Quality time

This tweet from Charlie and Andy @HowToBeADad got me reminiscing…

We parents spend an awful (and I mean awful in all senses of the word) lot of time dealing with poop. As a newbie you think there can be nothing worse than a bad diaper when, in reality, the worst is still to come. The wiping stage.

In the wiping stage you are a slave to the whim of your pooper. You will be rushing to get them to daycare and yourself to work and, just as you are heading out, they will double back with an “I need to poop!”

A rookie might think, “Well, that’s better than having to change a diaper.” Well, they would be wrong. You can have that soiled diaper off and a new one on in a matter of minutes, but the toddler toilet experience can take an eternity.

My eldest, let’s start calling him CJ, would always pick the most inopportune time to have a leisurely bowel movement. While he was on the toilet, he would call out updates such as, “That was the baby poo and the Mommy poo. The Daddy poo still hasn’t come out yet.” Meanwhile, I would be pulling out my hair urging him to just hurry up. I’ve since learned there is no hurrying in this situation.

Yes, dear Reader, this is what my post is about tonight… pooping.

I’ve had some amazing conversations with my youngest, we’ll call him ET (those are his initials but he also has a big head) while I sat in the bathroom waiting for him to have his last poop of the day.

It was during one of these toilet talks, he was almost three, when I noticed him staring at the top of my head. I was deep into the process of growing my hair out from a very short cut that I had worn since he was born.

I took the plunge, (very high brow toilet humour) and asked, “Do you like my hair?” Opening yourself to a toddler this way is always a dangerous play.

He responded quite seriously in his little 3-year-old voice, “You are starting to look like a woman.”

“Well honey…” huge pause while I processed this comment. “…I am a woman.”

“You are?” He was genuinely perplexed.

“Did you think I was a man because I had short hair?” I wanted to clear up any confusion. “Women and men can have short hair or long hair.”

“Oh, okay,” he said. This seemed to be the end of the conversation until he asked, “Is Daddy a woman too?”

I often wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t had this leisurely time to chat while he moved his bowels. Would he still think his parents were a same-sex couple?