Wiped out

How is it possible that I gave birth to two people so completely different from one another? I tell you the recessive gene pool is expansive. Vast.

We're having trouble getting my son to wipe himself (sorry, that wasn't much of a segue). He's five. I'm sure this is normal and to be honest part of me wants to keep doing it because I do a better job than he does, but he should really be wiping his own ass (I keep hearing that little boy in Adam Sandler's movie Big Daddy,  I wipe my on ass! I wipe my own ass!). Anyway, my husband told him he's not doing it anymore and I said, I guess me neither. And then my son didn't take a dump for three days. This is what we are up against. So I said fine, I will wipe and then after, you will practice, as in wipe with no threat of getting poop on his fingers. We've been doing this for a week or so. And yesterday, when he didn't want to reach over to get the toilet paper because he would have to close his eyes so he wouldn't have to see the poop and then he might fall and land in the toilet (his words), I realized the extent to which he is not psyched about poop.

Compare that to a recent conversation I had with my daughter. She'd been playing in leaves outside and then came in and wanted her pants off because something was itching her. You mean the dried up maple leaves in your underwear? Is that it? I pull down her pants and a bunch of brown flecks of leaf fall to the ground and a very nonchalant conversation ensues.

her: (bending over to touch the leaves) mommy, is it poo poo?
me: no, honey
her: spider?
me: no, it's a leaf.
her: oh, leaf. (shrugs and giggles). Leaf is not poo poo mommy. Silly.

Same parents. Swear.