The Poo Slug

We make all sorts of allowances and break all sorts of rules for our Third Child. Despite being three years old, she is – and always will be – our baby.

And she knows it.

And exploits it.

Despite regularly using the toilet and potty at daycare for most of last year – completely without my knowledge, mind you – now that I have lost patience and taken away Baldy’s daytime nappies, she has decided that toilets are for fools and there are much better places to find relief. Like the floor outside her bedroom. And the backyard.

Yesterday after three hours in the park, and my watching her like a hawk, there had been no accidents. When we came home and I asked if she wanted to do a wee on the toilet, she gave me a sideways glance and simply said ‘No thanks mummy.’

Pretending not to watch her, I pottered around doing mum stuff, like dishes and Facebook. When I heard her run to her bedroom and start digging through the drawers for a nappy I knew she needed to go.

So armed with a bag of lollies I walked into her room and bribed her: four lollies for a wee on the toilet. Perhaps not the best parenting technique, but certainly one of the most reliable.

She did her wee and got her lollies.

I was going to need more lollies, but perhaps this was going to be easier than I thought.

Not long after, she approached me with a strange look on her face.

‘There’s a bee!’ she said, frightened.

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘On my finger.’

I looked closely at her outstretched finger and my stomach lurched. ‘That’s not a bee sweetie. That’s poo!’

She looked at her hand and back at me, her eyes big and I could see I had about three seconds before she completely lost the plot.

‘Why do you have poo on your finger?’ I asked.

‘It’s in my bottom,’ she said.

Ah.

She bent over and yes, there was part of a poo squished between her butt cheeks. But where was the rest of it I wanted to know.

‘Bend over,’ I said arming myself with a whole packet of wet wipes. She bent forward and promptly cracked her head on the corner of the wall, a huge welt immediately appearing. Trying to comfort one end and wipe the other, we finally managed to clean her up, reapply knickers, and send her out to watch TV.

Meanwhile, I needed to find the rest of the poo.

‘Where were you when you did the poo?’ I asked.

She pointed. ‘On the couch,’ she said.

Awesome.

I checked the couch. No poo.

I checked the rug in front of the TV. No poo.

Soon I was running all over the house – the bedrooms, the bathroom, the kitchen – looking for the 

poo. Nothing.

I soon figured out where it was.

‘Arghhhhhhh poooooooo,’ she moaned like was facing the worst ever demon zombie monster ever.

The first bit was just the prelude. Now it was time for the main act.

As she walked towards me, little poo slugs fell onto the floor. Splodge. Splodge. Thank god it was on the tiles.

I grabbed her under the arms and ran to the nearest toilet, holding her as far in front of me as my pathetic upper body strength would allow. I put her on the ground and started to take her – incredibly full – underpants off, only to realise that she had put them on sideways so she was squeezed into them like a crotch hugging corset.

The only way to get them off was to make her shut her legs which she had as wide open as John Wayne after riding a horse for a week. ‘Shut your legs,’ I kept saying.

‘Nooooo,’ she kept howling.

As I forcefully moved her feet together so I could pull her undies down, the giant poo started breaking apart. We both watched as a giant poo slug slowly slimed its way down her thigh, leaving a brown trail the length of her leg. She howled and tried wiping it away, which merely transferred said poo slime to her arm. More bits were falling out onto the floor, and we were both crying, one from humiliation and the other from insanity and laughter.

I finally got the knickers off, and quickly decided that they were beyond redemption. The big chunk of poo went in the toilet and the knickers went in the bin. The child went in the shower.

Later that night when her Daddy asked her about her day, she merely smiled at him and said ‘My poo went in the toilet.’

Technically true but so far from the actual truth, I could have cried.

Toilets are for wimps