Vol. 108 - Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

On shit.

Emily and I have been wiping someone else’s ass for nearly seven years.

From the moment our son took his first meconium-laden poop, when he was just a few hours old, to just a few hours ago, when our daughter took a construction-worker-grade dump, my wife and I have been swiping shit that isn’t our own for almost a decade now.

However, one key goal for the early part of our daughter’s new preschool year was potty training. As she moved up to a bigger room, where many of the kids are out of diapers, her teachers and caregivers stressed the importance of being thoroughly potty trained.

And, like most second children (if you are to believe the wives’ tales), she took to it with aplomb. Within a week, she was recognizing she had to go, holding her pee and her poop until we could get her on the toilet, and going with ease. Hell, after a few days, she was wiping herself (albeit, without any sort of efficiency. But it’s the thought that counts). It was a far cry from our son, who fought to stay in diapers with all the ferocity of the Marines at Guadalcanal.

Per her teachers’ instructions, we sent our daughter into preschool with plenty of extra clothes, as plenty of accidents were anticipated. And, as they almost always are, her teachers were spot on. At the end of the first few days of school, I toted a plastic bag or two (one day, three) full of tiny urine- and shit-soaked clothing back to our car. But she was making progress. For every accident she had, our daughter successfully went on the toilet, thanks in large part to the efforts of the amazing staff at her school.

And then, at the end of her first week, we got the message that we’ve all been waiting for: a full day with no accidents! She recognized when she had to go, informed her teachers, and off she went. Boom! Emily and I might have even high-fived, knowing that our long odyssey of changing diapers was nearing its end. Very soon, we told each other, we could be done with changing, done with diaper caddies, done with tugging overstuffed bags of foul-smelling diapers out to the trash, done with asking each other whether there were enough diapers in the back of the car. We were almost there. We were so close.

And then, the very next morning, a phone call reminding us that parenting is never a straight line from a to z.

Our son had some sort of stomach bug and had an accident of his own at school. We needed to come get him immediately.

We dropped what we were doing and rushed over to his school, where he sat waiting for us in the nurse’s office, his own tightly knotted plastic bag of soiled clothing in hand. He told us he had no idea it was coming and didn’t realize it was happening until it was too late. We told him there was nothing wrong him, that shit happens, and that he’d be fine in a day or two. We also told him that he could spend the rest of the day on the couch watching movies and drinking Gatorade.

Of course, given the suddenness of his illness, which came on a few more times that afternoon without warning, Emily and I decided it was best to have our son, who’s been out of diapers for years now, pull on the biggest pair of diapers I could find at the store, that he wouldn’t shit all over our couch.

And once again, so close to the finish line, I stood at our local Walgreen’s, before the large shelf of various diapers in various sizes, trying to remember how much my son weighed, that I might buy the correct size of diapers to try and stem the sea of shit that we’ve been wading through for nearly a decade now.