SCENE: 6 o'clock, Thursday... After an entire day spent up in the TV room helping Will learn to go pee in the potty when he feels the urge, and being mostly successful, Kallah has just set up the breastpump downstairs to pump enough milk to add to Henry's first serving of rice cereal.
She brings Henry down with her, and, after debating internally, leaves butt-naked Will upstairs as he is contentedly playing with his blocks, zealously refuses to come down, and has peed commendably in the potty in the last 10 minutes.
She lays Henry down on the floor near her in her room, and pumps two small bottles. She is starving, but cannot figure out how logistically she will feed Henry his first solids and tend after her butt-naked (and incredibly stubborn) offspring upstairs AND put together a meal more decent than a banana with a hefty scoop of peanut butter and all the M&Ms.
It is at this juncture that she hears these words from the ceiling:
"Mommyyyyy! Come here! Mommy, I need you!"
An icy chill grips her heart. She holds her breath, and a sense of impending doom rises like a lump in her the pit of her stomach.
Then descends the dreaded cry:
"Mommy!! THERE'S POOP EV'WYWHERE!'
She flies out of the room, giving the baby a last glance - he is content and is farther than arm's reach from the pump or anything he could potentially hurt himself with, and, hearing further cries of danger from the recesses of the house, she decides he will have to stay there - and rushes up the stairs, two and three at a time, to the massacre that awaits her.
There is, indeed, poop everywhere. It is covering the legs (and hands) of her toddler with gory pollution. It has taken the strongholds of couch and toilet seat and has even emblazoned itself violently into the carpet.
She makes quick work of this foe, slashing at it with resolute courage and layers of wipes and bravely gasping for breath only through her mouth.
After rushing her two year old into and out of an unceremonious hot shower, she wraps him in a towel and sits him on the stripped cushion of the couch, and then hurtles down the stairs to her baby, worried that he might be crying or lonely, unprepared for a second night alone and desolate in his crib after being neglected by his mother all evening.
He has made the journey by himself, she knows not how, farther than he has ever traveled, over to the breastpump and has happily dumped the entire sticky contents of one bottle on his head, now licking the cone and cords with Winnie-the-Pooh-ish delight.
She swallows that feeling of nauseous and ugly tears. She wipes her brow... her hand smells of poop... and decides, this is where the real love happens in motherhood. And you aren't defeated if you never surrender.
And that evening, long after the babies are sleeping, and her husband gets her totally hammered relaxed with a big glass of wine, she is able to laugh til the tears she held in so hard come streaming down.
And it feels awesome.
Fistpump to all you Warrior Mama's who I know have been there. Keep on keepin' on.
Labels: potty-training, something true