Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Shitting the bus

So the logical place to start a blog is explaining the title.
I have three kids. Oldest is a 7 year old first grader. Her nickname is Mowgli, like from Th Jungle Book. Because despite being 8 feet tall and weighing 30 pounds (now that's a bit of an exaggeration), she loves to walk around in her underwear. She FREAKS OUT A LOT.
Middle is Dino. Also a girl, 3 years old. Dino like "dyno," not like the Greek man's name. We say that Dino has the joy. She loves dinosaurs, lizards, snakes, anything creepy. She's built like a Soviet power lifter and regularly nearly gives us strokes.
The youngest is a 2 year old boy. We call him Lionel, as in Ritchie. He used to be called Moammar but that became less funny recently, and we hope he never insists on traveling with an amazon guard. He has an afro and as we're discovering, the longer e let it grow, the tighter it curls in on itself. At this point it's more of an experiment than anything. He hasn't had a haircut since June.
Papa is in the military. Mama (me) is a civilian working for the military. We're both happy with our jobs and content to be here. We've lived lots of places but this (DC area)is our favorite because finally it feels like we're part of a community and not just on a 2 year vacation where Papa has to work 60 hours a week and Mama insists on dragging him to see a different country and cover an entire content in 100 short weeks.
I do not think that I am funny, and I am not blogging to chronicle my wisdom or pull at heart strings. I am blogging cause life is frigging hilarious, and I realize that I will forget all of the ridiculous/maddening things I see on a daily basis, like someone picking up a cigarette butt, already smoked to the filter, and smoking it, in the middle of the street, or Dino throwing such an uncontrollable fit at the minor league baseball game last weekend that she screamed "I NEED TO GO TO DOCTOR!" cause she didn't know how to control her rage, or Lionel grabbing stranger's boobs every chance he gets (OK, probably won't forget that one, cause it can be pretty embarrassing).
And for the record, this is a gross post, but whatever. Parenting is gross.
So, a few weeks ago, Lionel, spurred no doubt by Dino's recent potty training success, decided that he hated diapers. He peed on the potty for the first time, so we thought we'd try putting him in undies the following day. The next morning my husband went to get him out of bed and was overpowered by the poop smell in his room (here is where I should say Lionel is adopted from undisclosed country in Africa and has a very, very, very distinct and unpleasant poop smell. We had him tested for intestinal stuff a few times and were actually REALLLY hoping he'd have some issue, so as to explain the smell, which is not of this earth. No luck. It's just his essence). We've had a few instances before where he's taken off the diaper at night and made a mess--like most kids. But my husband was cleaning it all up and could only find smears and never the actual poop. Then he found this toy bus that Lionel had in his bed, with a removable top. It was full of poop. Yep, he used it as a toilet. Needless to say, there was no salvaging that bus. The incident seems to've scarred Lionel so much that he hasn't gone near a potty since.
Happy tuesday. I am off to work. I reserve the right to abandon this blog due to boredom, laziness, being sick of reading myself type, etc, at any time.