Everyone Poops

(Note: I just finished posting this over at the famly blog but decided to cheat and post it here, too. Context: For my daughter's birthday we gave her two guinea pigs.)

There is a book called Everyone Poops. It is one of those cute but gross kid books. I worked with a youth minister once who received a lot of flak for reading it to a bunch of highschoolers. A-n-y-w-a-y, as I was scooping out the Guinea Pig Condo this morning I remembered that book and I had my first serious thought of "What have I done?"

Don't get me wrong. I think these two piggies are about the cutest piggies ever. However, I'm experiencing a little mommy PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) as I'm cleaning up all the little pooplets.

My first in-depth experience wasn't actually with my kid babies but my dog baby, Bob. With a puppy, a lot of your energy is invested in their excrement:

• Where is the poop?
• I've got to pick up the poop.
• Why are there red plastic chunks in the poop?
• Yikes, is that a worm in the poop?
• I want my husband to pick up my dog's poop.

After four years of Bob poop, I added kid poop to my repertoire. Fortunately, I never had to ask where my kid's poop was. Wait. That isn't true. Marley was a tub pooper. Shudder. So, except for the tub poop potential, I didn't have to ask where the poop was. Diaper. Toilet. Easy. And, really, if I had ever had to ask why there were red plastic chunks in their poop, well, straightjacket and a padded room, I think.

With kids, though, it tends to be more of a frequency issue in the beginning followed by the inevitable effort to encourage the transition from diaper to toilet. Sometimes, in the effort to make that transition, you develop "issues." My daughter had one of these issues. Constipation. Let's just say there were many tearful times holding her and telling her, "You can do it, honey. You can do it."

Voila! The years passed and I was done with poop. The kids take care of it all of their own and the dog--may he rest in peace--is cavorting around doggy heaven. Enter the piggies. O-m-i-g-o-s-h! Pooplets to the left of me. Pooplets to the right of me. They're little. Okay. That's good. But I've gone and done it. I've let myself in for 5 - 8 years (average guinea pig life span) of this.

"You can do it, honey. You can do it."

P.S. I like to embellish my posts with pictures. In the name of not pushing a poop post over the edge of decency, I've elected to go without a photo today.