents were visiting on Saturday, Red pooped (VLP) in her pull-up and then attempted to take it off. She simply refuses to acknowledge the potty (which she calls the �ba-ba�) as a place to deposit bodily waste. It is simply a convenient place to sit while Dusty is on the real ba-ba doing her business like a fully formed human.

So, nasty poo ended up all over the carpet, down her legs, etc. I doubt I need to paint a clearer picture for you, right? Unless you want me to. I mean, if you have a secret fecal fetish, send me an email and I�ll give you all the details.

The good part about this incident is that the grandparents, who have been haranguing us to come visit them for years, decided perhaps they�d come back at Xmas and visit us rather than risking having some half-feral child smear her poo all over their (pristene, trapped in amber) house. Go Red!

I took her to the doctor�s on Monday because, you know, I�ve really had enough of this and I need to figure out a cause.

The doctor � my least favorite of the three in the practice � checked Red out and declared that all her molars were in various stages of coming in and most likely this was the cause.

Teething! Yes! And, while Dusty (when her two-year molars broke free) only had two isolated incidents of great gobs of poo so hideously disgusting it fountained out of her diaper (there � was that descriptive enough for you?) that she had to be placed in the tub and hosed off, Red brings her own special style to the eruption of her molars.

[I have to insert here that the human body has a long way to go before it reaches perfection. I certainly hope we are still evolving in a direction that will put an end to VLP as a reaction to TEETHING. I mean, come on! Give a mother a break here!]

After baths, I usually let Red run around naked for a minute or two (can you see it coming?) while I chop a vitamin in two for her. Last night was no exception. I dried her off and she slipped out of my grasp and ran into the living room. I chopped her vitamin and went to find her.

Suddenly, I was overcome by a stench so powerful I reeled. A stench that had not been present mere seconds ago. Looking down on the living room carpet, mere milli-inches from my LAPTOP, was a steaming pile of poo. In the two minutes that child had been released, practically under my damn nose, she�d just pooed on the goddamn rug! AND managed to step in and walk around so that it was tracked hither and yon before I was able to capture her and place her in her crib (Dusty was still in the tub and I didn�t suppose she�d want a poo-covered sister joining her) to begin the cleaning process.

My husband�s response? As we�re scrubbing away and spraying my bleach/water concoction on the carpet? With Red still imprisoned in her crib, clean but whiny?

�At least it was solid.�

Which, strangely, didn�t help all that much.

I am hoping this Era of Unnecessary Poo will soon be at an end because I am having WAY TOO MUCH FUN!! And I hate that.

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