A Tale of Two Children

My last post was a tribute to the Lord's care of my family. Since my last post, my children have worked together to produce copious amounts of laughter and joy in my life. It all started last week. Bekah has been diligently teaching Hannah to use the potty. While potty training is essential, it is also quite difficult. Some of the "fruits" of her labor were produced on Friday. Hannah finally went "pooh pooh" in the potty! While this brought much joy to our family, it did not provide the laughter which I am referring to. On with the story!

Friday evening we invited the Bowers' over for dinner. Bek had slaved all day long to prepare a delicious meal. In addition, she was baby-sitting for four neighborhood girls and potty-training. Oh yea, that is all on top of the typical home-manger and motherly duties. Before dinner we were all talking on the couch. Bek sees Hannah run into our room. Hannah was naked because this helps her recognize when she needs to go potty. So Bekah calls out to Hannah, "Hannah, do you need to go pooh pooh?" She responds in some cluster of Hannah-neese that no one understood. So Bekah goes to investigate a bit further. Upon entering the bathroom she notices a brown ball of pooh on the floor. Being a gracious and loving mother, she encourages Hannah and goes about cleaning her up. For some reason I had arisen from the couch and walked toward the front door. Turning around to go assist Bek I saw my wonderful son walking out of the hallway. He had a big grin on his face and was holding something with both hands! Upon further investigation of this brown ball I ascertained that he was in fact holding a large ball of pooh! It was quite a bit larger than the pooh ball Bekah had noticed. I have no idea how Hannah passed that in silence! (ouch!) Instantly I grabbed Ben's hands to hold them apart. I have to admit becoming a bit frazzled at this point, not knowing what I should do! As I am looking down at my son, I noticed some brown spots on his face. Actually, they were around his mouth! I assumed that he had not eaten any chocolate chip cookies in the last ten minutes and decided that he had become somewhat intimate with the big pooh ball. As any fifteen month old boy does when he gets his hand on something, Ben had at least kissed, if not tasted his sister's pooh. While still holding Ben's wrists, the horrors of this thought overran my feeble mind! The panic grew! As the Bowers were laughing hysterically, working off the dessert they would later enjoy, I transported my son to the baby wipes and proceeded to clean him up! Sure enough and true to form, he began kissing the baby wipes too!

As I am sure you can imagine, the whole situation stunk! Normally this would be a story reserved for the men's room, seeing how this whole post went to pot. How ironic that the evening's main course was 'pot roast!' So I lit some candles and we continued with a wonderful evening, successfully wiping away the event from our minds.

Thank you, Lord, for children!