Comment: Potty/Jello

It’s amazing the things that won’t phase you once you become a parent. Things that normally would have set my teeth on edge, or have me fleeing for the hills before kids, just don’t seem to be that big of a deal to me anymore.

Case in point: I’m in the bathroom taking care of business when my son appears with a box of Strawberry Jello and asks if we can make it today. I am not particularly non-plussed, but we do have a rule about no food in the bathroom, so I politely ask him to remove himself and said Jello and give me some privacy so I can finish my bathroom chore in relative peace.

This is the sort of thing that happens a lot, and after awhile you just don’t register that it’s out of the ordinary, because it isn’t.

When your daughter marches around the house naked, her underwear in her hand, waving them, flag-like, it’s just a normal day. When your son wipes his hands on your pants, you just remind him that that’s what napkins are for, and continue trying to conduct a conversation (such as it is) on the telephone. And when your daughter is doing the pee-pee dance and doesn’t make it, but ends up in a puddle of her own steaming urine, ah well. Part of the process. Deep breath. Time to get out the wipes.

There’s just so much that you take for granted as a person without children; you do things like make supper, use the bathroom, bathe and apply makeup uninterrupted. You can even have a long conversation on the phone, whose degree of difficulty only increases as your kids get older and (a) drop their naps so there’s no down time and (b) are interested in and understand in part what you are talking about on the phone. And once your kid starts to read, forget about it. Watch those i-ms, emails and texts, because even a small child can sound f-u-c-k and usually get it right.

So there are things you can’t do with ease anymore, and there are things you do that you never dreamt you’d do. I remember holding out my hands for my child to vomit into. If you don’t have kids, that’s utterly disgusting. If you do have kids, it’s still utterly disgusting, but also natural to do so since you’re at Starbucks and you REALLY don’t want to deal with vomit on the floor in a public place.

I mean, I’ve heard that women used to suck the mucous out of their kids’ noses by mouth, because those fabulous little rubber syringes weren’t invented yet. GAH. Happy to have missed out on that. But I understand it; if your kid can’t breathe, you’ll be a human vacuum for him without blinking; what choice do you have? There’s only time for a reaction, so you go for it.

The things we do for love.