No Bath

Now that the kids are back home and my irrational mommy-paraonia isn't on High Alert (if I tell people they're away and I'm not with them, they'll...they'll...something bad will happen, I just don't know what!) I can tell some of the stories from the nine days that N and Em were away (well, Em was away for three weeks preceding that, but that's another set of stories). It was high drama and pathos, let me tell you. And yet, I'm going to start with just a silly little story from last night that made me laugh ever so hard.

[Warning: Poop talk ahead.]

Part of the high drama and pathos was the fact that N didn't poop for the first eight days of his nine-day excursion. This was somewhat to be expected, he being prone to constipation most of his six years to date. But eight days? Oy.

So there were measures taken. We started with small guns, then moved up to larger and larger ones, until finally the dam, as they say...well, none of us wants me to finish that sentence, do we?

There was, as there often is when you've been loaded with laxatives, some spillage in the first 24 hours post-dam-breakage. Ew. Yesterday all had seemed well on the eight-hour (with layovers) trip back home. Once N was in his very own house, however, with his very own bathroom where he's comfrotable pooping...well, there was no dam. There were several making-it-into-the-bathroom-but-not-onto-the-toilet incidents, requiring an unbearable amount of poop cleaning. Let's just say that more than a gallon of bleach was used in the post-poop disinfecting stage and leave it at that, shall we?

Anyway, during the second major clean-up, I had N in the bathtub and was cleaning the poop off his legs (and feet and back and...URGH) when I said, "You know, I should probably just give you a bath when I'm done with this. When was the last time Uncle gave you a bath on the trip?"

"He didn't," N said calmly. "I didn't have a bath at all on the trip."

WHAT? Now, there are things that my brother-in-law (a gay man in his 50s) doesn't know about child care, and he was sent on this trip with a ridiculous number of "don't forget to"s and "you have to"s regarding both children. But baths? He had to have known that nine days without a bath was NOT appropriate. Did I literally have to tell him everything? I was...I was...I was. Speechless, that's what I was.

After deciding against the bath at that very second (realizing, rightly, that there might well be Poop Incident #3 on its way), I went storming in to Baroy to complain about his brother and his lack of hygiene. "I mean, really! No baths for nine days? What is WRONG with him? How could I have trusted him to take my kids all over the east coast? He couldn't even be trusted to BATHE them!"

Em, who was sitting beside Baroy on the couch, listened to me rant and rave. Then, her face betraying only a hint of a smile-at almost 10, she has as much an appreciation for the ironic as do most adults--she said, "It's true that Uncle didn't give N a bath the whole time. But he did give him three showers."

Oh. Um. Showers. No baths. Showers. Um. Never mind.

Damned literal-minded kids. All N did was answer the question put to him. All I did was look like an idiot. And laugh for a very long time afterward.