Monday, September 12, 2011

Another face of parenting

Today, I have not been myself at all. First, I could not get out of the bed until 10 am, but I had not slept in all that well either, I had kept waking up by my own snores a whole night long and then by the exciting kids when morning arrived! When I finally gave up the idea of sleeping in and got out the bed, I found myself suffered from a mild but annoying headache. As if that was not bad enough, Fabrice told me that it would be good if we could feed the kids earlier so that they could go to the swimming pool and not for him to miss his beloved Sunday football later in the afternoon. In this case, my breakfast was just a cup of milk and then I started to prepare the lunch, which was great lunch, by the way, giving how little time I was given. It is Sunday and it usually is the only day of the week that I cook properly. I had fried some Tofu and mixed it with stir-fried chicken breast, which was delicately marinated a day ago. The kids must have loved it greatly because I did not see the color of the Tofu after I put it on then table. After that, I was wondering how could that be possible, it never happened before! Suddenly, I found this lo, I thought to myself, when I finally sat down to eat. However, after lunch while I was cleaning the counter top, I found a half of the Tofu curd sitting beside the stove, I simply forgot to fry the second half of it. Then, I had planed to get some work, such as writing the dreaded research grant, done during the time when the kids were swimming, but when I was sitting in front of the computer in the office, all I wanted to do was to take a long nap...

When they got home from the pool, Fabrice said to me, the kids were exhausted and should be napping quickly. Yes, when I saw ZhuZhu was not willing to keep her head from the Daddy's shoulder, I thought, "Good, I would have the remaining afternoon all by myself!" Unfortunately, ZhuZhu discovered her newly arrived tap shoes and bellet shoes, that was the end of the nap. After Fabrice left for his football, the kids took my iPad and played with it. One game after another, they did not have any intention to stop anytime soon.

I am usually a great mother, the kind that kids hate, because I don't have any flexibility when it comes to parenting. When it is bed time, the kids go to bed, period! However, today is not the day. All I wanted to do was to take a nap myself. So, instead getting them to their respective rooms, I told them, "Could you two take the iPad upstairs, staying in Remy's bed, okay!" "Okay!" ZhuZhu cheerfully answered, surprised, but happy. Off they went. I was hoping that NiuNiu fell in asleep as soon as he hit the bed, as he usually does. That would leave ZhuZhu alone with the boring iPad, so she would follow her little brother's lead and fall into sleep. Good deal, all of us would wake up happy two hours later when the daddy came home! The bedroom was quiet down and my dream came true, I thought and fell in hibernated state immediately.
Well, I guess I just forgot what a "overtired" state was in little kids. They have their ways fighting for sleepiness now, at 2.5 and 4.5 years old. They simply never stopped playing, as far as I knew. I was half way sleeping since I needed to keep my other half of the brain to make sure they would not hurt themselves or escape from the house to hit the cars on the streets.

At around 4 pm, a little voice was calling me while I was dreaming, "Mommy, Remy pooped all over the toilet seat and himself. I've just cleaned it all up." "What exactly happened?" I opened my eyes and jumped out of the bad. ZhuZhu repeated what she said and before she could finish, I was almost fainted by the smell over the house! I then woke up completely and started to investigate the seriousness of the situation. Nothing on the toilet, good. But where the smell came from, I puzzled. "Where is the poop?" I asked ZhuZhu, "In the toilet and on the seat, but I cleaned it all up." ZhuZhu told me, proudly. "With what?" "The wet paper" She said, "I put them in the trash." She then described in details what exactly she did. I was almost in tears after her story. Taking naps on Sunday noons is not uncommon for me, but I usually wait until the kids went to their beds first. Today was the first time that I napped while they were still awake playing, look what just happened! According to ZhuZhu, she helped NiuNiu to come downstairs to use the toilet when he said that he needed to go. But they were not fast enough so he pooped all over the places.

Based on the overwhelming smell, I did not believe she cleaned "all up". Somewhere must still have some poops uncovered and unflushed. However, I could not find any poop anywhere. I opened the lid of the trash can and found full of the soiled wipers. Alright, the smell must have come from these wipers. I thought. When I closed the lid back, I noticed a pair of pants hiding behind, there it was, the soiled pair of pants of NiuNiu. It was unbearably smelly. Our little boy had diarrhea, no wonder. Yet after I dealt it cleanly, the smell still existed. Finally, I decided to track the smell down. What I found was a perfect drop of poop in the middle of NiiNiu's room. What the hell? How come this one was perfectly dry and smooth, did not seem to be "diarrhea-ry"? Alright, that must have been it. I picked it up and flushed it down to the toilet upstairs (Yes, we do have toilet upstairs, but the kids only like to use the one downstairs!) In the mean time, I found NiuNiu's bed was wet and I cleaned that too, thinking the smell would take a while to go away.

Then I came down and checked NiuNiu and the poor little sweetie's legs were covered by his disgusting waste. Just so you know, the worst thing associating with babies to me is poop and that was why both of them are diaper-trained early. Today, I am just out of luck. NiuNiu chose today to poop all over himself and the house, when I was napping and the daddy was out playing!

While I was cleaning NiuNiu in the shower, Fabrice came back from his football and was totally amused by what he found out. ZhuZhu updated him everything in details and I briefed him the nap part and he did not even have time to give me lessons about safety as he usually does. The it was NiuNiu's turn to talk, "I pooped on myself and Mommy is cleanning me up!" He reported. He likes to report the obvious, similar to someone I know very well in this household.
The story did not end here. After dinner, I was thinking to get the kids to bed early since they skipped the nap, so I went upstairs to put the bedding on NiuNiu's bed. While I was walking upstairs, I was surprised that the smell did not go away and it was stronger than I remembered. The diffusion just did not work?! I then began to open the windows in every room. Strangely, when I got closer to ZhuZhu's room, the smell became too strong to endure, I guessed there must have been more poops which I had failed to find earlier. I looked, looked, and looked, all over the stairs, corridor, a small room between NiuNiu and ZhuZhu's room, no poops. ZhuZhu's room was the last place that I searched since I knew they did not play in her room. Plus, the poop I found earlier was in NiuNiu's room, it was meters away from it!

Well, my nose said something was not right, I began to search ZhuZhu's room. I checked everywhere, the bed, every stuffed animal, her closet...nothing. I became even more suspicious, what was going on? I was about to give up to get back down, our little sweet pie NiuNiu was coming up the flight of stairs. While he was climbing, his pressed down his nose with his little fingers. The smell was not that strong there, what did he knew, I thought. Then turned back to ZhuZhu's room, to my dismay, two big poop poop were perfectly lied inside the long silver trash bin that we put in ZhuZhu's room, more as a decoration than as a trash container, and it does not have a lid.
There you have it, what a poopy day that I had!

No comments:

Post a Comment