Watch out for poop

In Israel you have to keep an eye out for poop. Dog poop. Because it's everywhere. Israel is ahead of its short 63 years in terms of technology adoption, universal health care, drip irrigation, solar water heating and pita, but they are sorely behind the times in terms of cleaning up after dogs. Even in a small town like the one in which we live as of four days ago, there is still poop on the side walk. So when I walk with my kids to school, we have our heads to the pavement always scanning for poop.

Don't misunderstand. The dog shit situation has improved in recent years, to be sure. When I lived in Tel Aviv thirteen years ago I had to almost tiptoe to work because the sidewalks were so covered. Do pet owners here just think that dog shit is magical and just disappears at the end of the day? Or maybe special poop fairies come out at daybreak to turn the poop into milk and honey?

In our case watching out for poop is tough because where we live there is astonishing beauty around every corner and it's distracting. The old stone houses. The olive and fig trees. The cobalt blue sky. The bougainvillea. It seems to be the perfect metaphor for our own situation as newcomers. So far our settling in has been a great success. We have a car! We moved into our home! We bought a fridge! We have Internet service! We have a bank account! Our kids are in school! I found the place to buy my son his school uniforms thirty minutes away along a winding road in the middle of the Judean Mountains! Beautiful!

But then you hit a dump bump. Like today, for instance. Mr. Rosen left at 7am to go to the Social Security administration so that he and the kids would be registered as returning residents and therefore be entitled to health coverage. Getting to this stage required a mountain of proof that we are actually residing in Israel in general and in our little town specifically. To help us out Saba Rosen stood in line for us to deliver this paperwork yesterday afternoon only to be told that they don't handle these requests in afternoon hours and anyway they can't do it in that office because now that we've moved, we have to take care of it in the Jerusalem office. Hence, Mr. Rosen's early morning departure leaving me to get all three kids ready and out the door by 7:40 for our oldest son's first day of first grade. Turns out that the Social Security Administration is on strike today. And closed tomorrow. That's some seriously stinky poop on the sidewalk if you ask me.

Such is life here these last two weeks. All things moving along pretty well. And just when you've spotted an alarmingly beautiful patch of bougainvillea and you can't believe your luck, you look down to see you've stepped in the poop.

Thankfully there is more bougainvillea around the corner. In our case, Mr. Rosen was able to get to the customs office instead since they're not striking and now all systems are go to receive our container in a little more than a week, barring any unforeseen acts of piracy or god. The sidewalk is clear again.

Talking shit

I have a secret. I encourage potty talk in our house. Poo and pee are funny and everyone knows it so, for instance, when my daughter slips on a stray sock in the hallway and bumps her head, we point our fingers at the sock and say in earnest you're a poo poo sock! And then we turn around and stick our butts out at the sock. And my daughter is no longer crying.

It's childish. I know. And largely inappropriate. And many things about excrement are not funny at all. But many things are hilarious. Now the dinner table is another story. The rule is that if we talk about potty stuff at the dinner table then we have to talk about chicken fingers and salad while on the toilet. That makes them laugh every time and the distraction causes them to forget what they were saying.

There are times when we take shit seriously. Like the other day we were hopping trains for the afternoon and ended up at Sunnyvale station when I was suddenly gripped by the runs. Thankfully and not a moment too soon I spied a public bathroom at the station. It had a keypad which worried me, but then we saw someone exit so we ran and caught the door. The kids came in with me and after warning them about what was coming, they huddled in the furthest corner.

Him: Do you have diarrhea?
Me: Yes, sweetie. It seems so. Did you ever have diarrhea?
Him: Yes. I don't like it. It's like the kaki flies out of your tushy at light speed.
Me: Exactly.
Her: You stink mommy.

But back to potty talk. I urge you to incorporate potty talk into your arsenal of distraction techniques. Kids are fighting? Go up and smell both of their butts and say, who made a poo poo? I guarantee they will stop fighting and fall over laughing. This is probably only worthwhile if both are out of diapers.

I'll understand if you don't want your kids to play at our house any more.

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.

Bathtub conversations

I was writing the previous blog while my son was in the tub playing the other night when he started getting into a hard core dramatization with his rubber duckies. So I dropped what I was writing and just started to transcribe. This was his conversation:

• Did you make poo poo big duck?
• Yea, you didn't!
• You're a big boy.
• You need to go poop in the potty.
• You're a big duck.
• Oh no, you made poo poo in the tub little duck!
• I'm going to put my legs on you because you made poop in the tub and you're a stinko.
• Guys, stay there, I'm going to put my legs on you.
• I'm not going to change you because it's not okay.
• That's so sad.
• Should I change you? No I'm not.
• Now you're crying and you want me to change you.
• Okay fine.
• Wow, that was a big one little duckie. Let me get the wipes.
• You're done.
• Now it's your turn. Oh boy, you need wipes too.
• You guys are big boys.
• Oh shoot.
• Okay, you're done.
• I have to clean you still okay duckie?
• You can't swim now because I have to change you because there's poo poo on you.
• Mommy! I need to get out of the tub because little duck made a poo poo and it's yucky in here now.

Classic.

Shit or get off the pot

I was an hour late for work this morning. Why, you ask? Because my son was sitting on the toilet.

My husband usually takes the kids to school and I pick them up but today he wanted to take his parents to the airport so we switched. Big mistake. They're just used to him dropping off and me picking up so when it's reversed, it's like the earth is suddenly spinning in the other direction. All is undone.

It didn't help that my son woke up late since he was up half the night for various reasons. He had to go poo poo. He lost his kitty. The stickers came off his hands. At one point I literally told him to get a grip (in response to the stickers coming off his hands). That actually seemed to work and he went back to his room and fell back asleep.

So he woke up late and my daughter's been a little unwell. It started when we switched her to milk a week before her first birthday (which was Friday!) and she started having a little bit of the runs. It was just half milk half formula, but something was not quite right. And then she spent half the night barfing after her first birthday party, likely having to do with the yellow cake and chocolate frosting cupcake she gobbled. We finally decided to take her off milk for a little while to see if her stomach would settle before we reintroduce. She may also have a stomach bug. Who the hell knows because my mother-in-law was also barfing the day before she left. Maybe it's my cooking? Nah.

And as much as I could I hurried my son along so that I could get to work by 9:00. But he wasn't much interested in breakfast and kept complaining that he had a tummy ache. So I sat him on the toilet and he spent about twenty minutes taking a dump. Indeed he got a lot of it out. So I wiped him, washed hands, flushed and got him into his clothes. My daughter by now is beside herself. She's also teething which doesn't help but she just could not stop crying, even when I was holding her. So my policy is that if they cry even when you're rocking and holding them, then why bother? Put 'em down. So I did and she went back to sleep. My son then asked again to sit on the potty. So he sat for another twenty minutes, this time with no output. I was starting to get annoyed because it was clear that I was going to be late for work. He finally hopped off, I woke up the baby and just as we were all ready to go, he grimaced and told me his belly hurt him and he needed to make a poo poo. So back he went on the potty. By now my daughter is awake and disoriented. She was gnawing on her own hand when, transformed into a rabid dog, she took a big bite out of my shoulder. Easy Dracula! I jumped and yelled NO! which totally startled her so she made the boo boo face and started crying again. And still my son is sitting dangle-footed on the pot. I told him to hurry it up but that made him cry. So I apologized. By the end of his session he'd been sitting on the toilet for 45 minutes. I mean, put me on a toilet for 45 minutes and I'll show you a hemorrhoid the size of a lemon. I have a feeling he had a sour belly and was just nervous about going to school for fear of having to do his business there. I totally get that, except that the toilets at his school are tiny and adorable. For toilets I mean.

We did finally manage to get out of the house and drop off was thankfully uneventful. But by the time I got to work I was exhausted. And depressed for having had to rush my son off the toilet, knowing that he had a belly ache, so that I could get to work. That sucks. Work sucks.

The Look Part 2

I changed my daughter's diaper this evening when I first smelled something foul wafting up from the kitchen floor where she was sorting tupperware. I scooped her up, put her on the changing table and took off her diaper to find only a tiny little poop. So, naively I thought, Super. A mini-poop. No mess. No rash. Lovely. What I didn't realize was that in fact she hadn't finished her business. She was between pushes.

I like to let her crawl around naked when possible to air out the ole vageen. So I'm putting away the laundry and she's in the hallway which thank god is hardwood and not carpet (you can see where I going with this). I glance over and she meets my eyes with, you guessed it, THE LOOK. Suddenly she's sitting on a giant poop. So I grab her and she's laughing and I'm laughing and my son is completely disgusted by this barbaric behavior since he is now civilized and craps in a toilet.

I clean her off and take off the onesie that now has poop on it and the shoes with poop and I wipe up the floor and dispose of the poop and put her down to continue playing while I go wash off the shirt and shoes. I come back two minutes later and she is sitting in another pile of poop, this time smeared all over her legs. So I pick her up and put her on the changing table to wipe her off again and she looks me straight in the eye and pees. And then it finally dawns on me. The girl wants a bath.

I don't bathe her everyday because I'm lazy and she doesn't get super dirty and it's just one extra thing that I have to do before 7:30 when I put her down. I try for 2-3 baths a week which I know would horrify some moms but it's winter and cold and her skin's dried out as it is. But she loves having a bath. She crawls into the bathroom and stands next to the tub waiting for me some evenings.

So I put her in the tub and she's as happy as can be when I hear a farty ripple noise coming from under her in the water and I think, what in the hell did I feed you? But, in fact, it was just her sitting on the rubber duckie. Situation averted.

The look

I'm home from work today with my daughter because she has pink eye now. So I decided to put her in the bath to get all of the gunk out of her eyes and generally give her a scrub down.

So she's in their clapping and splashing and generally enjoying herself when suddenly she gets the look.

Oh god, please don't do what I think you're doing. Baby. Seriously? You're really taking a dump in the tub?

There was a time when that would have just sent me over the edge. But at this point it's just water under the bridge. Clouds in the sky. Urine in the carpet. It is what it is. Thankfully I have purple surgical gloves just for this and other nasty occasions.

So I rinsed off baby, put her on the bathmat, dried her, got her dressed and then went in with the gloves. I won't go into the details except that it's not super easy to handle loose poop in water. So some went down the drain and some got scooped into the toilet. I mean it's no wonder the kid has pink eye. There must be trace feces all over the place. I'm someone who only uses all natural cleaning supplies but this may call for a Clorox intervention.