Civic Doodies

I just got my second jury duty summons ever.  Just to make sure I understood what I was reading, my county government sent me the summons twice.  Two jury duty summonses.  In one day.  It's like the civic universe is trying to tell me something.  I so wish I had paid attention in Coach Stewart's Government class in tenth grade. 

But guess what?  For the first time, I finally get to tell the government no.  I get to fill in the bubble that reads, "I am primary caretaker of a child/children 14 years or younger and this child would be left alone".  And therefore, I am able to stay home with said child/children and fulfill my parental duties doodies.  When you have two kids two and under, it's doodies.

Speaking of doodies...

My in-laws are going to cringe at this story.  It takes place back when Chris took me to meet his family for the first time.  We are walking up to the front door and he turns to me, all wide-eyed and serious, and says earnestly, "Okay, Sarah, I need to warn you about something". 

Oh, here it comes.  I knew he was too good to be true.  It's about to come crashing down - the other shoe, that is.  What could it be, what could it be?  His family, were they... Skinheads?  Bigamists?  Democrats?  Scientologists?  Or, could it be?  The worst, most unconscionable offense to my southern brain:  Non-thank-you-note-writing, white-after-Labor-Day-wearing yankees??  Turns out, my slightly overactive imagination was in hyperdrive.  Back to the story.

"Sarah, I need to warn you about something".  Gulp.  "Go on".  Here it comes.

"My, um, family, well, we always seem to talk about - er - somehow the conversation always ends up on..."

Out with it, you closeted-white-after-Labor-Day-wearing fool!

"...gas or poop".

Um, what?

"Within ten minutes, and you can set your watch by this, the conversation will somehow turn into farts or poop.  I just had to warn you".

Farts or poop?  Are you kidding me?  WE ARE MEANT TO BE TOGETHER!  I mean, hello?  I'm a nurse!  We love to talk about farts or poop!  We get paid to talk about farts or poop!  This is perfect.  Get down on your knee right now and save yourself the next two years of our lives.  We are soulmates, baby.

Okay, maybe that's not exactly what I said, but it's what I thought.  And it's what I still maintain to this day. 

Now, we Thomases, we solve all the world's problems around the dinner table, don't get me wrong.  But to lighten the mood, we also throw in the obligatory poop or gas reference.  And when you are potty-training a two-year-old, you will have an abundance of anecdotal experience to draw from.

For instance, recently, I placed Aria Grace on the potty to make her put.  Oh right, time to consult that Thomas Glossary again:

put - verb, to void excrement from the bowels, to have a bowel movement;  - noun, excrement from the bowels, i.e., poop.

We think she got this word from when we used to tell her to "put her poopy in the potty".  She just began saying she had "to put", when it was time to go potty.  Thus, another word added to the Thomas Family Dictionary.

So, Aria Grace was going "put".  As is typical, I got distracted by a phone call, and meandered away from the bathroom, through the family room, through the kitchen, down the hall, through my bedroom, and into my office.  In other words, I was a heckuva long way from my sweet baby as she was going put.  Our custom is for one of us to make sure everything is clean, and by everything, I mean "down there".  I tell her that I need to see her poopy before we tell it bye-bye.  This ensures that she will not climb down off the potty and commence play before being fully and properly sanitized.  However, in this instance, since I was waaaaay far away from that sweet little hiney and could not therefore see the byproduct of her work, she decided she would bring it to me.

Yep, you read that right.  She brought it to me.  Through the family room, through the kitchen, down the hall, through my bedroom and into my office, that sweet little rule-follower proudly brought me two handfuls of her, um, results.  To which I promptly hollered to my friend on the phone, "We have a Code Brown!  I repeat, a Code Brown!  I have to go!  This is not a test!  This is an actual emergency!"  That was followed by Aria's second bath of the day. 

Sorry if all this poop/doodie talk offends anyone's delicate sensibilities.  The way I see it, we all clean it/smell it/make it/hear it/wipe it, we might as well embrace it, right?  It's our civic doodie.  :)  Couldn't resist!

[Incidentally, his our family was and is the perfect southern family, who always write thank you notes and would never, EVAH be caught dead wearing white after Labor Day!]