It was a regular Monday. Like any Monday, and hubby and I “rocked off” to see who would bathe the kids and who would do the dishes. (I say rocked off as in paper scissors, rock, not some freaky sex game, those days are over). Anyway, I won, or so I thought, and I got to bathe the kids.
Before I go into this story, I need to tell you about my daughter Sofia (Fia for short) ... this girl is sass, okay? Sass.
She doesn’t ask questions as much as she demands, and with her little language they come in one-worded aggressive shouts. She has that much authority you immediately do what she says.
She heard the word bath and promptly approached me and said “off!” Pointing to her T-shirt, then points to the bathroom and says “BARF!” So I promptly obey and say “aye aye captain!” I mean who am I, but not her slave girl? She also occasionally points to me and calls me “naaaawti!” (Naughty) and furrows her brows so deep you feel you’ve been scolded and it feels like the time your mother told you she was “disappointed in you”… anyway. I’m getting to the point here … just hold on.
Another thing she does, is she also announces “poopies."
She holds her little bum and says “ahhh poopies” … I mean I could toilet train the kid but I’m still in the trenches with the other kid who tells me he was too busy being a lion to go to the toilet so he just HAD to pee on the carpet … or my foot … and look, sometimes Sofia actually follows through with her poopies and sometimes it’s a two-hour warning, so unless you can smell garbage there’s no urgency to act when she says it.
I chuck both the little dirty critters into the bath because you can wash one stone with two birds right?
And they’re both playing happily … I’m beginning to psych myself up to wash their hair and thinking, "I wish I had chosen the dishes," when Sofia stands up and says “pooopies!!”
I’m like, dude, you ain’t doing poopies now, just chill. She goes back to playing and then Luca (the lion piss guy) says “Fia needs to do poopies now” … thanks for the commentary my friend, but she does not in fact needs to do poopies, I’m pretty sure she’s met her quota of poopies today.
So I’m trying to carefully wash Luca’s hair, without a trickle of what he believes to be "acid" onto his forehead because his screams literally speed dial child protection, when Sofia says “Oh no, poopies.”
I’ve never heard her say oh no before, and my mouth runs dry.
I look over to see a massive brown turd between her legs. This turd looks like it came from a grown man.
“Ahh sh*t!” … “sh*t!!!” Both my kids repeat. Mother of the year.
I start calling out for my husband because I dunno, I’m not good in crisis situations and tell Luca with soap in his hair that it’s time to get out of the bath now, and he cries and I’m screaming louder for my husband because Luca is flailing around like an octopus slapping me with all his wet limbs because he wants to stay in the sh*t-infested water.
Luca starts uncontrollably crying because I interrupted bath times, socks me in the face and runs naked and wet to his father.
This prompts his dad to come into the bathroom where I’m trying to pry his daughter's tiny fingers away from the edge of the bath because she too refuses to leave the cesspool. He looks at me and asks what’s wrong? And I respond, “I’ve been punched by your son and your daughter has done a massive shit in the bath.” (I always call them yours when they do something I don’t like.)
He replies with an “oh sh*t” which sends off the two parrots again repeating sh*t over and over. He hands me a paper towel. I mean dude, what the hell am I gonna do with a paper towel? Dry the sh*t? Soak the bath water?
I tell him I’m gonna just have to pull the plug. Plug pulling results in the loudest slurping noise ever where both kids cry hysterically because it scares the sh*t out of them. Sofia sees what I’m doing and starts screaming 'NAWTI!!'
I close my eyes and put my hand in and go to pull the plug when I hear:
“Laura.” Followed by laughter.
“Bub” followed by more laughter. My husband is looking at me like I’m the biggest idiot in the world.
“Ahh Laura … it’s not a sh*t. Look at it properly.”
“What?” I take a look at the turd and don’t know how I didn’t see it before.
It was an (expletive) toy bear.
And he said, “in fairness to you, it did actually look like a sh*t, so this time I’ll let you off.” (There’s been other occasions where I’ve mistaken toys for other things. I wish I was joking. I actually have 20/20 vision. I’m probably just losing my mind.)
Ahh brother bear, you too shall join your siblings of lifelike animals in the bin. I’m also boycotting all toys bought from the zoo. They’re sending me to an early grave.
Both kids went back into the bath by the way and I went and did the rest of the dishes.
Rock Paper Scissors my ass.
This post was written by Laura Mazza of Mum on the Run and reprinted with permission.
